THERE’S BEEN snow on the ground for twelve days but it’s only at sunset, after a day of chores, that I’ve made any attempt to sketch it. As the light fades and the snow takes on a hint of a pinkish tone, as Blackbird gives its alarm call.
Today we’ve had Nuthatch and Treecreeper in the garden. Will they turn up tomorrow when we record our garden birds for the RSPB birdwatch?
I find drawing and painting “snow” a challenge. The subtle shift of the shadowing as well as the color of those shadows seems to be key. Here in Vermont, shadows at night skew toward violet blue, a bright cold winter day deep ultramarine, misty warmish winter mornings can be pinky-yellow, and a day hoving around freezing and overcast can produce shadows of a most beguiling turquoise-blue!
I’ve had twelve days to practice trying to catch the colour of snow but didn’t quite get around to it, but I must admit it’s reassuring to be back to the greenish brownish world that I’m so familiar with. Our snow is like the snow you occasionally see in Monet and Sisley paintings – it doesn’t have that crystalline purity that I associate with mountains and colder. More the sort that you can imagine turning to slush in a day or so.
Before the snow we had one day of thick hoar frost. I’ve never seen trees so thick with it – you’d have thought it was snow. Not very colourful as it was such an overcast misty day.