Yesterday I did the second of two snow demonstrations for my classes at Capitol Arts Network. I was more excited about the Monday demo, but I liked yesterday’s better! It’s on a 16 x 20 mounted UART 500 board from ProArt Panels. Unfortunately, it warped a bit, and I’m hoping that my framer can flatten it, as I really like the painting.
Started out with a rather wild underpainting. I used water color for the sky and snow and hard pastel for the buildings. And I used yellow green in the sky and snow areas! Not sure what the class thought. The different media created very different values of underpainting that I had to be careful to overcome. I ended up using nothing but blue greens and blue violets in the snow–no yellows or oranges. It gives it a unified look and the color is quite unique, I think. The warm pieces are in the buildings and in foreground grasses. I think I need to darken one piece of roof snow (in the middle).
The foreground was the big challenge as this is quite different from the photo. I felt like I was sculpting and making it up!
I’m having problems with the blog. Can only add text if I add the photos afterwards, which places them at the bottom. Not sure what’s going on. This is the only solution I’ve figured out for the moment. Any title ideas???
Snow demo (no title yet), 16 x 20, UART 500
I love the feeling of this painting as I can imagine the chill I would feel looking across the field. Even though there is a lot of sunlight, the cast shadow colors make it feel very cold so something like “Three degrees below zero” feels like a title that encompasses a viewer who is standing outside or “Windswept” that describes the scene from the viewpoint of someone not standing out in the cold but perhaps from the comfort of a car. Well done.