Nénuphar - stage 4

Have got most of the picture done now, it just leaves the bottom of the painting to sort out and then I need to paint some glazes over various areas to intensify the colours a bit as the white that I have used in the mixes has made the colours slightly chalky.

Nénuphar - stage 3

Spent the whole day refining and defining the middle ground of the painting as I need to do this before I paint in the buildings in the sunlight in front of the mountain. The influences on this picture are Maxfield Parrish and the Hudson River School of painters; I must also add that I am not basing this picture on a particular colour combination (it could be vaguely described as based on a blue/green - yellow/orange complementary I suppose) as I am having pretty much every colour in the rainbow in this one.

Nénuphar - stage 2

Managed to get quite a lot done today; painted in the sky and mountain (will paint the moon in tomorrow) and then made a good start on the slopes of the hillside behind the city. I also adjusted the shape of the foreground tree at left and put in some more cool greens in the bottom half of the picture.  The ruined temple will be much more subtly lit than it appears at the moment.

Nénuphar - stage 1

Nénuphar is French for water lily which will be found in the pool at the bottom of the painting but I just love the name anyway so in my imagination it is the name of the woman who is emerging out of the pool (you can't see her yet)...or maybe it is the name of the Land that I am painting....
I first "drew" it up with a small bristle brush using a mix of Burnt Sienna thinned with Liquin and Lukas Number 5 Medium and then used a rag to wash in some tone using the same colour mix thinned with turpentine in the morning session. By mid-afternoon it was dry enough to very roughly paint in some underlying colours. 
This is another painting that will hopefully be heading to Illuxcon later in the year.

Sanctuary Of The Sun

As the sun sets a lone figure has walked through the ruins of an ancient temple complex and performs an ancient rite to the sun disc in the Temple of Apollo at the top of the hill. All is quiet and still in the warm, misty air, just occasionally one can hear the muffled words of an incantation previously thought lost to the world drifting towards us.
Another painting hopefully heading for Illuxcon in October, "Sanctuary Of The Sun" was influenced by the colours of Sydney Long's "Spirit Of The Plains" but has something of Caspar David Friedrich in there too, maybe it's the arch on the hilltop temple. As the composition rests on the centrally placed arch and sun I have tried to break up the symmetry by offsetting other elements against it as well as having movement within the composition whereby the eye is led from the temple ruin at left onto the broken column that then leads around to the way up to the hilltop and the figure below the arch and sun. I chose an analogous palette based around red that went from oranges and yellows to pinks and violets (with a guest colour of yellow green)....and the subtle light blue in the sky. Oil on canvas 23 1/2" x 19 1/2". There is a step-by-step progress though this painting in previous posts on this blog.

Sanctuary Of The Sun - stage 6

I have continued to work over the whole picture as it is quite difficult to modulate the values and colours for it to work spatially. I have knocked back the arch and cypresses so that the foreground can come forwards more and am putting some blues into the foreground so that it differentiates itself from the rest of the picture. There will be no real dark values in this painting as everything is contre-jour and misty - it also looks better in the studio than the photograph so please bear with me until it is finished and can get a decent shot of it!

Sanctuary Of The Sun - stage 5

Have worked all over the picture again, adjusting values and colour so that most of the painting will be in middle to high values but trying to keep a strong saturation to the colours.