Ok so summer is barely over, kids are just getting back to school and the weather is still warm. Why then would I be working on snowmen? Well it is quite simple really, I love the winter time. I love the cold crisp air, and the way it stings your nose when you take a deep breath. I love the sound your feet make when you crunch through freshly fallen snow, the smell of fire in their fireplaces and most of all I love the quiet. No lawnmowers, no neighbors singing drunken songs into the wee hours of the night, no motorcycles racing up and down the streets and barely any people out and about, nothing but quiet and the songs of a distant chickadee or cardinal. While I am not a big fan of the holidays I do like the solitude of the seasons end, the purity of the white snow. With that in mind I started to design a few snowmen, after all they are easy enough, just a bunch of circles. I wanted to give them a warmness too, something that is not always associated with snow and the winter and a feeling of belonging and friendship. The original paintings you see here were in fact painted in very bright colors and it just didn't seem to convey the feeling I was going for so I scanned them into my computer. After doing this I opened them in Photoshop and copied the layer resulting in two of the same. I applied a sepia cast to the top layer and cut the opacity down to around 40% 
allowing the original bright colors to peek through, much of like any color that peeks through a blanket of snow. I added a few digital snowflakes on a third layer and then flattened it to get the end result. Hopefully what I have is a charming old fashioned painting that conveys the warmth of friends and family and the beauty of the winter season. To be continued...
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