Winters Scene

There were 19 of us at Avon Valley Artists this morning, and it was great to see so many interpretations of the subject. There were some lovely traditional landscapes with a variety of different colour renderings of sky and land. After the recent weather, there was plenty of snow!
I used one of the photos taken in the garden of sturdy twigs bowed down with the weight of the snow as my starting point.

The idea was to paint the snow with bits of berries or rose hips peeping from under it, with perhaps a couple of snow laden leaves as well.

How difficult was that! I had to paint the twigs, hips and leaves first and then add the snow.

I painted in the twigs by puddling a pool of paint in the top RH corner of the paper and then dispersing it by blowing at it through a straw. I always think this process gives very realistic twigs.

I then painted in the hips, doing the minimum of drawing, not worrying too much if the colour did not hide some of the stalks as I knew these could be covered with snow later.
Finally using the AV Acrylic white gouache I painted in the snow, first making it blend with the underpainting to give the shadowy colours and then adding crisp white when it was totally dry.

I used a toothbrush and the spatula to splatter both a fine spray and some more dense blobs, and I added a few red splatters in the lower half of the painting.

Although, as usual, I totally enjoyed the experiment, I did find it quite hard to interpret the bulk of freshly fallen snow so close up!

'Snow Covered Rose Hips'

30 x 22 cm

Fabriano Artistico 300g 'Not' paper