Oak Shadow

Oil on Board, 10x14 inches

Here's a snowy painting, upon request from Iona House Gallery in Woodstock for their Winter Exhibition next month. 

Painting snow holds great attraction for most artists, me included. It's not that easy to paint either - as I always say in my demos, we all know that snow is white, but to paint an effective and convincing painting, we have to observe both the colour and tone, and that is where so many budding painters fall at the first hurdle. Snow is only white when you look at it face on with the sun shining on it. Otherwise, it only appears white because of its surrounding colours and tones - our brain tells us it's white, even though  a lot of it here is quite a dark blue/mauve colour.

There is actually no pure white at all in the snow in this painting - the only bit of pure white is near the top left, depicting the blinding sun, and even that will appear darker than the surrounding white on your screen! The photo doesn't quite pick up all the colours accurately, but the entire picture was painted with my usual three colours, Cadmium Yellow Light, Permanent Rose and Cobalt Blue, plus Titanium White of course.

A little nuance I did like, was the gorgeous light underside of the big branch in the upper centre of the picture plane, receiving reflected light from the gleaming snow beneath.