Gray day is a perfect day to paint outside

It's a couple days after Christmas. I'm still looking for a job. It's gray outside. I haven't seriously painted in several weeks. Hello...brain...tell this body to get off it's butt and do something...like paint.

So I know I have to paint more from life. But, it's winter. It's cold. It's ugly out. Isn't it? As a matter of fact, I love snow. It's the cold that I really could live without. I enjoy a big snowstorm. And when the snow is wet and sticks to everything, it's really a beautiful sight. Guess what it did just before Christmas? It snowed. Wet snow. It hasn't melted down and there's a painting waiting for me somewhere.

Okay, make a decision: I'm going to go paint outside. Ya know, plein air style. And I know just where I'm going to go because I scoped this spot out earlier yesterday, a whopping mile from my house. The resulting plein air trip produced a nice little study of snow, trees and a winding creek with fallen trees. It was a beautiful scene. The study has got me thinking about a full size studio version.

But for now, here's the video I put together as I trampled through a field on a perfect neutral gray day to do a little painting.

Digital Crash

What a cluster: Hard drive on my laptop died with no chance for data recovery. I should say, the cost to take the drive to a clean room with a 50/50 chance of total recovery would cost more than the laptop is worth. But what is the data worth? More than that piece of crap Seagate drive that went belly up after just two years. To make it really bad, my lazy back-up two months ago didn't get all my data. So, 2 years worth of reference photos, family vacations, special moments, etc....gone. Forever. All my high rez photos of artwork are gone. Of the pieces that sold, it's not a big deal, but it's still a shitty deal. No one else to blame but myself. And that sucks.

NOTE TO SELF- purchase some sort of cloud-based backup package and/or become very regular in backing up your computer.