Another snow painting

We had a significant snowstorm March 14. My work was closed so I got to go out and paint in it. I'm wearing my new snowshoes. So far, I haven't ventured far from home to paint in a snowstorm - to drive would be foolhardy, and I'm still a beginner on the snowshoes. But in near whiteout conditions, one place looks pretty much like another, so it's all good.

I noticed that the falling snow picked up the colors of the surrounding scene, giving a slight color cast to the flakes in different parts of the scene. I tried to convey that with paint, varying the warmth and coolness of the colors. I'm using a very limited palette of venetian red, phthalo blue, and white. As I painted I sang "Snowy, snowy day, paint your palette blue and gray..."

Painting in the snow - more flakes!

The thing about snowstorms is - there are a lot of snowflakes involved! I decided the previously posted version of this painting didn't do the subject justice, so I added more flakes.

painting in the snow

We had a couple of good snowstorms last weekend. I tested out my latest invention, "Artistic-In-Tent," a portable shelter to cover my pochade box. It's made from an old file folder hanger and a large plastic bag with a hole cut out and clipped to the hanger frame.

The frame is secured to the box with C-clamps.

Here's a video of my first foray into the flakes:

It worked fairly well but still let snow in through the access hole, (you can see me blowing it away in the video) so I added an umbrella and an adjustable plastic valence over the top.

Here is a painting done using this setup.

Early Snow

We finally got a respectable snow the other day so I went out back and tried to get the falling snow against the trees and the layers of landscape behind.  

Here's the paintbox in situ. The thing hovering over the the palette area is a roof I made out of an old canvas stretcher and a piece of plexiglass to protect the paint from getting totally buried in snow.

Sketchbook Pages 12/2016

Fort River footbridge. Watercolor and casein. I started in watercolor, but closed my sketchbook while still wet, causing major blemish. Went in with casein to cover opaquely.

Sketchbook pages 10/19/16

I biked out to the bike trail, which is built on an old railroad line, including a gorgeous truss bridge (a lattice truss, to be precise) spanning the Connecticut River. I rode over the bridge, then pedaled down to a dock on the river to paint the bridge from below. The bridge is somewhat tricky to draw, because although at first glance one would assume that the cross beams would be orthogonal to the sides, they are not, which means that if you draw it right, the perspective looks wrong. I was mostly interested in getting the play of light on the complex nineteenth century ironwork, foliage and river reflections.

Painting in Amherst Historical Society show

I entered a painting in a juried show at the town Historical Society and it won first place!

http://amhersthistory.org/moving-day/

I did the painting many years ago in 1989, and had it in a couple of group shows in Boston back then. It had languished in my basement ever since until the announced theme of the show, "moving in, moving out, moving on" reminded me of it.
It was inspired by the inevitable scene at rush hour in Boston's Park Street station as people trying to get off the antiquated streetcars would have to fight through the mob of blockheads pushing to get on, who seemed unable to grasp the concept that the emptying must precede the filling. It struck me as having larger resonances with the human condition - our societal battles between enlightenment and atavism, and our individual struggles to emerge into the light in the face of our own selfishness and ignorance.