1. The initial sketch

This picture was based around a lot of photos I took on a visit to Portmerrion (the backdrop for the Prisoner series). I started by just blocking in some rough areas of colour and some of the main light and dark areas. Most of this was done fairly cautiously as I didn't want to add too much contrast at this stage

2. Refining dark areas

The next step was to refine some of the areas and start to get a bit bolder by adding some really dark areas into the picture to try and add some depth.

3. The sky

I hadn't touched the sky at this point and needed to get something down to bring out the buildings a bit more. I separated the sky from the main picture and then mixed a picture I had taken of some clouds. I also decided to add a gradient fill to the clouds so they would fit better in the scene.

4. Details

There was a lot of foliage in this picture which was very time consuming to draw. I ended up madly scribbling over the areas with lots of different green colours. This gave a nice base to work on which I added more details along with blending some Photoshop Paint Daub to create a more painterly look.

5. Contrast and colour

The picture was almost there. The only thing I was unhappy with was the overall contrast and the image had a green tint to it. I played around with the contrast and colour balance until I found something I liked. It had also become a bit blurry as I had overpainted slightly too much. I blended a sharpen over the whole image to bring out some of the details.

Click here for the full size image.