LJ and NJ

It’s the end of July and that means it’s hot. Here in Colorado we do not have the same heat issues that are literally killing folks in Texas and some of the other southern states. Nonetheless it is certainly hotter than it used to be here, even in the mountains. So i decided it would feel good in this weather to at least be thinking about snow on a canvas. So i painted a scene from a reference photo Norma provided from her photography workshop in January in the Yukon. So — Yukon in January vs. most of U.S. in July. Painting not quite finished, but close enough, i thought to post. I’m titling it “beating the heat.”

There are always technical issues and challenges when painting snow. One of the most frequent is the fact that snow, which we see as white, is actually a combination of colors, esp. blue. For this project, there was the challenge of the snow, the mountain and part of the sky all sharing similar values. So i had to figure out how to delineate the trees in the background from the mountain behind, and then not have the values of the snow, the mountain and the trees not be too similar but also not be too contrasting. My “solution” for the trees is perhaps a bit fantastical, but for now that’s the story.