The Art of Seeing - Part III: Where Technology Fails

Perspectives from The Artist's Road

Now that we are covered in snow here, we have each shifted our plein air color palettes over to the cool end. Cobalt, cerulean and ultramarines really come into their own in expressing the gorgeous shadow tones of snow. Contrasted against these are the ochres, siennas and rich umbers of the winter trees and the golds, rusts and reds of the winter grasses. In between these strong hues are the greys and bridge colors - the purples, violets and magenta that we both love to use. The one color that our winter landscape palettes lacks is pure black - we only use it rarely as a mixing color when absolutely required. It has taken a lot of practice over the years to train our minds to see the colors of winter accurately and especially to be able to work with the large dynamic range between pure white and the deep darks of tree trunks in shadow.

How is this different than any other time of year? In winter, snow can become a major player in the composition, and in full sun, a large and dominant b…