Working top to bottom and left to right across the painting, the composition is beginning to take shape. The painting is organized in three tiers, the same as the architecture of the building, with a base, middle and cap. Ground, building, sky. In architecture it is known as tripartite.
The first step, after blocking out the painting with pencil, was to mask out the outline of the building and put in the sky. I used a wet-to-wet wash of Cobalt Blue and touch of Crimson Red at the top to create depth in the sky. The clouds have a soft edge that will sit nicely against the lines of the castle.
This week the painting is about half complete. Along with moving forward on the image, I went back and pushed the areas that I thought needed either more detail or more layers of paint to build up the color.
