
Winter landscapes seem to be a bit of a topic of mine, both with northern lights and without. And like many others I seem to paint them closer to winter time, there is just something about the longer nights, and the frost starting to take hold. Though even with winter approaching, it can take a few tries before I land on an image which works really well. This image is really one of them, and if you keep scrolling you’ll see the images which helped me get closer to this image, in chronological order.

This is where one of the winter forests images began, about twenty days earlier. Though it actually started off with having painted an autumn forest, which had some lovely colours. That said, I cannot fully recall having painted a winter forest just like this before, which added such a calming atmosphere. All in all, I wanted to try to capture the winter feeling, but also paint a more sparse forest. That said, I don’t think the colours were there just yet.

Next winter image up was this one! Instead of focusing on the forest I wanted to focus on the sky, and have it be reflected in an ice covered-lake. The colours are definitely better than the winter forest, but the cracks in the ice didn’t look all that great. I do like the variations of the trees though, as it gives a hint of diversity in tree types, which you can find in a forest.
After completing this I knew that the cracks in the ice didn’t look quite right, and I am a lot more happier with the ice in the first image on this page.

Next up, a slightly different perspective, and a change in trees in the foreground. I realised that I didn’t want to keep all the trees with dark trunks, as sometimes a forest doesn’t just consist of just pine trees, and evergreens, sometimes deciduous trees are present as well.

I decided to go in with some darker colours of the sky, and make them a little bit more vibrant. The lines in the lake work a lot better here, but the snow in the foreground might be a tiny bit too far down.