Doune Castle (Castle Leoch)

I love all things Outlander at the moment. I read the book years ago and I think the recent series is great. My only grump is that it’s on Amazon rather than normal TV which is such a shame as lots of people in the UK don’t get to see it and I can’t compare notes with my pals!

Anyhoo, I’d visited some of the places where Outlander was filmed and was inspired to have a go at painting them. Now, I’ve never been one for drawing or painting buildings. I had to do a couple of townscapes for my course and did not enjoy the detail and time required. I thought I’d have a go anyway.

Doune is a beautiful wee village about an hour from me, close to Stirling, and Doune Castle is the filming location for the fictional Castle Leoch, home to the clan MacKenzie in the 18th century. This is where Jamie Fraser brings Claire in Series 1. The castle was also used as Winterfell in the pilot episode of Game of Thrones and in Monty Python’s Holy Grail. If you haven’t been, and you’re in the area, it really is worth a visit. The audio commentary is fantastic, it’s read by Pythons Terry Jones and is hilarious (coconut shells are a requirement!). It even featured Jamie Fraser himself – Sam Heughan – talking about the filming of Outlander.

I used acrylics on canvas paper working from a series of photos I took on my visit(s). I used a palette knife to apply the paint as much as possible as I find it stops me being too detailed. The end result was still more fiddly than I’d intended (as usual). I tried to keep the foreground as rough as possible.

In hindsight I can see I’ve positioned the castle far to high on the paper, it should have been lower. Again, probably due to being too reliant on the photo. I’m quite pleased with the castle walls  and the broken battlements.