With love and embellishments of frost

Bright winter day

After the snowfall and storms, the day comes to greet you with a bright and sunny smile. Every worry is buried under the healing cover of white snow blanket, and you just walk by wondering how overwhelmingly beautiful a simple tree can be. We can love or hate winter, but sometimes, days happen when love shines through millions of ice crystals on tree branches embellished by frost. It is an understatement to call such landscape beautiful because it consumes one entirely and echoes in the heart and resonates with the soul.

All is white

The best feature of winter snow is to beautify all ugly and awkward-looking fall remains. The view is undisturbed and travels far away, and everything we see is endless path of light, topped with the purity of transparent sky. I delved into such winter landscape and transferred it onto canvas. It took me a while. The view is not complicated, but acrylic paint is quite stubborn. It requires five to eight layers to reflect the deep whiteness of snow and the strong shadows of trees. Every tiniest spot on a painting requires attention and work.

Extremely limited palette

This particular painting is created using extremely limited palette: black, white, brilliant blue and burnt sienna. The green color is a mix of burnt sienna, blue and white. Only four colors will create a great winter painting because we can adjust all proportions of the above-mentioned colors, thus, getting numerous shades of grey, blue, green and white.

Screen settings

Now, what you will see on the screen depends on your device and its settings. I looked myself at pictures on the iPhone, and they have extremely strong contrast. On the large monitor of my big computer, everything is more balanced and not that exaggerated. Regardless of your device, you will still have an idea of what the painting is like.

Long history

Just like many other of my 20 x 16 in or 40.5 x 50.5 cm paintings, I started this one last year at a full day workshop. Therefore, this painting has a very long history and processing time. I didn’t get it done and adjusted completely last winter, so it was left in a pile of paintings waiting to be either painted over and changed (subjects I have lost interest in), or finished (subjects which look promising).

Three versions

After I took 3 sets of about 30 pictures each, I finally got some with acceptable color balance. Accidentally, having taken a picture of only half painting, suggested me I could use this painting for 3 prints: vertical with the front trees only, square with the main portion of painting and the horizontal which is the entire painting. Each one looks interesting, indeed. I know other artists do that, but It’s the first time I will be offering 3 prints of the same image.

Winter birch acrylic painting by Inese Poga
Vertical version of White birch trees, bright day
Winter birch acrylic painting by Inese Poga
Square version of White birch trees, bright day
Winter birch painting by Inese Poga
Horizontal version of White birch trees, bright day

Shop some art, make my day

I have decided to ship only paintings which somebody requests to be shipped. The main reason is that my art looks much more attractive in reality when the actual size makes extra impact on the viewer. I am well aware that not everybody is ever be in Canada, Ontario. Yet, many people live here and have no problem stopping by at Inese’s Art Studio. They are my main customer and thanks to people , who live here, I can paint and purchase new art materials and paint more. It’s not a whole lot of money, but it is a support. If you feel you like some painting, don’t hesitate, let me know! We can always arrange something.

Link to my store on this website: Shop special offers

I hope to be in touch a few more times this year. With love, Inese

21 Replies to “With love and embellishments of frost”

    1. Thank you Ivana!
      As you know, it’s acrylic, and using many layers definitely gives that feeling of completeness and volume.
      Some of my paintings do look realistic, yet, I’d say that isn’t my main intention.
      It’s hard to explain what I’m after, but it’s usually something beyond realism. I mean, I’m usually applying colors which can come up in reality, but most often I used them as a messenger to convey my idea.
      Anyway, thank you very much for stopping by and leaving a nice comment.

  1. You’ve really managed to capture an otherworldly atmosphere in this beautiful painting, Inese. When you say 5 to 8 layers, do you mean very thin washes? I’ve been using a restricted palette for landscape lately. And, you’re right, it’s amazing how many colours you can conjure up.

