First Painting of Snow

I haven't painted a snow scene since I was back high school. It was a watercolor and a teacher bought it.  O was just never inspired to paint landscapes. Guess I just preferred pics with people in them.

So now here I am in my late 50's having inspired to paint landscapes. I like landscapes but feel my paintings aren't at the caliber I want them to be.  Up to 20 so far and it seems I always get to a point where I lose interest in the piece.

Take this snow scene inspired by a recent morning snow fall in the Ahwahnee Hills Regional Park. Rushed down early hoping to catch the snow still clinging to the oaks. But as I hussled toward the area where the barn is, it was melting fast off the oaks. Fortunately I took some shots of the trees closer to home on the way down so I got a feel for what the branches would look like.

The grasses and weeds were peaking out all over so there wasn't the nice smooth even snow. But the brown and rusty grasses still looked kind of cool against the white snow reflecting the sky. I took a lot of liberties with this composition. The bridge was much farther to the left and there was no water in the ravine. Overall though it still has the feel of what it was like. Three trees to the left and one on the right.

But here's the thing, the more I painted on it the more I started getting into the details of the branches. I'd start with the basic branch shapes and then start branching off into ever smaller ones. Next thing you know I had too many of these detailed branches going all over. It was king of cool but not where I wanted to take this piece. So I'd knock back using bigger brush strokes to define branch clusters. It was fun playing with abstract shapes and lines and got to the point where I lost interest in the rest of the painting.

So I've set it down to work on areas of other paintings that I wanted to improve. I wonder if other artists have this problem of finishing paintings. I've decide to go ahead and start posting these.  For the most part I like where they are headed but they're not quite where I want them to be.