We had a severe ice & snow storm just before Christmas and I was inspired to capture the moment once things settled down. Ice hung from all the tree limbs and covered the snow drifts making each step crunch. This is December in the midwest, or as they say in Iowa the "middlewest". 
At the Christmas art show in Milo the paintings that sold were mostly winter scenes like the one above. They are simple scenes but full of emotion that speak to the heart. 
There are times when the sky seems heavy and loaded with snow, ready to touch the ground. I've seen that effect during many snow storms. You'll se it when there is a lull in the storm but more is on the way. 
I'm still working on a winter theme and the weather here in Iowa is reminding me old man winter is on his way. The lower painting is the first washes of the sky and the top painting has a cut out of a couple of barns. Sometimes I use a cut out to get the placement right.
SOLD
I just started to paint with no real idea or real location in mind. I haven't done something like that in several years. Usually work from a real scene somewhere but not this time. The finished painting will probably be a snowfall scene. I've been working on house projects so much lately that the blog has had to suffer.
Does this painting look a little different than what Ive been doing lately? It's all acrylic. Fall is on the way or maybe here by the looks of the fields here in Iowa and I wanted this painting to look like the fields are just starting to turn colors.
Here is a project in acrylics. As you can see the acrylic paint goes down heavier and more opaque than water colors. The sky is done but the foreground and landscape around the barns needs some imagination. We'll see!
This is the completed painting of Allerton, IA's round barn. That small community is trying to preserve this barn, a one room school house, and a large victorian house on a museum property. I usually don't show the painting in the frame but I thought some of you might want to see how it is matted and framed.
Here is a painting of the round barn in Allerton, IA that I painted last year but in the 5x7 size. This painting will fit a 16x20 frame and hopefully be an improvement of the first one. The sky started out with a lot of big, puffy, billowing clouds. Yet, I couldn't make them look right so I smoothed them over and you see what I come up with. Maybe this is better in that they don't over power the white of the barn.
Well here is the finished painting with its corrections! The fence row making its way over the rolling landscape leads the eye to the barn just as it should. This painting has much more appeal than the previoius rendition. 
