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Now that Thanksgiving and Christmas are right around the corner I just wanted to address how much fun painting outdoors in the winter can be here in Va.  

I have painted many scenes from the inside of my truck in the middle of a Wyoming January with the heater on and it still not being warm enough to keep the colors from becoming stiff on me.  Dont get me wrong, I loved every second of it!  When I finally departed with that truck in Cody, Wy the dealership had some issues with getting out all of the paint marks from the passenger side of the cab.  Anyway, here in Va.  the weather does some surprising things.  I have never  been as cold in Wyoming as I have been here in Va.  All due to the fact of humidity.  40 degrees here feels like 10 in Wyoming standards.  If it drops down to 15 here in Va, well, the only way to escape that is to go sit in a hot sauna.  I have lived in temps in Wyoming that could make raison's in seconds, but with out that humidity it's just an issue of putting on another layer.  

My point to all this is, here in Va it does warm up nicely.  Usually new years day i recall is usually in the mid 50's.  All this makes from great winter paintings!  The light is further south, so you can paint ALL day, in the summer the sun is to far north and too overhead during the middle part of the day and the light is flatter.  Winter has better sunsets, and they last longer, and are more colorful.  Thank about it, time changes and the shortest day of the year is in December.  Jan days are getting longer and good ole Mr. Sun wants to stay up just a little longer each day.  So tomorrows sunset will last longer than todays!!

Another aspect about winter here is you can see further, trees dont get in the way so much, and all the trees are NAKED! So much character to them!! So lets get out and paint some nakedness!