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Carew Castle Medieval Welsh Fortress Aerial Painting by Edward McNaught-Davis

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Carew Castle Medieval Welsh Fortress Aerial Painting by Edward McNaught-Davis

My Carew Castle aerial painting shows an interesting perspective and which was achieved by flying over it several times in a light aircraft. How many artists can say they do that?

I wanted to show the castle in its entirety rather than just a face-on part of it although I have since painted parts of the castle medieval interior; such as one of its towers spiral turret steps and a stone staircase in shadow and leading up to the light - this being the way to a Medieval banqueting hall. (I have added their links to the bottom of this blog so that you can see these paintings).

The aircraft cockpit was cramped and which made sketching the castle quite difficult. My knees were up by my ears seemingly as it was impossible to get my long legs under the cockpit dashboard.

My view was hampered too by low wisps of cloud that resembled flying Candy Floss! In the end, I resorted to taking many digital photos from a compact camera which I take with me when my pilot (a client and friend) takes me flying over the Welsh countryside. Hence having to fly around the castle several times to sketch and to take many photos.

Carew Castle is located in Carew (near Tenby) in Pembrokeshire, South West Wales (UK).

Building the castle from local stone started around 1200 AD and continued to the 14th Century. Its location had a strategic element to it, apparently.

I love visiting castles and there are many medieval castles in Wales but not all are as complete as Carew castle.

The greenery behind the castle is not sky but that of the Carew river. Perhaps, I should have painted the river bank plus the fields beyond to illustrate better its current perspective? Too late now unless I do it again but there are so many other castles to do first and before second attempts of completed works.......unless of course someone commissions me to do it again!

Carew castle, as it stands now ,is quite drab looking with weathered limestone and so I lightened the colours to make it more appealing. I used quality artist acrylic paint throughout. The colours of the Tudor stone window frames are similar to the colours I used (for the castle) these being imported Cotswold stone and so rather akin to a light yellow ochre colouring.

From memory, I think we flew over the castle several times at about 1,000 feet. My Carew Castle painting suggests a lower height but that is only as a result of using the zoom lens on my camera and basing the painting composition on that view.

As mentioned above in paragraph two here are the two links to view two other paintings of a Carew Castle interior. The first is a picture of spiral stone steps in one of its towers and which was painted in oils. The second painting was painted in acrylic paint and shows a straight set of stone steps leading upwards from the dark to the light into the castle banqueting hall.

Copyright (c) Edward McNaught-Davis 2018. All Rights Reserved.

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