The sketching habit is an important part of an artists’ routine. Many sketches can be produced for any single painting. Most are exploratory and are rarely seen by anyone other than the artist. Some of the many sketches that are produced have a freshness and appeal all their own, and are so nice, it will be hard improve on them by painting a larger work. Two that I produced recently seem to fit this category.

Both of these sketches reflect my own thinking on the coming of the end of winter. In this time of the year when winter is more than half over and the days are noticeably longer, I often start thinking of and anticipating the coming of Spring. To be sure, here in Vermont, winter is not necessarily over on March 21, just because the calendar says so. It is not unusual to have some of our worst snowstorms in March and even after the spring equinox. Still, the brightening and lengthening of the days is a welcome sign that winter will indeed end!

Both sketches were executed very quickly.

The first one is about late winter melting - when the ground starts to re-appear from under all the snow. On its return in spring, the earth is brown - brown mud, brown grass, brown weeds and in some places, leftover brown leaves from the fall. This sketch captures the receding snow, the appearance of the earth and the warming light and trees in their post-winter, pre-bud state. To me the sketch feels like the anticipation of spring when it is still cold out, but the sunlight feels warm anyway.

The second sketch is of a time farther into the calendar - late April or early May in this part of Vermont. The snow is gone and won’t return again until late in the year. Streams are full of winter melt and are running strong while the landscape is greening up nicely. This little sketch I think nicely portrays the flowing but still cold water of a country stream, filling up onto the banks with the melted snow.