Capturing Woodland Snowdrops: A Painting Journey

What a sight!

In late January, the first snowdrops appeared. I noticed them here and there, in small clumps along the road side and in the gardens.

In February I came across a snowdrop-filled woodland quite by chance, on one of my regular dog- walking routes. I just happened to take a peek over the fence on the field boundary and there before me was a carpet of snowdrops, undulating and spreading down the banks, into all the nooks and crannies between the trees. Dappled in sunlight, they glimmered a soft white, leaving only pockets of dead leaf litter unadorned. Of course, I started thinking about how I might paint what I saw.

Preparation

I started by taking plenty of photos to look at different angles. Back home, I made a couple of attempts at composition and colour, trying to figure out how to give an impression of this swathe of white flowers through the wood. Of course, the white of snowdrops is also tinged with green.

I made a first sketch in watercolour, just to help me start thinking about how to approach this painting. I went back to the woods, without the dog and took paints and a sketchbook with me so that I could take my time looking at the colours, light and shade and think about composition. I also tried out snowdrops with pastels, to see how effective that could be, and was quite pleased with the result.

Painting in oils

Back home and ready to give the oil paints a try, I made a pencil sketch to help me think about composition and light and shade again so that I was clearer on what I was hoping to achieve on the canvas. I started with my background woodland palette, using loose strokes and a flat brush to work in soft shades of winter woodland . I put the snowdrops horizon in the top third of the painting and filled the upper third with a woodland background.

From there I used mixes of burnt sienna, ultramarine and alizarin crimson to make the darker earthy patches of the woodland floor, some of which were in the shade, so darker, and others catching the light, so a little lighter in tone. Less ultramarine and more burnt sienna for the foreground to make it warmer.

I the focused on the greens, trying to find the darker, cooler greens and the warmer, brighter shades which caught the sun. I used ultramarine and a tiny amount of lemon yellow, adding more yellow in for the brighter tones.

I used the greens I had already mixed and added white to make a range of shades of snowdrop greens, greys and whites, layering tones and trying to keep brush strokes loose which wasn't easy, as I was focusing quite a lot on where the light and shade fell.

I then added in the slender tree trunks with mixes of burnt sienna, ultramarine, alizarin crimson and yellow ochre. This woodland has clearly been coppiced in the past as the trunks sprang out from one base, forming clumps of stems, all reaching up towards the light. At this time of year, before the leaves grow, the light in woodland enables flowers on the floor to emerge. If you take a walk through any deciduous woodland in spring, you'll find all manner of tiny flowers making the most of the shafts of weak sunlight finding the gaps between branches.

A few final highlights of white to try to make the snowdrops glow in their woodland, and I'm done. I hope you like it. I'm looking forward to seeing the bluebells in the next few weeks!

Thank you for reading.

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