Departure Of The Bash Kadin - stage 6

Didn't get much done today as I had to go to the Eye Hospital for a check up wherein they put in an eyedrop that makes the pupils dilate and the eyesight goes a bit fuzzy so not ideal for painting! I did manage to get one more glaze layer on the sky and then worked on the trees and village. Towards the end of the afternoon I worked out that if I put in some blue/green over the darks you get a nice colour which will make the whole painting based around a classic red/orange - green/blue colour complementary with most of it being variations of blue/green.

Departure Of The Bash Kadin - stage 5

Getting the sky near to the depth of blue that I want so that the palace looks slightly ethereal in the moonlight especially now that the light on the sand dunes has been put in. I have made a start on sorting out the village and palms by the shore of the river which I need to be the darkest area of the painting so that the tonal design works.

Departure Of The Bash Kadin - stages 3 and 4

I didn't get a chance to post anything yesterday so here are two stages of the painting. In stage 3 I made a start on the palace and the sand (as well as a glaze layer of Phthalocyanine Blue on the sky) which I repeated today to a point where the palace is pretty much finished. I also made the moonlight on the sand more convincing which I will finish off tomorrow. Another glaze layer of Phthalocyanine Blue on the sky tomorrow should also make more sense of the values used on the palace. 

Departure Of The Bash Kadin - stage 2

Well I decided to stick to moonlight in the end as I think that it will look more atmospheric and evocative. I can't paint in the reflections until I can see what they are reflecting i.e. I have to finish the upper part of the picture first. The painting will be centred on a blue/green - red/orange complementary colour axis although I will need some yellow for the desert sand. The darkest part of the painting will be the strip of land with the buildings and palm trees which neatly lies on a line a third of the way up the picture. In fact The Rule Of Thirds has been used a lot in this painting, the boat lies in the corner at a third of the way along and up; this is to offset the centrally-placed moonlight reflection.

Departure Of The Bash Kadin - stage 1

The Bash Kadin is the First Wife of the Sultan; this picture shows her leaving a small quay near the Sultan's Palace on a boat heading who knows where. I still have a choice of the time of day that I want to set it in, originally I saw it as moonlit but it could be sunlit too - either way there will be a considerable amount of flare coming off the reflection in the water. I first "drew" it up with a small bristle brush using a mix of Burnt Sienna and Winsor Violet thinned with Liquin and Lukas Number 5 Medium in the morning session so that it would be dry enough in the afternoon to apply a wash of the same paint mix thinned with turpentine for a basic tonal underpainting. This is another painting hopefully heading for Illuxcon in October.

Nénuphar sold

A nice lady in the USA has just bought "Nénuphar" even before the paint had dried! She had seen it on the IX Facebook page when I posted it yesterday and immediately contacted me about buying it. This is the second recent painting destined for Illuxcon that has sold straight after completion; I will be taking them to Allentown to exhibit at Illuxcon before the buyers take them away at the end of the show.

Nénuphar

Nénuphar is French for Water Lily so is ostensibly connected to the lilies in the pool at the bottom of the picture but as I love the word so much it could be the name of the woman emerging out of the pool or even the name of the Land itself. Another picture that is hopefully heading for Illuxcon in October this one is loosely based on an orange/red - green/blue complementary colour axis but in fact just has about every colour in the rainbow in it. The basic idea was to have a warm top third contrasting with a cool bottom two thirds centred around cool greens. The main influences on this landscape typical of what I used to paint as an illustrator are Maxfield Parrish and the Hudson River painters, particularly Albert Bierstadt and is just about the first time I have painted an imaginary mountain scape for fifteen years. Oil on canvas 15 3/4" x 31 1/2". There is a step-by-step progress through this painting on previous posts on this blog.