It’s cold. Not Montana cold, but cold for this part of the world.

And, of course, when I issued a challenge to the Northern Neck Plein Air Group in October, to go outside and paint following our first snowfall, I forgot about how snow usually is accompanied by cold.

So, here it was yesterday at 16 degrees out and I set up an easel where my husband’s car left a nice dry spot in the driveway out of the wind and painted. I did have some sense in that I was well bundled and wore many layers of warm clothing. In fact, the only part of me that actually got cold was my face and my fingers (despite gloves). I may try mittens if I go out again and see if that helps as gloves have never kept my hands warm… something about separating the fingers from each other…. In any case, I think I have the clothing part down.

I had enough sense to preload my palette with a limited palette before I left the house with it. I opened the easel before I left the house and it was easy to attach the paint box on top. I had a 5X7 board all prepped and ready to go.

I was out about 45 minutes and got the basics in. But in that time, snow started dusting down from the treetops across my palette and painting surface and the paint (especially the Titanium White) got stiffer and stiffer. I had solvent, but I didn’t want the paint to be too thin either, so just pushed and patted the paint into place.

I took this picture with my phone. I found out that to work the phone, I had to take off my gloves. And yep, that made my time out there even more limited and I discovered that gloves did, in fact, provide some insulation.

Finally, I went inside and took my little painting upstairs into a warm studio, let the paint return to a workable temperature and finished the painting.

I think I will work inside today… it was great to see my oldest son and his wife and their little dogs who stopped in for an overnight visit on their anniversary trip to Georgia from Pennsylvania.