Studio notes
A winter on the river
Studio notes · · 1 min
Three days at minus eight, a borrowed barn, and what cold does to oil paint.
The River Year commission asked for one painting in each season. Winter was the second visit, and the one I was most worried about.
Paint in the cold
Below freezing, oil paint goes stiff. It does not freeze, but it moves like cold butter. I kept the tubes in my coat and the palette on a hot water bottle, which works better than it sounds.
Snow is not white
The snow in that painting has no white in it at all, except for one stroke on the water. It is blue gray in the shade and a warm cream where the sun hits.
If you paint snow white, you paint paper.
From the studio notebook