Because it seems that the movie will up-end, or at least question, the accepted ideals of good and bad in the Robin Hood  story I wanted the scene to reflect that. The castle is bathed in the crisp February light, shimmering and golden. Not at all forbidding and gray as so often portrayed, but a place of enlightenment in a lawless world. The woodland, far from being a Romantic Greenwood is a dark unyielding menace. The tree branch's reaching out and threatening to invade the clearing of the road.

After all the reality is that the English woods are green for less than half the year...the rest of the time they are eerie and dank. At the time they harbored both outlaws and wolves. (The last wolf was supposedly killed in the 15th century.)

It's actually a valley about five miles down the road from me.....and yes...the castle is part of the real scene and it was sketched, then photographed, in situ.

Nottingham castle is also high on a crag...but the present-day castle  is not the one dating from the Robin Hood period but a later re-building. Also of course, the modern city lies beneath and around it.

The castle keep in my painting was actually built by the fabulously wealthy (at the time) Earl of Shrewsbury as a huge Romantic folly and is a faithful replica of a Norman Keep. It peeps above the deeply forested valley and not a modern blemish encroaches on the scene. The track in the painting was his private road to town....no rubbing shoulders with the great Unwashed. But it does look, for all the world, like Nottingham would have looked from a distance all those centuries ago. Hubby wasn't very comfortable sitting astride the horse....(the horse is called Simon by the way and I exercise him for a friend) ....so that was a problem as Russ is an excellent horseman.

Jan