Valle Crucis Abbey, with Dinas Brân

In this composition on white wove Whatman paper most of the colours have been applied directly to the paper without the aid of an under-drawing, although the figure and the pigs were lightly sketched in graphite pencil at an early stage. This allowed reserves of white paper to be preserved to act later as lights in these areas. The paint was applied to very wet paper in the sky area, though further down it was applied to drier paper to give harder edges to the composition. This is a dark image utilising multiple dense washes for the middle ground, but fewer and thinner washes in the foreground, to create quite intense light/dark contrasts with a fairly limited palette of colours and some washing out for highlights.

Pigments used include: indigo, a brownish red madder lake, Mars orange, yellow ochre, mars orange is a synthetic ochre colour in a brilliant orange shade, used very extensively by Turner throughout his life, in both watercolour and oil medium.