Well this year we had WINTER!!
Well for a few weeks anyway.
It was cold. Really cold. Minus some ridiculous number cold! We had snow. Real snow. 12-14 inches of the stuff.
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| A FLASH OF BLUE IN THE SNOW - 12 x 15 Vanished Watercolour on Wood Cradle |
Ok, I admit it. I loved it!
We had beautiful cold, crisp days, the sun was glistening off the snow and the mountains. Fantastic!! It was real powder. None of our usual wet slushy stuff.
Of course I had to PAINT it!
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| See what I mean, Snow is gray tones. Not very exciting |
When I looked at my snow reference pictures I discovered my camera had a common goal. Use only White and Gray! The snow was white and sure there were shadows, but they were usually tones of gray. Not my idea of a great snowy scene.
I decided to add some colour, my snow didn't have to be WHITE. . . .
First I went to my Resources: Stephen Quiller, a watercolour artist who's work I really enjoy. He does lots of snow pictures and his snow is NOT WHITE.
Then I chose my palette: I decided I would have pinks and blues for my snow colours as my Stellar Jay was going to be blue it would look good with my bits of ferns. I felt the soft glow of the pinks from the setting sun would give a nice punch to the whole picture.
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| My colour chart for my snow - Light to Dark |
It was interesting to look at my colours in black and white. It gave me a much better feel for their value.
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| An easy way to see the tonal values of my colours - note how light the Cad Orange is. I was surprised at that. |
I studied my colours and arranged them from Light to Dark. This helped me interpret the values on the snow with a colour. I was surprised how light the Cobalt Teal Blue was. It was my lightest blue. And the Cadmium Orange, although very yellow, had a really light tonal value.
Finally put Paint to Paper:
Painting the Stellar Jay and my ferns was fun and fairly easy. The kind of thing I am use to doing. But when I started on the snow I found I really had to take it slow. Using colour for each area and assigning a value for each area did take me longer. I found I needed to check my values as I went.
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| The first section seemed so dark!! |
When I did the first section I thought, OMG! That is way too dark. . . . .
I kept checking things to make sure it was working out. The more colour I put on the more things began to to work out. In the end I had only a few very thin strips of white but my snow really read as Snow to the eye!! I found my eye really accepted all the colours, even the yellow and greens.
I hope you are having fun with snow pictures too. I think all of Canada and northern United States has snow now. Give your snow pictures and infusion of colour. I found it really makes me happy to see all the colour. It reminds me of my walks on those sunny, cold crisp days. I love the glow of colours in the A Flash of Blue in the Snow.
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Wendy
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