When I see light glistening off of snow covered trees, and long blue shadows stretching far across the fields, I can’t help but feel nostalgic. It brings back memories of staying home from school, sledding between snowy trees, building snow caves, running home with cold fingers and tucking into some hot chocolate (with marshmallows).

It doesn’t often snow where I live in Scotland, so when it does I make a point to go out and experience it first hand. I pay attention to the color of shadows, and the textures and shapes of snow. It’s absolutely fascinating how my normally very green world suddenly becomes monochrome.

Painting Snow

I’ve shared how I like to paint snow in the past here, but I think my technique is evolving, especially with gouache.

I still love to exaggerate the colors of shadows in particular. In this scene, I was leaning on intense blue to draw the viewer in.

Once in the painting, the viewer can get lost in all the details.

To me the most interesting thing about painting snow are the light and shadows, which is why I focus on those.

To layer the gouache, I use as little water as possible. In fact I like to let my gouache dry out on the palette a little. This leads to a lot of brush drag because the gouache gets sticky. But it means I’m not creating goopy mess and I can more easily control the quality of each brush stroke. It also allows me to get very distinct brush strokes that stand out against each other (rather than blending together).

I love creating paintings that look abstract up close, but when viewed at a distance they soften and become recognizable. a dry brush effect lends itself beautifully to this painterly style.

To create the dry brush effect, follow these steps:

• Clean the brush completely, then remove most of the water.
• Thinly coat the brush in color and apply to the paper. Let it dry completely before overlapping with other color.
• When layering up, avoid adding too much water. If you need to soften the gouache, dip just the corner into water either before or after picking up color. But test the brush stroke off to the side to make sure it’s not too wet.
• If you end up with too much water on the brush, try dabbing it off on a paper towel, at the base of the hairs.
• Layer as many colors as you need, letting them dry between application.
• Let your gouache get a little bit dry on the palette, this makes it a little more sticky and it’s easier to get the dry brush effect with that.

Watch my technique on youtube:

Want to take it a step further? Head over to my Patreon and learn how to paint with me!