The Season of Whites

Perspectives from The Artist's Road

In the Wild North 1891 Ivan Shishkin

For outdoor painters, the season of snow means the season of whites on our palettes once again. Over the decades we have learned a lot about winter painting, especially working in a snowy landscape. We love the light at this time of year for several reasons. The weak winter sunlight is lower on the horizon, creating interesting blue-tinted long shadows much earlier in the afternoon. Bare trees reveal their architecture and the glancing angle of light reveals the shapes of the now bare land. Distant hills often take on a lovely blue cast, creating a cool background for the warm ochres, siennas and sepias of the plants and trees. Things are simplified and defined by their qualities of light. Objects can stand out bright and warm-colored in the sun against these cool backgrounds.

One might think that the color of snow is mostly pure white, but that would be an error. We have measured the temperatures of sunlight on s…