As I so often do, I’m working on a toned support, in this instance using a thin wash of light grey acrylic, leaving some transparency from the white gessoed board to show through.

With a no 2 Jackson’s Black Hog Round, I drew out the main structure of this interesting old priory with black acrylic; it was the perspective and strong shapes with varying layers of crumbling stone work that had first attracted me to this vantage point, I could employ counterchange later on to exploit these shapes to my advantage. A thin wash of black acrylic was loosely blocked in to indicate the main areas of shadow. You must establish your light source at this early stage and don’t deviate from it!

With my composition now looking well balanced on this square format, I started on the shadow areas with transparent washes of colour, I can build on this in the later stages with a more heavily bodied mix where required, and also brushed in some strong colour across the sky area as a starting point. As I had only used washes of paint thinned with turps in this stage, it was dry within a very short time.

I’m adopting the fat over lean rule as I generally do for my studio work, building up my painting methodically and gradually in layers, making any minor adjustments that are necessary as I proceed. I’m looking for a strong visual image here, bold lines and colours that will give the image maximum impact. 

I started to add a few areas of neutral greys and blues to some of the walls, this acts as a relief from the ochre stone work. Too much colour can and usually is overpowering to the eye, so don’t dismiss greys as simply boring mixes of black and white, they can be made up from a range of complimentary colours and can be a great help. A few muted blue patches were added to the sky.

Further additions of stronger colour glazes were brushed into the building, which was now starting to take on some good depth and tonal contrast. 

I don’t want to start fiddling around with too much detail, but I felt it necessary to pick out a few areas of stone work, in particular to the foreground walls - definitely not to the main structure, that’s fine as it stands - to start drawing in individual stone work would be a recipe for disaster

I was reasonably happy with the sky as it stands at the moment, it harmonises well with the buildings, primarily that’s because I’ve worked over the whole painting at the outset, so the colours will all naturally gel together.

Some of the abbey walls needed toning down a touch, followed by small additions to one or two parts of the foreground structure and floor - the painting will show this much more clearly than trying to describe all this detail in words.

I deliberately kept the buildings in the background simple and low key, we don’t want to distract our attention away from the main focal point.

I brushed on a mix of quinacridone red glazing medium to various parts of the stone work to add a touch of vibrancy.

Want to paint more stunning buildings in oil? Follow Alan to paint Lichfield Cathedral, A Vision of Segovia and The Alhambra, An Impression.