Painting Summer in the Middle of Winter

Sunflowers!
Oil on Paper
12 x 16 in/30.5 x 40.6 cm
Copyright Byrne Smith 2018

During this long and, surprisingly, cold winter even here in the semi-tropics, I find that painting summer scenes helps. Or at least it helps me get through January.

I hope this warms you up, in the northern hemisphere anyway. I did this one in oil on gessoed Arches 140 lb/300gsm watercolor paper. It makes a very nice, if somewhat unorthodox, painting surface for oil anyway. The gesso keeps the oil paint on the surface, but it's that great texture of the Arches paper I really like. I may do one using acrylic next.

Oh, and Happy New Year, too.