It's Woolies Time

Four of us painted outside today.  Oh what fun.  It was -10 C with a gusting wind that drove the temperature with the wind chill to -23 C.  My oil paints got thicker and thicker until they finally froze solid enough that I could no longer work with them.  This will be my third winter painting outside with oil paints and this is the first time ever that I  couldn't paint.

This is what my palette looked like while I was working.  The problem may have been more the blowing snow mixing with the paint than the actual cold.  When I could work it the paint was more like wet sand than paint.




This is my painting on my easel.  It is far from finished but it is as far as I could go with it and there is so much snow mixed in with the paint that it will be a mess when it thaws.  I would love to carry this farther and especially darken and grey the tree which is way to brown but the whole thing is far to unstable to even think about it.




This is the view that I was attempting.  It is just outside an artist friends back door so I was tempted to duck inside but it is better to just get used to the cold.

It sounds as if it was a miserable experience but I had a blast.  I was outside surrounded with snow holding a paintbrush.  I still love my job.