Winter Holidays - paintings

It was near the holidays when I started these thumbnails.

From the thumbnails, I picked out 2 and worked up from there.

I wanted to paint a piece where the snow could be viewed from a window, but wanted to break away from a Western interior since I had sketched a similar window scene for Inktober.

I started out in a loose style in the thumbnails which transferred over to the larger painting. 

The dog and house weren't as designed as I liked so I did another pass over them. Then I realized just how large the dog was compared to the house, given the distance. (Yikes!)

I also fixed up the trees and snow since, in a realistic sense, with that much snow on the ground, the trees seemed a bit bare given their size.

I had a lot of fun painting both pieces for their styles as well as the snow. The tea house painting was a piece I really had to look up references for, which I'm glad for. I was really able to gather images for my reference library that way. The same can be said for the dog playing  in the snow piece.

Additionally, both pieces really helped me develop the habit of flipping canvases often, to the point where at times I'd forget which side was the correct side, haha!