I like to have a bit of fun with titles and with these Orientalist fantasies that I paint I try to come up with something slightly overblown the way that they were titled in Victorian times when Orientalist painting was at it's height (generally speaking). Apologies to Muslim scholars etc for this one, I know that Jebel means mountain but I think that it can mean rock as well (I stand to be corrected!) and I think Moussa is more Sub Saharan African but that's alright, these are fantasies and I deliberately mix up architectural styles to emphasise the point that these are not real places, more "Arabian Nights" in feeling. I had originally planned this to be beside a river with palms and feluccas around the rock with the buildings on top but midway in drawing it up I lost confidence in that idea and decided to stop and have another look at it over my breakfast coffee the next morning when I decided to situate it on a sea or lake shore. When the tonal underpainting was finished I dallied with the idea of painting it in daylight instead of night time as the underpainting kind of looked that way but I stuck with the nocturne deciding to maybe do another one of this but in daylight at a later date. I had an Atkinson Grimshaw -like sky for this in mind but as is often the case with a painting it kind of went it's own way and came out like this.
Oil on linen 16" x 12".
There is a short step-by-step progress through this painting including the colours I used in previous posts on this blog.
Awesome!
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