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Tag: snow

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Monday Morning Art School: can you paint in winter?

It was way below zero; the rough texture is because my oil paints froze; it was also cold enough for my battery to die. And of course I was out of cellphone range.

I’m being chased home to Maine by wind, rain and occasional snow; that means winter is just around the corner. Beginning plein air painters often wonder, can you paint in winter? Sure, if you take simple precautions.

Watercolor

Everyone knows that you can keep your paint water from freezing by adding vodka. The problem with vodka solutions isn’t getting the paint on the paper; it’s getting it to set up once it’s there. Alcohol evaporates faster than water. If you use vodka, expect softening as the painting warms up.

With watercolor in winter, you’re best off avoiding fine washes.

Ocean saltwater freezes at a 28.4°F. On a sunny winter day, that might be all the boost you need. The more salt you add, the lower the freezing temperature, but remember that salt is hygroscopic and changes the texture of watercolor paintings.

My palette and water basin are plastic, which cools more slowly than metal. Wrap them in an old scarf and slip a chemical handwarmer underneath. Bring hot water in a thermal flask and add it bit-by-bit to keep your water liquid. Don’t leave your brush standing wet in the cold; the bristles will freeze. If you can, keep them in your jacket pocket.

The problem with cold is not freezing so much as that nothing ever dries. Avoid sloppy wet washes and don’t overload your brush.

I was thinking of buying a cordless hair dryer, but Richard Sneary told me that in his opinion they’re not effective. “You’re better off getting in your car and turning up the heat,” he told me.

Of course, watercolor is compact enough that you can often paint from your car.

I was very grateful on this day for Eric Jacobsen’s wood fire.

Acrylics

The short answer is, just don’t. Acrylics need a minimum temperature of 50°F to cure properly. In extreme cold, acrylic paints become brittle and can crack.

Oils

The answer to “can you paint in winter” is always yes for oils.

While oil paint becomes stodgy as it gets colder, its linseed oil base doesn’t freeze until the temperature drops below -10°F. Odorless mineral spirits don’t freeze at all. That means oil paint can be handled through conditions that fox all other mediums.

I painted this years ago while waiting for my kid to finish swim practice. It’s long gone, but the photo always reminds me of that time.

Taking care of the artist

I hate cold feet and hands, so I wear insulated, waterproof snow boots when painting outdoors. Others stand on a scrap of carpet or cardboard. I slip handwarmers into the backs of my gloves. My buddy Eric Jacobsen carries around a small brazier in which he lights a scrap-wood fire.

I used to wear overalls, but they’re too cumbersome. Now I wear a waterproof, windproof jacket with layers underneath.

Consider working from a seated position. The closer you are to the ground, the less you’ll be buffeted by the wind. The best location is a sheltered, sunny corner. Work in short bursts to avoid hypothermia, and bring something hot to drink.

Winter is a great time to practice park-and-paint, but don’t forget to wear a high-vis vest and bring traffic cones.

Your car

I’ve killed my car battery in extreme cold, and I’ve gotten stuck in the slush on the side of the road. Inevitably, that happens when I’m out of cell phone range.

If you don’t already have one, get one of these little car starters and learn to use it. A high visability vest and traffic cones are important anytime you’re painting along the roadside, but especially in low-light situations.

Special online plein air show

Work from the 20th Annual Sedona Plein Air Festival is available in their special exhibits gallery and online here. I’ll have more to say on the subject later this week, but for now enjoy browsing!

Reserve your spot now for a workshop in 2025:

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Lake effect snow

Winter lambing, oil on linen, 30X40, $5072 framed, includes shipping and handling in continental US.

My home town of Buffalo, NY is the most famous lake-effect snow city in North America, but it’s hardly unique. Erie (PA), Rochester, Syracuse, and the small city of Oswego regularly get buried in snow. The Great Lakes are very deep, so they don’t freeze solid in winter. Arctic air sweeps across them, picking up moisture that then drops in deep blankets onshore. I miss those blizzards very much.

There are other, smaller snow plumes that are not as well known. One of these is in Orleans County, New York. I spent two decades driving weekly from my mom’s house in Niagara County to my house in Rochester. That took me straight through the Orleans snow belt.

Wind sculpted snow in Orleans County, NY.

As my children can recite by heart, you don’t drive in snow country without a candle and matches, bottled water, a chocolate bar, car blanket and collapsible shovel. People have frozen to death in their cars in Buffalo.

The drifts that formed the basis of ‘Winter Lambing’.

