For this exercise, we are asked to enlarge an image using the squaring up technique – preferably a townscape or with buildings in it. I chose to use one of my own photos taken whilst I was in Wales recently, it’s a view of Criccieth Castle.
I don’t usually tackle a scene like this using a squaring up technique, I prefer to paint an impression of the place. When we were there, the weather wasn’t all that great and it was gloomy most of the time, I have some lovely photos of the castle taken from the beach on the one morning when it was bright but they don’t include buildings in the foreground, so I decided not to use any of those. In retrospect I think I should have done because there would have been more ‘light’ in the finished painting. anyhow, I first squared off the image that I’d printed onto A4 paper and then expanded it onto A2.
squaring up the reference image 
making the squares on the A2 paper
rough sketch of main shapes 
tidying up thhe shapes a bit
I decided to use gouache for this exercise, for the white, I use Winsor & Newton acrylic, ‘cos I still haven’t managed to buy more white gouache!
laying in some colour 
working over the top with soft pastels, pencils and tinted charcola pencils
I used a variety of different media to work on this painting, including soft pastels (for the grassy hill and parts of the castle ruins, sky tones. I decided to get rid of the car. This is the finished work:
I now have one more exercise to do before i can start preparation for Assignment four.
Footnote: I discovered that JMW Turner painted many castles in England and Wales. He also did studies of Criccieth. The images below were obtained from a website that concentrates on Castles and Fortifications (http://www.ecastles.co.uk/turnerw.html), however the copyright for these images is held with the Tate.
