Let it snow!

Across from Meeks Bay, Lake Tahoe 6x8 O/P

I was up in Tahoe for a friends birthday the other weekend, and got in a few oil sketches while I was supposed to be snowboarding : ) Mixed success, but I found that the paintings done at the very last moments of sunlight, when I really had to move fast turned out better than the ones where I had more time to work on them (pride keeps me from posting the REALLY rotten one). Reminds me of when I first started painting with Ian during lunch breaks at work. There was a crazy rush in trying to get a painting done in 45minutes! Other than a few random blobs of white at the tops of peaks, I’ve never really painted any snow scenes. I found it pretty fun and not as intimidating as I had built it up in my head to be, but then maybe that's just ignorance being bliss. The Meeks Bay scene was done in about 25 minutes partly because I only had 25 minutes of light, but also because a big blank field of snow is really easy to block in!. I looked for my big shapes and broke down them down into their local color and the rest was just edges.

Before Eagle Lake on the Eagle Falls trail. Lake Tahoe. 5x8 O/P

This Eagle Lake pic didn't turn out quite the way I imagined it. It was a beautiful, but somewhat icy hike back into Desolation Wilderness. I took it for granted and dawdled and gawked at the scenery as the light slipped away and shadows changed, which led to the inevitable and dreaded "chasing of the light". Took more than a couple of hours to slave away on this, if you can believe it. But it WAS a beautiful HIKE.

Overlooking Vikingsholm on Emerald Bay 5x8 O/P

I did however have way more fun painting Emerald Bay. After a morning of falling on my ass snowboarding, I had had enough and made a hasty drive to this gorgeous lookout with just enough daylight to warrant a quick setup. The adrenaline was pumping, and not just because I was precariously perched on an icy slope. The light was moving fast and I really wanted to capture the mood of this spot. This was one of the quickies, maybe an hour or so.