Slant of Light



6x6 inches
Oil

You can view and purchase this painting here.

 It's still very autumny here in North Carolina, but now that we're a week into December I wanted to paint something wintry.  I could wait a long time for it to snow - some years we have none at all - so I worked from this photo reference. I think it's in the Oakwood area of Raleigh, but don't really remember.

A fun one to paint - barely any warm colors at all, although when I started mixing up paints I realized the snow was really a blue-green, not a blue-purple, so that keeps it from looking icy-cold. Cozy.

I'm not entirely happy with the house. My structures tend to be either too soft and mushroomy, or over-illustrated. I should have changed brushes to do the house - used something with a clean, thin edge, so I could make crisper corners. Oh well, next time... I'm remembering Laurel Daniel's excellent advice, which was: "fix your mistakes on the next painting."  It's good advice indeed - messing around with a painting after it's "done" rarely leads to a good outcome, for me. I usually put my finished paintings on the mantelpiece for a few days, so I can review them and decide if they need more work. Sometimes I'll see that one little thing that needs tweaking, but more often than not I choose to leave it alone. I've ruined more paintings than I've fixed by trying to edit after the fact.


Comments

  1. Love the early evening glow of this painting. The blue-green snow works. Love it.

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