Painted in oils from a photo (thanks Aunt Joan!) of a snow-covered drumlin.

The soft make-up brush had another outing for the blending of the snow colours, but many of the textures were the result of trial and error with a palette knife—either smearing or scraping away the layers of paint.

Decisions had to be made about how much detail to describe, or whether to give just an impression. It’s always tempting to add more detail, especially as I’m one of those people who like to get up close to a painting in a gallery and have a good peer at the brushstrokes. Mark Carder talks about resisting this temptation to add more detail, and instead suggests we ‘paint ugly‘.