Painting Snow

In an earlier blog, I mentioned painting snow and felt inspired to paint this scene.  My wife and I snow-shoed to this spot after receiving about a foot of snow.  New fallen snow is a beautiful blanket creating graceful contours of the rocks and bushes it has covered.  Here, Lynx Creek is partially covered with ice and rays of sun filter through the trees highlighting the far bank of the creek.  I wanted to portray this kind of light.  Painting snow is actually quite fun.  I enjoyed trying warm and cool colors to define the shape and mass of the snow, using pale yellow to suggest high spots where light is hitting, blues and purples in the shadow areas.  The finished size of this oil painting is 18x24 inches.