Ice Painting

This is the second of my "sunny snow" paintings, completed on site on March 6...a clear sunny day with no wind and temperatures in the 40s. I had an idea in mind before heading out - for a painting with a lot of sky and the land concentrated near the bottom. Found my subject at the beach at Braddock Marina...the near shore waters of Lake Ontario (out a hundred feet or so) were frozen and snow covered, so I hiked out a bit and found this nice view to the west (thus the title...ice painting as opposed to ice fishing). Beautiful subtle colors in the distant headland contrasted with the sunlit willow trees glowing on the left. An added feature of interest was the area of partially melted snow and fissures in the ice in the fore and middle ground. I feel I captured the true colors of the day, though I'm not sure I'm satisfied with the sky...it's very thinly painted without a lot of variation. I think it offsets the interest in the land pretty well, though.

10x12 oil on canvas panel. If you look too closely you'll see a vertical line where I had to join the 2 scanned images of this painting. It's not there in real life...