Learning objectives
■ Colour mixing with a limited palette
■ Practise the lifting-out technique using a brush and tissue
■ Work on your drawing skills
Whenever I'm about to start a painting, I spend a good five minutes studying my reference and formulating a plan. Deciding what I'm going to include and what is unnecessary detail is worth considering. I often tell my students a painting can go wrong before you start, if you don't give it some initial thought. In the case of this project, the first thing I decided was to leave out the Tudor-looking window in the top left,behind the moat, into a wet-in-wet blur to send it farther back and give it less importance. I then decided to exaggerate the greens into more yellow and blue tones to give more contrast in the foliage.
