Snow came down hard all throughout Tuesday. It’s the first snow fall of the season in New York, it covered the city in white, which it’s a nice site to see, but as most of us here know the prettiness only lasts for so long. Once it starts melting everything becomes a big muddy swamp. As snow flakes hit the windows I sat in front of the easel late at night working on the sliced pear painting. I had done some work to the background a few days ago but it came out all wrong. I had to wait for it to dry before I could start work on it again. In the meantime I had to think about how to cover the pale mint green I had covered it with. It needed to be toned down, there was no doubt about that, but how and with what color. I was not sure if I should keep working with some kind of soft green or should I try some other neutral color. Too many thoughts running through my head made it hard for me to come to a clear idea of where I want this painting to go. To get rid of confusion I covered the background with a mixture of earth tones. I applied it thinly so that the green under layer could show through. I proceeded to keep working the whole painting using earth tones, building up layers trying to get a new feel for the painting.
Snow came down hard all throughout Tuesday. It’s the first snow fall of the season in New York, it covered the city in white, which it’s a nice site to see, but as most of us here know the prettiness only lasts for so long. Once it starts melting everything becomes a big muddy swamp. As snow flakes hit the windows I sat in front of the easel late at night working on the sliced pear painting. I had done some work to the background a few days ago but it came out all wrong. I had to wait for it to dry before I could start work on it again. In the meantime I had to think about how to cover the pale mint green I had covered it with. It needed to be toned down, there was no doubt about that, but how and with what color. I was not sure if I should keep working with some kind of soft green or should I try some other neutral color. Too many thoughts running through my head made it hard for me to come to a clear idea of where I want this painting to go. To get rid of confusion I covered the background with a mixture of earth tones. I applied it thinly so that the green under layer could show through. I proceeded to keep working the whole painting using earth tones, building up layers trying to get a new feel for the painting.
Comments
The moment of snowflakes sounds nice. We got just the "ornamental" snow here which is typical of central New Mexico. I grew up in Colorado where the snow was intense at times. I don't miss it. In Telluride when the snow begins to melt they call it "mud season".
We've bee getting some snow since late December, I think, but it never settled or was enough to call it an actual snow fall. Temperature has been weird around here, during this winter we've had two occasion when we've had spring days. A week ago it was 70 degrees out, we thought we were never going to get a real winter, but here it is!