Patty's Winter Barn

My sister Patty has long asked me to do a painting of a red barn for her, and particularly a red barn in the snow.  Of course I have no *photos* of a red barn in the snow. I looked in the Resource Image Library at Wetcanvas but saw nothing that grabbed me. I guess part of the problem was that I had no interest in doing just any old barn. 

In fact if I did a barn I wanted to do our barn in Canada! It's not red, but has red doors and red trim, and I thought that might do. But we only go there in the summertime so I have no photos of it in snow. 

So this is sort of a combined picture taken from three sources: 

1) A photo of the barn and edge of the farmhouse shed - but at high noon, so a flattish light and no shadows.

2) A plein air painting I did of almost identical scene, done in the green of August, but in late afternoon with long shadows.

3) A photo of a cabin in the snow from the Wetcanvas RIL

So I merged those three and used:

1) The vantage point of number one

2)  The long afternoon shadows of two

3) The snow and snow-covered trees of three

And the above is what I wound up with! It's done on Art Spectrum Colourfix, the standard 9x12 sheet, but the picture is just 8x10 as that's the size frame I have for it,  and I'll give it to Patty for Christmas.