Snow light 11.5 x 19 pastel on paper




Here is my second snow painting. On this day the sun was out and brilliant. It was so bright that it cast a glare over the scene. I found this old barn in Rochester, Mass. and took a number of shots of it, liking this view best.

The painting consists of complementary colors of cool reds and greens. The sky is green and pink! The snow in the shadows has a lot of light red and blue violet and is pink in the sunny areas. I like the harmony of this. A blue sky would not work as well.

The composition is unusual and I was worried that it would be too heavy on the left. So I tried to render the tree rather loosely and keep it from getting too dark. I feel that the length of the buildings stretching to the right gives balance.

The painting was done on "super tooth" paper by Art Spectrum with only Girault pastels. These are a medium soft, somewhat grainy pastel that really work on this paper.