Abandoned Fort

Alert readers will recognize this climbing structure from my profile photo. For some reason it always cheers me up in times of trouble, sitting out in the back yard pointing onwards and upwards, and reminding me of happy times watching the kids play on it. I’ve done a lot of drawings and paintings of it over the years; this one I started back in the winter and put finishing touches on recently. It uses only burnt sienna, yellow ochre, ultramarine blue, and titanium white. I started the painting as the snow was falling, with overcast sky and very dim and diffuse light, then went out and worked on again the following day with the sun out. But the view is due south, so the light was actually coming from behind the structure. In the course of developing the painting in the studio, I decided I really wanted the light to be falling on the front, and fabricated a situation that never happened. I'm pretty sure it never could happen, unless we had a midsummer blizzard. I'm considering doing a companion version with the snow falling, like Goya's Majas.