Winter Wet Paint

driving back to the studio today, i decided to take some back roads, looking for a painting, and came up on this beautiful winter scene. thought i'd let you see what it looked like and the small changes i made. the colors of the photo arent even close to the real scene. this is why photos are good for the drawing and details part of a painting but you really need to do plein air color studies done on site to get the actual colors out there. the photo makes the sky look white and the building in shadow, blue. thats not how it really looked.

SOLD

i moved the phone pole out of the middle of the peak of the house, and moved the small tree closer to the center for better balance. i made the path look more like a dirt road. Paved streets just dont have the same aesthetic as a dirt path.

bare trees are very hard to make believable in a painting, and they usually take me a few months of painting them before i like what i do. in this painting i feel like i'm "getting there".
also used a painting knife edge to get those fine telephone pole lines. works great