To say I was not impressed to wake up and see that the ground was covered in snow and it was still snowing is putting it mildly.
So after doing the barn chores and having breakfast as I watched the snow continue to come down I thought I may as well do a winter scene.
I decided to do the pathway by the paddock that leads into the two front fields below the house and barns.
I went back out into the snow and took a photograph of what I wanted to paint, although normally I would go out and make a sketch first.
Using titanium white and ultramarine blue I put in the sky first and the under paint for the snow in the foreground.
With burnt sienna, raw sienna and a small amount of white I painted in the background trees first. Many of them will be covered up by the foreground trees, but their colour will show through the branches of the closer trees.
The next layer of trees had more burnt sienna in it with a small amount of ultramarine blue.
More blue was added to the paint mixture to darken and make it a little greener for the front row of trees in the background.
Next I added a small amount of the tree colour to the white and put the tree shadows across the snow below the background trees.
Using ultramarine blue, pthalo blue and raw sienna I put in some of the foreground pines, next I added burnt sienna to the mix and added more trees.
With a mixture of ultramarine blue, burnt sienna and alizarin crimson I painted in the trunks and bare branches of the deciduous trees throughout the pine and cedar trees.
Lastly, I put in the dark shadows across the snow from the foreground trees.
