Dark Citadel stage 1

Sorry about lack of blog activity but was first put out of action by a heavy cold and then I have been making the final decisions for the IX Commission. After lots of thoughts, ideas, changes, reassessments etc I whittled it all down to a fantasy landscape which I am calling "Dark Citadel". Once I had a concept sketch approved by Pat and Jeannie Wiltshire who run IX I settled down to the fine tuning of what I was going to do. The idea is simple enough, high up on a protruding ledge overlooking a valley are the battlements and buildings of a city. Simple enough but I agonised for several days on which format to use, Landscape or Portrait. Landscape as the name implies gets in the most err... landscape but it looked more ordinary in this format. Portrait had more scope for making the city more dominant and better enabled an idea I had to give it more drama; a moving perspective. At the bottom you are looking down onto the river meanders and the ruins, as you move to the middle the horizon is approx the end of the valley in the distance and then you start to look up to the city on the ledge, then the mountain at right and finally you are looking high at the sky on a moonlit night. so it has the effect of a vertical angled wide angle lens view of a landscape. The other important thing about "Dark Citadel" will be the colours and lighting. A full moon in a dramatic sky lights up a landscape in hopefully quite a magical way...you will see what I mean as it progresses...
Normally I "draw " up a painting in less than a day, but this is much larger which gives more scope for additional elements to include to help with the sense of scale. This has meant that I will have to do this over another day before I can move on to the Tonal Underpainting.
I "drew" it up with a small bristle brush using a mix of Burnt Sienna and Winsor Violet thinned with Liquin and a little turpentine. Any mistakes/changes are rubbed off the canvas with a clean rag with a bit of turpentine on it.
Oil on canvas 30" x 40".