I started it in 1993 but never finished it. I found it recently and made another attempt to complete it just this year. It is a bit sketchy in style, but I think I like that...
I struggled to work out how to paint the eroded brickwork. I also wanted to give the effect of warm and cool light; the direct light through a gap in the outer wall and the shadow light of inside the tower.
I chose two different colours for the highlights, instead of just using white which didn't look great. I used a Pale Violet for the interior highlights and a Naples Yellow (pale yellow ocher) for the warm highlights. Doing that just seemed to make the image come together so that I could finally call it finished.
The composition was based directly on a photograph I took in 1993 when you could still get inside the tower It is since locked and closed with an iron gate...
From my sketchbooks of 1993, it was going to be a much bigger painting with more of the design of the interior features in the brickwork but I'm sure I must have thought that would have been too ambitious for the time available in my course...
And the photograph of that scene shows more of the structure...
Cow Tower is an old medievel defensive structure. There is no city wall along Riverside in Norwich because the river was the defense. This tower stands at a bend in the river to the north-east of Norwich city centre.
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