Snow day! We woke up to about 8″ of snow and it kept coming down all morning. In total, we got about a foot of the fluffy white stuff. As beautiful as fresh snow is, I’m thankful we got no more than that.
Snow day means a couple of things around here. A snow painting if the conditions are right—that’s the fun part. The not-so-fun part is lots of snow plowing and hand shoveling.
We have another storm coming in a couple of days so we thought we should get rid of as much of this snow as we could. We literally shoveled off half of our roof in an effort to reduce the risk of ice dams. This spring we are already scheduled to get a waterproof barrier under our shingles which should solve the ice dam problem. No more shoveling the roof—hallelujah! Living in the cold county is not for sissies.
Today’s painting is a view on the south side of our house out to the lake. We have a driveway down to the lower level of the house that can only be accessed by 4x4s which explains the sign. I liked how the snow was caked on it and the mountain ash next to it with the view out to the lake.
For those that think pastel paintings don’t have any texture, take a look at all the yummy texture I got with the softest pastels in my collection.
I’m not feeling confident yet in taking oils out in the field. I’ll get there. If I hadn’t spent the whole afternoon outside shoveling, I would have come in and painted the same scene in oil. Next time…
“4WD Only” plein air set up—I wear latex gloves with fingerless wool gloves over them and my hands stay fairly warm. Except if the wind is blowing which thankfully today it was not. My box of grayish colors is down on the snow.
It’s hard to judge the depth of snow so I use a plastic ruler stuck in the snow. It was still snowing when I measured and I think we got close to another inch. Notice the graphics ruler with all the cool extra elements. That is sort of a blast from the past as I don’t use it much anymore, except to measure snow!
