I've never painted a winter scene with snow before, though I have admired them for years, and have wondered about the subtleties of warm and cool colors so near white that they make us see the snow folding over the landscape. After a hike up Gales Creek in the coastal range, I thought I might give it a try; I was struck by the muted colors in the stand of alders along the creek, the hazy background forest, and the vibrancy of the moss in the soft light. This is more like a preliminary color study, trying to find values and temperature contrasts to see if I like it as a painting, but it seems that I need to find a way to avoid painting all those trees as they fade into the background. Either that, or I need to acknowledge that this might take quite a while, and is not something to be attempted standing out in the cold.
John Carlson, of course, was a prolific painter of snowy landscapes:
