With verve into the light

You did it in less than 3 hours? That's great man!
I personally don't have guts to start on something of that size and to expect satisfactory results in less than many many many hours;-).
It's a complex scenery! I love how you broke it's structure, planned and painted it. Your colors are much vivid than those from reference. I think you're on right tracks to be able to paint what you want to paint.
I don't see any bad in painting from reference. I will do it over and over again until I feel comfortable enough with composition, perspectives, rendering light and shadow, choosing right subject to paint (and how to paint it ) and who knows whats more. Doing abstracts is great for giving your brain deserved rest. And of course, it's essential to challenge yourself constantly and have fun!

I love seeing you when you hit a creative 5th gear. So many experiments that look good and hold together nicely. This last is just fine. Who cares if it took 3 hours? Great use of time

Thanks all of you for you encouragement. Thanks a lot.

OK - my "alter Schinken" is ready.
"Alter Schinken"that's what German say about old paintings - literally translated "old ham" something that hangs around to loose last of it's juice.
But it was fun and important to do that!

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I used my own image brush for clouds, which were done in a few minutes with it. Same for grass and stone structure.
For reflections I exported the single layer needed as Vertical flipped pictures.
After, I made a new layer (important, verve will overwrite active layer with imported picture) flipped vertical back and load the layer.
Water ripples were done with brush#2 few bristles and SHIFT for smudge, but before I had to rearrenge some parts for reflection size and placement with warp function.
Everything is done in verve except frame and tiny things.

Best,

Knacki

[Taron]

That's really impressive, Knacki!
I somehow get a tiny bit of a Mike vibe from it, probably because of the great details. My favorite parts are the marshes, though, for some reason. I think they feel the most painterly and add a lot of life to it!
Again, great job!

Fantastic, what a work ! Yes the marshes are great, also all the mountains, the texture of walls...
Maybe the green is bit vivid for an "old painting" but it gives its own personal flavor to your painting.
Oh, and about your last quick studies, my faves go to Latex_Fire-web, Liquid-Moon and Melting_Arnie, very poetic Sci-Fi set, you are gifted for those things too.
regards,
GBoGBo

@Knacki

Wow, congratulations! You did most complex landscape painting on this forum as far as I know. And you did it pretty well, all elements are there, painted in great details and painted well.
But I think, they are little out of sync. You gave almost equal attention to the whole painting at once, as I guess Taron's comment was about. What I would do is to focus which part of the painting is of greater importance to me (is it castle, bridge or some fuzzy path through marshes next to bridge and to the castle). Once I have that established the other parts of paintings are then of less importance and must be subordinated (painted in less details, less saturated, put in shadow or some elements like haze, fog etc.). The most important part is then focused (illuminated, saturated, contrasted with negative painting, negative shapes etc.) and/or painted in great details. The viewer should be guided through painting and kept there in loop as long as he can withstand (the longer the better). This whole process is grown from the very beginning, when you starts with speed sketch. I think first sketching shapes outlines with pencil-like brush on only one layer may be a good approach to this, to keep painting as a whole. Then building up contrasts with lights (i.e. atmosphere), colors and shapes etc. to emphasize and subordinate with opposite (this can be on as many layers as you like).
Please don't get this as a preaching, but as a fellow artist constructive critique. We are here to help and to push each other to conquest inch by inch our everlasting dream, which is to enjoy in our paintings and to learn more with each one we painted. You have great potential and energy!

Let's finish this constructive preaching (which is much much easier than paint anything) with two lines from great Irwin Greenberg:

Analyze the work of great painters. Study how they emphasize and subordinate.
Prizes are nice, but the real competition is with your performance yesterday.

very very nice job dear knacki and the critique from zen is good too

There is also a rule for some artists - 70/30 .... 30% high-detailed areas + and 70% less detailed areas in a artwork.

Oh - thankd for all feedback.

GBoGBo - those abstracts are killer. If you are interrested in things mine that , put flud on 100, curl on 0, brush#2 on half canvas size, opacity off but size on and start painting an eight like structure quite quick to get fluids moving. Then stop. If nothing is happening male quick stroke over the parts you already have painted and watch the magic. I created non stopping magical displays with that technique. If I find time I'll post some screenrecordings -aaaaawsome.

Zen & zero. Thanks for taking time in writing those critiques.
You totally right. That's probably one risk on references as taron said. You easilyget lost in detail. But that is somehow very much my personallity. I was dissapointed after seeing complete painting in total.
Impact was far less than I hoped for. But I just copied something and didn't thought much about composition and focus. And that was very good to once gone through this and learn how to produce next one on my experience and extend freedom for creativity and composition.
As one experience I learned that I now can achive this detailed look where ever I want to have it but not on complete picture.
I thought about placing a person in foreground i.e.
I could also take all single layers to photoshop where plenty of tools are available for creating focus.
I ran out of time.
Now I'll focus more on speedpaint where all what I learned will be seen. Time is short next weeks so don't expect too much.

@Knacki

Please don't be disappointed! You did hell of a job! But really! Only you know how much of a job is to catch and paint everything you did. I can only guess that it's a lot! Be proud man! You have energy and skill to finish something like that where I would struggle for couple of days to get even close to you. Yes, that's are traits of copycats as I'm also. We bite something bigger that we hoped for and then in order to finish it as faster as we can (as we got tired) we got lost in details. But this is a great for learning. I know that you will plan better in future and reject what's not needed!

btw. Painting is not that bad after all, I could rest my eyes on background without effort where middle and foreground are fighting with each other. So yes, something to take more focus on foreground could help.

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