How to Paint Snow in Watercolor: Snowy Evergreen Branches

Lightly pencil the shapes of the snow clumps, a few branches and the curve of the snowbank. Keep the lines faint. Then load a wide flat brush with clean water and wet the lower part of the paper where the snow slope will go. You want an even shine, not puddles. Wet paper lets the shadow color spread into soft edges, which is what makes snow look soft.

Mix ultramarine blue with a small touch of burnt sienna. With the flat brush, lay long strokes on an angle across the slope. Leave strips of white paper between them. Those strips are where the sun hits the snow. The color will bloom on the wet paper, so keep the mix fairly thick and do not flood it with water.

While the paint is still damp, tidy the shapes. Grant rounds off a corner that looked too sharp and keeps the top edge of the slope as one smooth curve. Snowbanks are soft, so avoid jagged points. Then stop and let the whole area dry completely before you go on. Painting into half dry shadow gives you blotches.

Now work smaller. Wet one snow clump at a time with a round brush, staying inside its pencil line. Touch the same blue shadow mix onto the shaded side of the clump and let it spread. The edge facing the sun stays crisp white. Working one clump at a time keeps the water under control.

Carry on across all the snow shapes, always shading the same side. If the paint dries a little too fast and leaves a hard edge, run a damp brush along it to soften. Soft shadow edges read as snow. Hard ones read as paper cut outs. When every clump has its shadow, let the painting dry again.

Switch to phthalo blue with burnt sienna for a dark, slightly green midtone. On dry paper, cut around the tops of the snow clumps with a sharp edge. This is where the snow comes alive. Work quickly across the background so it does not dry in bands, and let the dark overlap the edge of the shadows, never the other way around.

Using the same dark mix, draw a few trunks and twigs into the background while it is still workable. Paint around some lighter stumps too. That is negative painting: you darken the space around a shape so the shape appears. A few darker positive marks on top add depth, so the forest seems to go back a long way.

Mix a dark green from burnt sienna and phthalo blue. With the tip of a small round brush, flick short needle strokes along the underside of each snow clump, as if the branch is poking out from under the snow. Once these darks go in, the white tops look much brighter. Keep the needles loose and pointing down and out.

With a liner or rigger brush and a brown mix, paint a few bare twigs rising out of the snowbank. They are handy for hiding small blemishes in the snow too. Start thick at the base and lift the brush as you go up so the twigs taper. Two or three groups are plenty. Too many and the snow gets busy.

Grant scrubs out a little paint with a damp brush to make a light ridge. Once it is dry, he lays a strip of masking tape along it, twisted slightly so the line curves. Then he flicks fine grass blades upward from the tape edge. Peel the tape off and the grass seems to come up through the snow.