Preparing the painting

I used a 2B pencil to draw the picture. I didn’t put in detail, but made sure I had the position of the fields and trees, and in particular the path. This is very important, since it gives dimension to the foreground field and also helps to make the field look flat.

I then wet the paper on the sky area, using my Number 10 brush, leaving some parts on the trees dry in order to keep some areas of ‘white’ paper to represent snow on branches. I stopped wetting the paper after I had gone over the distant two fields.

I used French ultramarine with a little crimson alizarin, a touch of yellow ochre and, using the same brush, worked from the top of the sky down the paper, adding more yellow ochre as I got nearer to the fields.

Having wet the paper first, the paint spread well and covered the sky areas, but didn’t cover the dry areas I had left on the trees.

At this point I always relax; the sky was in and I had started. I find the most worrying part of any watercolour painting is starting. Once that has been done I am painting happily.

Beginning the trees

Making sure that the sky was absolutely dry, I used the same brush and colours, but stronger, with a little more French ultramarine, and painted the left-hand and distant trees. This was done very freely, with the paint very wet, and still leaving white paper in the trees.

At the same time I painted the hedges. Then, whilst these were wet, I used my rigger and worked the trees on the right of the picture.

With the hedge still wet, the tree brush-strokes merged with the hedge and the trees appear to grow out of the hedge, not on it.

Detailing the large tree

When these trees were dry, I mixed French ultramarine, crimson alizarin, Hooker’s green Number 1 and a little yellow ochre, and with my Number 10 sable painted in the big tree.

I started at the bottom and worked up and outwards with the branches. Where the branches became too thin for the large brush I changed to a Number 6. This was done freely with the paint very wet.

I then suggested the hedge on the left and right of the path, adding more crimson alizarin and yellow ochre. This warmed the colour, helping to keep the hedge in the foreground.

Cooler colours (blue) always recede; warm colours come forward.

The snow

I then worked on the main tree again.

I mixed French ultramarine, crimson alizarin and yellow ochre, and using my Number 10 brush with the paint watery, I worked over the branches, creating the small feathery parts.

By putting pressure on the brush where the hairs go into the metal ferrule, and working in sideways movements, the brush stroke gives broken edges. This is what you want, so it doesn’t become too uniform and ‘patterned’. I made sure that I still didn’t paint the white paper I left in the first stage, and by now the white paper was looking like snow on the branches of the trees.

When this was dry I added some smaller branches with my rigger to give more form and dimension to the tree, and the small ones at the side.

Finally, I painted in the shape of the path, using yellow ochre, crimson alizarin and a little Hooker’s green Number 1. With this colour, using my rigger, I put some more detail into the right-hand hedge.

At the end of this stage it could have been left as a finished painting. Notice again how little work there is on the snow, yet it looks like snow. But I decided to put in some shadows to give the impression of more sunlight and also added a couple of figures to give life to the scene.

Final details

It is this stage which I find perhaps the most dreaded in painting a watercolour, even more than starting. The painting can stand as a finished picture (see stage 4 above), yet you decide to put more work into it, with the risk of spoiling it. Nevertheless you feel it needs ‘something extra’, and you have to have a go.

So I took a deep breath, mixed a very watery shadow colour with French ultramarine, crimson alizarin and little yellow ochre and, with my Number 10 sable, painted in very freely the shadows in the foreground. It was all over in a couple of minutes, and I was a very relaxed artist. It had worked. The shadows gave contrast to the white paper (snow) and made it appear even brighter than before.

I then painted in the two figures, using my Number 6 brush, painting them in freely without detail, or they would jump forward too much in the picture. You can see this in the close-up illustration. Finally I put in the birds with a Number 6 brush.

At this stage, when you look at it and know it is finished and you are happy, don’t pick up a brush and start adding a little touch here and a darker line there unless it adds something important to your picture: leave it! Go away from your painting, come back with a fresh eye and if you have captured what you set out to achieve, whether a mood of nature, a complicated scene, a simple subject, a painting full of contrasting colours or whatever, don’t touch your watercolour again.

I hope you have found this ‘stage painting’ interesting, and that you have learned something from the way I work. But the best way to learn how to paint snow is to go out and paint it on cold winter days.