snow and dark

Snow. I want to paint it. It's a challenge.

I made this backyard-at-night-with-snow painting last Friday evening while at Kat's studio for First Friday to see if I could get the snow right and if I could get the atmosphere right. I like this painting. I know where it is and it has a bit of a dark-corners spooky feeling with a bit of alley light showing.

It's maybe not done but I am going to think of it as part of a (possible) series of studies of the backyard or as a (big) thumbnail sketch/painting. I can look at it and see what worked and what didn't and what to try next time and how to tweak the composition. Reminder to me: I had brought the wrong white (zinc white transparent) and Kathy gave me some of her's (titanium white opaque).

This painting is another one of the house directly across the street. It's a cute little side-by-side double bungalow. They leave the front light on all the time and it makes a luminous glow in real life. I tried to capture that. More work needed. This is in acrylic and I am thinking that maybe I should use open acrylic? Not sure but it is on sale at Wet Paint for another week. I have a few landscape-related colors but not the standards that I usually use.

When I see the photos of my paintings I can see what I need to change or work on. Oddly, I can't see that with my bare eyeballs. Why is that?