New Art - Norman Motte and Bailey

Heya folks,

I finished up a new piece this weekend.  I wanted to do a landscape with a motte and bailey castle and the surrounding countryside.  I used a program that is new to me called ArtRage 4, it's the closest thing you can get to actually using a brush and paint.  The brushes leave strokes and you can smear them with a pallet knife or roller, its really pretty cool.  After I was done I took it into Photoshop and made a few final adjustments.

Overall I'm semi happy with it, it took me much longer than I expected and learning a new program was time consuming.  It was a good experience but I think I can do better!  Next up will be a real acrylic painting, I just picked up a 36x48 canvas yesterday and I am thinking of doing a cosmic/horror/Lovecraftian style painting.  Then its on to figure drawing, I hope to be able to do some historical illustration (merging my love of art and history) in my spare time so I need to work hard on learning the human figure!

Thanks for looking!