The Colors of Snow

Perspectives from The Artist's Road

Cedar Snow Shadows 12 x 16” Watercolor © John Hulsey

The large snow storms that have graced our area in past winters have given us opportunities to study the unique light, colors and shadows that only snow cover provides. Painting snow presents many challenges to the plein air painter—the least of which is the cold. The primary difficulty is the intense light reflected by the snow. This causes us to squint down, and in so doing we darken the entire scene before us somewhat. This is fine when painting the lights, but it gets very troublesome as we peer into the shadow areas. The iris opens up to take in more light, giving us false information about the value and temperature of the shadows. Switching back and forth between shadow and light can not only cause us to paint our values incorrectly, but also get the color temperature of those shadows wrong. Most importantly, it is important to protect our vision from the bright glare, but sunglasses can compound the diffic…