TM9372 From a Winter Walk 36×40 oil on panel

The transformative power of snowfall – what had become the dark woods of late autumn is brilliantly lit by reflective snow crystals, and even the shadows glow! This view, from the trail around my favorite little pond, epitomizes why I so love to paint winter. Enjoy.

Technical painting notes: I start the winter paintings much as with any season, applying a dark roll-up of thinned oil paint, sometimes warm, sometimes cool in tone. In this case, I used a mixture of burnt sienna, raw sienna, and burnt umber, with a little pthalo green on the left side. I scraped into the wet paint, suggesting branches, and spattered and roughed up the paint on the right side, where the outcrop would be. When the base layer was dry, I began refining the forms, using soft brushes and thin paint to “draw” the trees. I also use a roller to apply white or tinted paint to suggest snow. The accidental way the roller landed on the ridges of dark underpainting almost painted the outcrop for me. Layers of rolling the shadows and white highlights was followed by more refinements with a brush on the rest of the image.