Icehouse Lane Winter Marsh View

Underpainting

Winter Marsh View from Icehouse Lane - Stage One

Winter Marsh from Icehouse Lane

There have been few mild days and the New England snowpack is still intact.   The sun is setting later though and the colors have been spectacular.   The pre-dusk light on the snow has been pinkish-yellow against the long cornflower shadows.   It has been begging to be painted and so I resolve to layer up and get out there.

I threw my long down coat, headband and knit gloves in the dryer and while they were heating up I loaded the car with my gear.   I was almost too hot as I drove the short distance to the end of Icehouse Lane at Barna Road in Marshfield.   The view across the salt marsh to Duxbury Bay was a snowy white tundra.   Miles Standish Monument was visible in the far distance.   Next closest was the Duxbury Bay shoreline and Great Wood Island.   In the foreground was the dense underbrush with plumes of orangey salt marsh grass at the edge.   Closest to me was a snowy embankment about 4 feet tall.   The snow shadows were darker than my initial mix, so I kept comparing until I had a good match (pthalo blue, cobalt blue, asphaltum and flake white).


Icehouse Lane Winter Marsh View

Generally for me there is no danger of overworking a painting when it is this cold.  My biggest technical problem was that the paint was too stiff.   I had used a trick that painter Stapleton Kearns uses for painting in the cold, and that is to make a circle of titanium and pouring medium in the middle to soften the paint as needed.  This certainly helped but as the finished painting reveals, the striations of paint made by the bristles never relaxed and are still visible.

The final work on the tree I did back in my studio.   It was a combination of dark shaded branches with no snow, snow shade color (a deep blue), and brightly lit snow branches.