Winter Barn

This is amazing. I'm not sure what I like better, your trees are awesome, the cabin is spot on and the snow on the ground couldn't be done better

Soo pretty! I love all the intricate and delicate branches.

Goodness Dracula! I am scared to ask you how long this took you! Was this your first try with the Painting Butter? Did you take any photos as you were working on it you could add so we could get an idea of how you carved out the area for the cabin?

Great painting Drac!Your trees are amazing.Love the winter scenes.Nice little shelter you built as well.Cheers,P

Dracula, this is great painting! I love how active the sky and how calm is the land. Trees are so wintery! Barn is great. I will try to figure out more about that new medium. Thanks for showing us all the new materials!

Dracula, here are few references from Russian Museum in Sainct Petersburg. https://rusmuseumvrm.ru/reference/classifier/author/shishkin_ii/?lang=en

However majority of his works should be inside Tretyakovs gallery in Moscow. I am trying to get link for you. They have nice website and you can switch to English there.

Finally got it: https://www.tretyakovgallery.ru/collection/?author=shishkin

Thank you everyone! I'm glad this one turned out the way it did. I wasn't particularly looking forward to it; it was one I had skipped over in the past, but it turned out to be lots of fun. For the last few months I haven't been cherry-picking, but instead just going through the Joy of Painting books I have and painting in order. This challenges me to try things I might otherwise avoid, which has been very valuable to me.

@doggymommee8301 - this painting took me about 4 hours, which seems to be my running average these days for Bob Ross paintings. I usually wake up a little late on Saturday, set up my paints, prepare my canvas, and paint in the sky (and maybe the background) before lunch and then finish up in the afternoon.

This is not my first time using the painting butter, I think I've been using it for a few months now. In fact, I just used up my first little tube on this painting. It has a fairly strong solvent smell, which is probably why it dries so fast. I can't say I'm all too confident in its long term stability. I haven't heard otherwise, but I reckon a fast-drying medium sitting atop liquid white or liquid clear is going to eventually crack and be weird, but probably not for years and years.

That said, in the applications where I use the painting butter (i.e. cabins and mountains) I usually scrape out my shapes as close as I can down to bare canvas (I also wipe it with paper towels and cotton swabs). I unfortunately didn't take any pictures along the way on this painting, but what I'm doing is not unlike how Bob does it. I used the palette knife to scrape in my shapes and then apply my dark color (again using the palette knife). The only difference is that I add the painting butter to the dark color and then let it dry a bit, maybe for 30 minutes, while I work on another part of the painting, before applying the highlights over top.

@Dracula ahhh okay. That makes sense. Thanks so much for the explanation!

Ah-ha! Thank you @Tom0779! You are completely right, of course, buildings are generally something I have avoided in the past, but I think it's time to put more effort into getting them right. Your advice makes perfect sense to me. I couldn't see it before but once you pointed it out it is very clear. I really appreciate you offering me this valuable direction; I will begin using it right away.

@Tom0779, I can't add the photo here here, but the paint for this was still wet enough that I was able to partially correct the issue and it really helped. I am looking forward to my next cabin painting (for once) so I can attempt to build it correctly from the beginning. Thanks again!