Almost Gone

With the higher tempertures we are enjoying the snow is just about gone revealing the dormant winter grass. Alot of people don't care for the snow, in the beginning when its new its ok but after a while they tire of it.

Artists look at it differently, snow provides us with new seasonal painting material. After painting the greens of summer and the colors of fall, snow presents us with another challenge, to capture the moods of winter.

Here are my attempts to capture those moods of winter over the years.

Hope you enjoyed these scenes, thanks for looking.

Pat

A Dozen Red Roses

A Dozen Red Roses  8x10 oil    

An image for Valentines Day.
Enjoy,
Pat

Fading Light

A quick sketch Sunday afternoon capturing the fadng light on the neighbors fence and yard. I like the shadow thrown by the top of our house on the fence. I happened to be looking out the window to see if any birds were at the feeders when I saw the sun on the fence. I grabbed a 5"x7" panel that had a sketch on it already and painted over it.
Constant pratice keeps you sharp and helps build your knowledge of light and how it affects the landscape.
I do alot of these sketches, the good ones you keep for reference, the bad ones you paint over.

Thanks for looking,
Pat

Autumn Lineup

 Autumn Lineup  11x14 original oil painting  $224.50 

I usually spend the late fall looking for the last spots of color that are left in a now drab landscape. Its like a treasure hunt, each day that passes gets harder and harder to find some brillant color. And when you finally do it like finding a treasure.

 I found this set of trees at sunrise on Nov 20th  and painted this 5x7 study on location. The sun moves so quickly at this time of morning so  I hurried to catch the shaft of light that lit up the trees.

This is the photo reference I took sitting in my truck BEFORE I started painting.
Sometimes I forget to do this step when I'm in a rush to catch the light.
You can see I edited out some things, the bare tree in the foreground and the blacktop.
I only included the things that re-enforced my initial feelings about the scene, the reason it made me stop.
Everything else is unimportant.

It was a great morning treasure hunting.

Thanks for looking,
Pat