January's blanket

White Frosting, 5x7" Oil on canvas

January arrived here in the midwest with a thick frosting of white snow! This is a plein air painting, even though I did not actually sit outside to paint. Instead, I painted the 3 sentinels of my back yard in the midst of a snow storm from my back upstairs window. The 3 evergreens are about 40 - 50 ft high, and I only painted the uppermost section. It was a very gray day with snow falling in large wet flakes all day, and the weight of the snow draped over the branches of these trees slowly weighed them down.

I also really loved the abstract shapes of the white snow on the dark evergreen background - who says abstract "art" isn't something we see in nature every day? There weren't very many colors on my palette for this - although I did put a pale pink under painting on the canvas before I began. The method I used for this frosted effect was a very thick impasto application of paint. It took a long time to dry enough to scan - I pushed it a bit and scanned a somewhat tacky painting last night ... so I could post it today!