The fist snow has just fallen in Vals-sous-Châteuneyf, a nice village on the western slopes of mounts of Livradois in the centre of France.

The fist thing I must say is that the photograph do not really pay justice to the picture. I find that it emphasizes the brush strokes even if I certainly made to many here. I tried to correct with a picture editing, but with a poor result. I really like the real one better.

On the other hand, I just want to say I made this one with a secondary test on the back of a missed one in the same pad. It was very useful to test the colours and the effects I wanted to try. The paper is Canson Montval 24x32 cm. Stranger thing is I also made a test on the same paper but on a smaller block and the colours did not react the same for the wet on wet background. It was kind of a horrible mix, and I do not understand why, as the paint, brush an paper were the same. May be a quality difference in the making of the paper...

One last thing : on the final painting, the background is way too soft to be a real part of the thing. But, as you can see on the sketch, this was a very misty, moody winter haze (and it shows a little better irl than on the photograph)

The sketch :

The result :