This is a castle at the bottom of a tiny valley, built by a nobleman in Portugal for his little daughter, for the ducks in the moat of the castle. I thought it was fascinating. I have to say it took forever. There is still something to be done but I'm tired of it at this point, so I call it finished! It's 50x60cm.
I started on a primed but not toned canvas and layed down the first layer in umber:
I then wanted to see what was the effect of the wall and set the divider for the painting, so I introduced the colour layer for it:
At this point the woods needed attention, so blocked in the major portion of the woods and painted the faint woods in the top right corner, which will then be covered by a mist. You'll notice that the tree in the foreground (of which you can see some branches from the top of the above picture) will have disappeared. They will continue to be hidden and I'll resurface them at the very end of the painting.
The woods are now finished, and so is the mist:
At this point I'm blocked - I need to re-work the tower, make those bricks a lot bigger. However I have a problem with the colour of the bricks... should they be much darker or much lighter? Here is what I'll try to resolve today - the uncertainty of where I am is clearly shown here:
I've now tackled the tower and its bastions. The tower is somewhat finished here I think, so are the bastions unless the overall effect will call for more, but as you can see I started the colour layer on the water. This layer is the first of two and at the end, since it's going to be a fairly dark colour, the bastions may have to be revisited.
Now added finally the water as it's intended to be:
And last, I put colour on the bush to the front left, and added some highlights to the bastions.