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First Snow by Nancy Bush, 2008, oil, 28 x 30,
Courtesy Nedra Matteucci Fine Art, Santa Fe, New Mexico. |
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Painting outdoors in winter can be an extreme sport. The snow, the wind, the cold—it takes a certain kind of artist to paint a winter landscape while in a winter landscape. The first time I attempted outdoor painting in the winter this was a couple of years ago when I was living in Connecticut. Two feet of snow had fallen the day before, but when I looked out my window the scene was so inviting. I didn’t go far and didn’t stay out long, but I had fun trying to capture the light effects and reflective surface of the snow during daylight.
Looking back, I wish I’d done a little research first. Painting snow is hard! I thought snow was just plain old white, but that doesn’t really work unless you are purposefully flattening your image. Snow is like a patchwork quilt, with different areas infused with different colors or textures depending on the surface underneath, the area exposed to wind, or the object casting light onto it.
To create a sense of dimensionality I loaded up my brush and jabbed and swirled it around to get the paint on the surface the way I wanted. Color is an exciting part of painting snow as well, and I've become sensitive to how “plain old white” is actually full of blues, yellows, and reds. My favorite challenge is getting that crisp blue-gray color of shadows falling on snow that can darken a scene in an eerily beautiful way.
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Winter Moon by Nancy Bush, 2008, oil
30 x 40. Courtesy Astoria Fine Art,
Jackson Hole, Wyoming. |
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also wish I’d had access to Frank Serrano’s DVD Mastering Plein Air in Oil before braving the cold. Serrano is an expert at landscape painting and has built a career on trekking into America’s most beautiful places and painting the diverse scenes he encounters. His experiences as a plein air painter offer valuable outdoor painting lessons for those of us who are eager to try plein air landscape painting but don’t quite know where to begin. He even gives some great tips on how to paint snow, which could come in handy in the winter weeks that remain. If you get out there, upload pictures of what inspires you and what you end up painting!
