Vermont House Commission

 Around Thanksgiving a good friend commissioned me to paint her son and daughter-in-law's new ski house in Vermont. At the time she only had one photo of it, but promised to send me more photos after they were up there for Thanksgiving. She sent me photos of the house, the shed, and the mailbox and wanted all of them in the painting if possible. The house sat on a large piece of land and needed some foreground detail. I used artistic license (with her approval) to move the shed and mailbox within reasonable distance and move the few foreground trees closer into the scene. Of course there were no shadows on the snow and that took me the longest time to approach that because it was so important to the look of the painting. I was happy with the result and my friend was thrilled. 

The final painting was 11 x 14.

Brattleboro Red Barn

 For the afternoon with the NYC Urban Sketchers we did covered bridges in New England. There are a lot of them. Some of them are no longer used for traffic because of their age, but I'm glad they saved them for us to see. This was done from a photo reference of the Creamery Covered Bridge in Brattleboro, Vermont. Of course the bright red color called to me immediately.