Snowy Vermont Farmland, 5 x 9 inches

Snowy Vermont Farmland

Its nearing the end of January and so far, winter has not really arrived in the way of snow. So I have been experimenting with painting snowy landscapes in the studio.

Working from photographs is new for me, as I have always preferred to paint from life. I have found this to be a bit liberating, because when working from a photo I feel like I can alter and interpret the colors more, knowing that photos never "truly" record color accurately. So I shift colors, warm or cool, play with variations within the same value range, and even make stuff up if I want a specific feeling to occur.

I am beginning to love this series because of all the additional design freedom that is involved with each painting.

Here is a detail of the how I warmed up the foreground and cooled and neutralized the background. In life I love the "lace" that bare trees make, and I am going to continue to work on representing this detail in paint