Storytelling

Sometimes telling a simple story takes a very complicated setting. One of the things I love about living in the country is the way a freshly fallen heavy snowfall looks on our trees. When the sun comes out, it is magical.

Unfortunately, painting a scene like that is very time consuming. Each section takes careful thought. Rather then complete all the dark tones first, I work on the dark, light, and medium colors at the same time.

Two small angle bright brushes are used for the brightest whites and the darkest darks. A larger medium angle bright brush is used for the middle tones. (I keep the middle tone brush between the light and dark one so I don't accidentally contaminate my light brush with dark colors.)
I mix two bright white colors, 4 medium tones, and have 3 colors adjacent to each other for the dark tones (burnt umber, ultramarine blue, sap green.)

Here is the start.

For the furthest background trees, I mixed three dark blues.