Made flesh
and bones
In stones
And slate.
This is Eltz Castle, a real place, rising above the River Moselle between Trier and Koblenz in Germany. Now, today's prompt in Sketching Every Day is castles. Well, one thing we're not short of in wales is castles. However I've sketched and painted several Welsh castles before, so out of perversity I decded to say stuff it, and go for something from a bit further afield. When I found a couple of photos of Eltz Castle I knew that this was what I wanted to go for.
Right, I'm a firm believer in being honest about your own work. Without being destructive, it's important to be able to look critically at aspects of your work you'd like to improve, and to admit it to yourself. The other side of the coin is to allow yourself to admit it when you've produced something you're happy with. And I have to say that I'm really happy with this. I exaggerated the perspective of the castle buildings, leaning inwards to point up at the sky, and that's given me an effect that I like. More than that, though, is the use of colour on the buildings. As usual my scanner hasn't really quite done the original justice, but it's a good enough scan that you can see what I did with the brown and violet merging on the buildings, and the blue and violet merging on the mountains. This is approaching how I'd really like to be able to use colour on urban sketches and is much closer to what I admire in some other urban sketchers. Yay!
