Herewith a rather  better picture of the next stage of the Blue Mosque.

I’ve just started to get some generally fairly thinned down colour onto the canvas and have already taken huge liberties with the starting material, cutting out large quantities of red roofs between the mosque and the railed balcony where I stood at the time. This has unbalanced the picture.

Before more and thicker colour goes on I will have to alter the composition to drop the horizon line where the sky and seas meet to make it work as a picture. The current colours are about as subtle as a child’s crayon drawing but in the broadest sense are still useful because it gives one an idea of what goes where. One of the main challenges will be to get the effect of the setting sun on the clouds, sea and buildings, especially where the roofs and minarets have some highly reflective gilding in places

Chris