A little more about winter fashion

Lucia Deleiris , pictured above wrote in to my comments page to tell what layers she had on she said "In the picture you see only the top layer, but I also have on merino wool long underwear, expedition weight poly pro pants, then work coverall windbreaking pants over that, merino wool top, part wool shirt, fleece jacket, down vest, then two jackets over that. wool scarf, and two hats, and heat packs inside gloves and in my trans-Alaska III Cabella boots!"

Lucia is an experienced winter survival painter having made numerous painting trips to both the Antarctic and to the arctic documenting in paint the wildlife under the auspices of the National Science Foundation. Below is a picture of her wearing that same coat in the arctic.
One night on this trip she tested out a new sleeping bag by sleeping in her car overnight. It was about zero , she looked OK at breakfast. Tough girl. Here is her web site

Chemical hand warmers are a nice thing to have when it is super cold. When you pull the disposable warmers out of their protective packets a chemical reaction begins involving iron and salt and activated charcoal all sealed up in little polypropylene bags. They rapidly heat up and stay that way for hours. Toe warmers are also available. If you put a pair in your gloves or boots they will keep them warm all day. I only use them when it is super cold, but they are a nice luxury then. You can buy them inexpensively here or at Amazon .

I was also asked about snowblindness and how that can be avoided. Snow blindness is essentially a sunburn of the eyes. The snow reflects a lot of UV waves into your eyes. One way to cut it down is to wear ordinary glasses. The plastic lenses cut the UV rays by a lot and the high density polycarbonite lenses that I wear cut them even more. As always when painting outside, a hat with a brim will also provide some protection for your eyes. Perhaps because I wear thick polycarbonite lenses I am never bothered by the glare from the snow.

I also wear lots of Polar fleece. Tomorrow I will tell you the story of that

Winter fashionwear

I drove through a blizzard and an ice storm and am lived to tell the tale. Above is an artists wedding from a number of years ago, the bride is on the right. The marriage was, however, never consummated, due to an equipment failure.

One artist on the trip was surprised to find out how many layers of clothing some of us were wearing. We were all sitting around and counting how many layers of clothing we had on. Layering is the trick to staying warm when painting outside. T.M. on the right, said he had on eight layers of clothing . I am marching along in my handsome new pantsuit on the right. I have on a set of Cabela's polar weight long underwear, a shirt, bluejeans, the pantsuit, a heavy plaid fleece jacket, a down vest and three hats.

Over top of that I have an arctic weight jacket. That weighs about five pounds it has so much insulation in it. The hats are a brimmed baseball cap, a "Turtlefur" ( a proprietary synthetic) hat and the peculiarly warm orange stocking cap that looks so good on me. I am wearing a pair of ski gloves with a chemical handwarmer packet in each.


Here is Suzy wearing an overall style work suit. When she paints she adds a jacket to the ensemble. The hat has special ears, I don't know exactly why. I have no idea what she has on underneath. Notice the boots on the guy to the right of her, those are the Cabela's trans Alaskas. T.M. is wearing a Carhart winter insulated worksuit with all those layers beneath. As I said yesterday, it was 13 degrees below zero when this shot was taken.

Lucia is modeling a more restrained outfit with snowboard style pants and lots of layers underneath. She is actually a rather small person, but all of those clothes give her a stylish and enlarged appearance. There are lots of modern synthetics that are really warm, Polar fleece and underarmor to name a few. Any outdoor shop can sell you lots of different varieties, even Walmart has a selection. They don't need to be expensive or fancy to work well. My orange hat cost three dollars and is the warmest hat I have ever owned, other than a bomber hat.


Here is Barrett wearing a set of insulated overalls and a bomber hat. Those are real good when there is a wind, the flaps protect your face from freezing, somewhat.

Here are a pair of the Cabelas "superboots" modeled by the lovely Lucia.

It is possible to be completely comfortable if you have enough layers on and good boots, providing you are out of the wind. The wind will freeze any exposed flesh and put you out of business, so you have to set up facing away from it, or paint down in the woods or in the lee of a building for shelter.

Painting trip 2

Plenty of snow here. We got out before first light.

Here we are meeting in the parking lot of a convenience store at 7:00. It is 13 degrees below zero.

Here I am painting That is a frozen Moxie in the back of my box. I have new Realtree camo pantsuit on.

Here are T.M Nicholas and I, T.M. is painting a 40" by 40". Outside in minus 10 degree weather, that is a herculean feat, very physical, that's a lot of canvas to cover.

Here we are all strung out in a line. This is only some of us, the rest are on another location down the road. We had ten on this trip. This is not Snowcamp, by the way, it is just friends painting together.

Here is my days effort. This is a 24"by 30". I will work this up in the studio, if I don't crash it, I will show you the finished picture.

A painting day in the snow

I am on a painting trip in Vermont with a big group of artists. We have been out today and it is real cold and continues to snow on us. There is Renee Lammers and Barrett McDevitt.

When it is snowing it is pretty hard to paint outside. It turns your paint mixtures on your palette into something Barrett compares to grated Parmesan cheese. Here is Mike Graves working from the deck of an unused covered bridge. You have to find a shelter like an awning or a bandstand or picnic shelter in order to work.

Here is T.M. Nicholas working on a big canvas. It quit snowing so we moved to a hilltop overlooking some barns and houses and went to work. There was a cold wind blowing and it was gray, occasionally we got some light but it was pretty severe.

But within an hour or so, it turned into this. For the next couple of hours we worked from snow covered palettes and kept blowing the snow off of our paint. It is real difficult to control paint when it is like this, it turns into glue. We were determined to get something for our efforts so we cursed and worked and cursed some more until our boxes were filled with snow and we were painting with as much snow as paint.

I made this. Not my finest hour by any means, but I did manage to get the canvas covered. I will probably use this 18 by 24 inch sketch to make a painting in the studio. I have some information and an idea, but I don't like the design well enough to continue without redesigning the thing.

Here we are back at our cabin in the evening. That's T.M. Nicholas with Katherine Raynes.

This is from front to back Paul Goodnow, painter and master framer, John Caggiano, Barrett McDevitt, and Barbara Lussier.
Tomorrow, we hear the sun is going to shine. Perhaps I won't have to fight so hard to make a painting. Today was very trying indeed.