It was on a bitter winter afternoon that I found myself flagged down by an Orleans County Sheriff’s Deputy. She directed me around an accident and warned me that the road ahead was barely passable. The wind was whistling along the long, flat fields of the Niagara-Orleans lake plains. There, wind can pick up already-fallen snow, reducing visibility, and driving it into drifts as hard as cement. When these form across a road, your steering wheel can be wrested right from your hands. Road salt doesn’t work in extreme cold, which is perilous in icy conditions.

Bad parking job.

I’m an old hand at winter driving, but I slowed right down. At one point, I stopped entirely, which is when I saw the drifts above. At the time, I was thinking through a solo show at Davison Gallery at Roberts Wesleyan College called God + Man: Paintings by Carol L. Douglas, about which I wrote last week.

James Herriot wrote about the bone-chilling work of the Yorkshire veterinarian, particularly the grueling task of lambing during blizzards on the high Dales. Not only were shepherd and veterinarian at risk, but newborn lambs were in danger of freezing or predation.

I wanted to paint that feeling of intense cold at high elevations. At first glance, viewers see these shapes as mountains; it’s only when I tell them the backstory that they realize they were a series of drifts just a few feet tall. Context is everything when it comes to reading a painting, and the artist has lots of latitude in repurposing reference pictures.

It might look soft, but that stuff is hard as cement.

God + Man was about the relationship of God and man in the natural world. This painting was based on Isaiah 1:18, which says: “Come now, and let us reason together,”
Says the Lord,
“Though your sins are like scarlet,
They shall be as white as snow;
Though they are red like crimson,
They shall be as wool.”

Reserve your spot now for a workshop in 2025:

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What sells?

Sea Fog, Castine, 9X12, $869 framed.

“Interesting that you say ‘I have come to recognize that there are certain subjects that will languish, and I no longer seek them out.’  You mentioned gray days. What other subjects do you find difficult to move?” a reader wrote in response to Wednesday’s post.

For the record, it was Ken DeWaard who doesn’t like gray days. I love fog, especially Maine fog, which seems to have an intelligence of its own. I don’t have a particular problem selling fog paintings, especially when there are boats involved.

Snow at Higher Elevations, 11X14, available, $1087 framed

On the other hand, I have never had much success selling snow paintings, although they can be very interesting as they invert typical light relationships. I’m from Buffalo and live in New England, so I know snow. I’ve painted enough of it. But I only go out in winter to keep Ken and Eric Jacobsen company. Just as Ken has a closet full of grey days, I have a closet full of snow paintings.

Perhaps my audience is sick of shoveling it. However, the late, great Aldro Hibbard lived and worked in Rockport, Massachusetts. He made a fine business of painting snowy Vermont landscapes.

Buyers tend to associate certain painters with certain subjects. Colin Page paints boats, children, and complex still-lives. Charles Fenner Ball paints pastorals and trains. Mary Byrom paints the marshland along the southern Maine shore. Whether or not it’s fair for the marketplace to pigeonhole artists, it happens.

Île d’OrlĂ©ans waterfront farm, Saint-François-de-l'Île-d'OrlĂ©ans, Quebec, 8X10, available unframed, $522

I will occasionally paint an old tractor or historic old farm. These, too, sit on my shelves, but Kari Ganoung Ruiz and Jay Brooks are able to move them along just fine. They both capture the mystery of lost time in these paintings, whereas I am just painting objects.

On the other hand, I sell a lot of boat paintings. A lobster boat is just a tractor of the sea, so why does my audience find them romantic and a Massey-Ferguson prosaic? Perhaps because nobody comes to Maine to look at old tractors, but they do go to central New York for them.

Glaciar Cagliero from Rio Electrico, 12X16, $1159 unframed, available.

I love rocks. They tell the story of a place, they’re fascinating to observe and classify, and I find rock outcroppings easy enough to sell.

However, I also appreciate farm animals, orchards, and hayfields. However, I find it harder to shift these subjects. The farther I get from the farm country of my youth, the less it compels me. Somehow that’s transmitted to my audience, although I can’t tell you how.

What sells depends on the obsessions of the artist. If you love, say, butterflies, your passion will be transmitted to the canvas and buyers will respond. If you are indifferent to rain, it will show, and your rain paintings will languish. If you spend lots of time painting boats and very little time painting classic cars, your boat paintings will be fresher and livelier.

I frequently marvel over this real estate listing, which features large paintings of meat on the wall. Why anyone would paint them, and why anyone would buy them, escapes me. But truly there’s a market for anything, if you’re passionate about it.