The Sultan's Favourite - stage 7

Finished the palace and mosque area today (bar any glazing when everything else is put in) and then roughly painted in the figure and octagonal table.

The Sultan's Favourite - stage 6

Only managed to get some more work done on the palace area today. I want a richly colourful, hot, almost oppressive feel to the colours which I am now seeing is coming into the picture but I don't want the palace area to be as precisely painted as this so I hope to break things up a bit tomorrow with more random highlights and shadows.

The Sultan's Favourite - stage 5

I worked on the palace and mosque area today, defining some of the buildings more and lightening the areas in the sun as they were too dark as well as putting in more shadows such as on the blue dome.

The Sultan's Favourite - stage 4

All I could get done yesterday was to put in some basic shadow areas on the palace buildings before I had to go to London to deliver some paintings to The Store Street Gallery. Today I painted in the background landscape at right and made a start on the palace buildings. In my mind's eye I have always seen this picture in very rich warm colours with an orange/pink cast to the palace buildings and warm orange/yellows in the foreground which I think will only work if I can get some very dark shadow areas and then use glazes over the whole painting to get the lighting and atmosphere that I want.

The Sultan's Favourite - stage 3

I darkened the sky yesterday but stopped as I didn't like where it was going and left it alone to look at the next morning to see if I could resolve it in the cold light of a new day. I decided that it needed more blue in the sky, to make the clouds more variable in colour and to get in the sunlit mountains on the horizon. So I changed the sky near the horizon, put in indications of sunlight on the far mountains and then put in an indication of the sunlit land in front of them. I need to fix in my mind how the lighting is meant to work in this picture so I put in more darks into the foreground  before I start on the background palace buildings. This is quite a difficult picture to paint as it relies so much on the lighting and colour to get across the atmosphere I want.

The Sultan's Favourite - stage 2

I have now put in some very rough colour to give me an idea of what works and what doesn't. The sky needs to be darker and I need to work out the colour of the shadows in the background palace buildings, these are the first things that I have noticed so far. I also need to make sure that the blue domes are a different colour and tone to the foreground pavilion and I need some touches of red in the palace buildings....and the foreground light areas should be more orange.

The Sultan's Favourite - stage 1

Original sketch

Early draw-in

I have chosen to paint an Orientalist picture in rich, warm colours to which end I am going to try using Zinc White as opposed to Titanium White for hopefully more saturated less chalky mixes and tints of colour as well as glazes for a richer effect. It is set in the early evening with the last rays of an orange/pink sun illuminating the scene of a naked girl sitting on an oriental carpet on a belvedere with pavilion overlooking a sunset-lit palace. There will be indications of town/city buildings on the right with a plain and distant mountains in the far background. I plan to have lots of rich reds, blues etc and the strongest contrasts in the foreground while the palace building will be softly lit against a slightly darker sky for more mood and atmosphere. This is of course a fantasy in every way and is very much in the tradition of the Western Orientalist paintings of the late 19th century whose imaginings of languid naked girls waiting for the attention of the Sultan as they bask in opulent interiors was in complete opposition to how harem life actually was. I have mixed up various Islamic architectural styles together in this picture as I want it to remain a fantasy with no specific location or country being depicted. It was first "drawn" in with a rag using a mix of Burnt Sienna and Dioxazine Purple thinned with Liquin and turpentine before a tonal block-in was painted over it using the same colour mix also using a rag.

Tonal block-in