    1. Thanks very much!
      Winter paintings are not that difficult when we keep them simple.
      Layers mean I let dry between paint applications. Some parts get transparent glaze only and some get thick layer of paint, I mean, I’d use the paint selectively, not doing over every single spot.
      I rather adjust as needed to achieve more depth.
      Acrylic is like that: the more times you go over some part, the more volume that part will have.
      It’s possible to refine everything even more, but I usually get tired of one subject soon, so I just leave it alone when it makes sense.
      I also always paint on canvas which is already covered with one layer or coat of paint. I don’t use Gesso since I don’t like the chalky feel of it, I just use paint which is left over.
      It’s good to have prepared canvas in stock in case you get inspiration. Blank canvas is the worst because it will absorb a lot of first layer and there’s no point in trying to define anything. Second layer would be big blocks of paint and so we go until everything is in place.

    2. Thank you so much for this helpful reply. I do agree that paintings look more believable somehow when they are more thickly painted. I have sort of just realized that I don’t always use enough paint.So I will definitely try some of your ideas on my next canvas – especially the tip on using leftover paint.

    3. Thanks Margaret! Everybody who is just starting with acrylic uses too less paint.
      I have a few articles on this website which lists issues with acrylic paintings and how to fix them, here is one https://inesepogagallery.com/2015/07/03/weekend-painting-tips-to-enjoy-summer-creativity/
      Underpainting or priming canvas is very good. That’s where you use the paint you have left over from other paintings and it is not suitable or too weak.
      Mixing colors together creates somewhat grey shade. If it’s very dark you have to make it a bit lighter.
      We start painting with what’s underneath, going from back to front.
      Then we go from dark to medium dark to light and add highlights at the end.
      We watch we haven’t lost all values and place them back if the darkest spots are gone. Something like that and always with sensitively applied layer of paint. More for first layers, less as we grow them.
      Too less paint is always problematic, especially, because acrylic paints have gotten much worse in the recent years.

    1. Thank you! This is definitely getting very much attention. Blog is kind of slow compared to other sites.
      One more of paintings from previous years finished up and that is good.

    1. Thank you very much Maria!
      I like how this painting came out. This suggests me I should use more often very strong blue which I rarely do.
      I was just contemplating about doing a few sketches with the use of bright blue.
      Watercolor is way faster. Some 15 years ago I was much better with watercolor than acrylic, but eventually I leveled off the differences.
      The only thing is that to have abstract portion and then some realistic portion (that’s the way I love it, abstract versus realistic in the same painting), I need to apply numerous layers with drying between. That takes time, therefore, creation of some paintings stretches out not over weeks, but many months and it can be years, too.
      Have a great week!

    1. Thanks very much for such a wonderful comment!
      It’s worth painting if somebody else can feel what I’m trying to say with it.

  2. I have just had the time to read the post on acrylic painting techniques that you linked me to , Inese. Thank you for making that available. It was very helpful and I am practicing using the dark to light method, which I didn’t know about. However, I am having trouble with the cadmium yellow in the restricted palette I am using. It doesn’t really glow over a dark underpainting. Perhaps I need to upgrade the quality of my paint.

    1. Great!
      With acrylic, you always go from dark to light.
      First is underpainting, just covering canvas whatever medium dark color you have. You could steer it towards warmer with underpainting in warm colors, and cool with cool.
      Every step we allow to dry in between. With indoor heating, it takes about half an hour or so.
      It is good to use artist grade paint for yellow and white. You can get yellow parts also in the same way: layer and let it dry. Next layer lighter and let it dry. At the end, we take concentrated yellow and mixed with white, that should eventually create yellow parts. You are looking at going over for a few times, I’d say at least 4, but better yet more.
      It is much easier to achieve bright parts on dry, not on wet canvas with acrylic.
      That’s why I’m saying, one painting can take weeks, but sometimes months.
      About 15 years ago, when I switched to acrylic after watercolor, my paintings came out great, but each one took me more than a month, working on it every single day. Eventually, I worked out different brushstrokes from which the most helpful is painting on a spot with featherlight touch. I think I’m writing about that in an article, too.
      Good luck and merry Christmas!

    2. Thank you!
      Merry Christmas!
      We’re just 2 of us, and we keep everything small-scale and cozy.

    1. Thank you very much!
      In moments like this, I definitely regret I cannot show you the actual painting, not photo of it, since the actual painting is even better.
      Happy, safe and healthy New Year!

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