City of the Sky People

The third in a series of sky-based paintings, in this one I intended to paint a more naturalistic sky and landscape but with much more of a Fantasy content so I came up with this: an imaginary city set in a cold and desolate landscape against a big sky, this time painted in more naturalistic colours than the previous one. The river meanders are influenced by Cuckmere Haven, an iconic landscape half an hour away from where I live in East Sussex UK. I think I've channeled  a battleship's conning tower for the city!
The lighting developed as I went along with the decision to have the distance in sunlight only happening near the end of the painting. It's quite a busy painting but composed with the Rule of Thirds used in the placement of the different elements. The composition is a series of checks and balances of light and dark areas against each other, trying to get as much movement as I can into the painting particularly helped by the sweeping river meanders.
I try to make my landscapes as dramatic/dynamic as I can unless I want an atmosphere of stillness. One of the reasons that I am doing sky-based paintings is that I feel I need to improve in this area and am already thinking about ideas for the next one, cloud-based again as I enjoy doing them.
I hope to take this to IX in Reading PA later this year.
30" x 20" oil on linen.
There is a step-by-step progress through this painting in earlier posts on this blog.