"Orange Truck" -- plein air field study -- oil on birch panel -- 9x12" Margie Guyot

After painting down on the beach (see below) I trekked through the snow over to this abandoned orange truck. It was parked by the ranger's station at Barnes Park Campground, in back of their little log cabin headquarters. I saw this the other day and planned on returning to paint it before our snow melted. I really loved the color of this truck! After painting so many vehicles in the snow, I knew how the shadows would look, so I invented some for this painting. In reality, it was an overcast day, with no strong sunlight and defined shadows.

"Ice Breakup - Lake Michigan - 2/26/09" -- plein air field study -- oil on birch panel -- 9x12" -- Margie Guyot

I decided to take my morning walk down here at the beach, at Barnes Park. It's a beautiful park and campground on Lake Michigan. During the winter it's virtually abandoned. We were having a heat wave -- all the way into the upper 20's today. Still -- I put on my layers of long underwear and heavy down coat. And I was so glad to have it. Surprisingly, it wasn't windy. Usually it's like trying to paint in the middle of a tornado down here, but today it was calm.

I walked along with my viewfinder, checking to see what looked like a good design. I really loved the clumps of ice, piled up a little ways out from the shore. A few weeks ago I crossed a stretch of flat ice to climb up onto some of these "chunks", but I didn't trust the ice today.

As I painted, the ice was moaning and making crunching sounds. Really neat! Dark clouds were moving in the distance. As far as you could see at this point, Lake Michigan was covered in snow-covered chunks of ice.

I liked the little pattern of footprints on the ice. I wanted to be sure to include it in this painting. And the snow was not a dazzling white today, due to the cloud cover.

"Ice Breakup -- Lake Michigan" -- plein air field study -- oil on panel -- 11x14" -- Margie Guyot

Never thought I'd ever say this, but I'm kind of sad to think of winter ending. I've had such an interesting time this winter, painting snow-covered cars and lake scenes!

This morning I had planned on painting daffodils in my studio all day. But first I decided to drive down to Barnes Park Campground, about 3 miles south, for a hike along the lake. I try to get some daily exercise, outside whenever possible.

When I got down to the lake, it was just amazing to see the huge chunks of ice and the sky and just everything! I turned around, drove home, gathered my painting gear and drove back. Needless to say, I had on my wind-proof pants, polartech pants, thermal socks, Arctic snowboots, heavyweight goosedown coat and gloves. Always over-dress! You can always remove stuff, but if you find you need it -- and don't have it -- it's pretty miserable.

It was a nice hike from the parking lot, through the crunchy snow. I was glad it has semi-thawed, then refrozen, or it would have been hard walking in it. There is a rather steep hill going down to the lake at this point. Glad it wasn't icy!

About 50 feet from the shoreline was a long, high mound of ice and snow. To get to it, I had to hike over snow-covered ice. This time of year, a person is never totally sure of how thick the ice is. It could have broken through. But I figured the water was probably only about 3 feet deep right there, so I decided to risk it.

The mounds were the place to be! Standing up higher, a better view of the ice chunks could be seen. I decided long ago only to paint things that I found amazing. Never paint anything that's boring. So this scene was pretty amazing to me. I loved the variations in colors: the pale mauves, the hints of olive, lavender, etc. The sky in the distance was so interesting as well, with the low, dark cloud bank, bordered with higher, brighter clouds.

Notice the distant "bluish" treelines? The ones on the right side are the Old Mission Peninsula, I believe.

It was very windy, but not quite as horribly windy as the other day when I was painting on Peebles Road. It was a relief not to have my gooey, wet palette blow up onto my good goosedown coat.

So I finished the painting, carefully packed up, lugged everything up the steep hill, drove home -- and then realized my camera was missing! Drove back to the park, slogged through the snow and down the hill again. Whew! There it was: my beloved camera, lying in the middle of the path!

I hope we have another big snowfall again. Just one more!

"Storm - Dec. 1, 2008" -- plein air field study -- oil on canvas 9x12" -- Margie Guyot

This was the second painting I did yesterday out on the beach, looking at the stormy Lake Michigan. It was so windy I had to hold onto my easel with one hand the whole time. The wave's spray was freezing instantly, pelting me with ice pellets. That white stuff in the foreground was chunks of ice. Waves were swooshing it up onto the rocks at my feet. That big boulder you see out in the waves was getting a crust of ice on it. In the distance you see the snow-covered hills of the Leelanau Peninsula.

I like painting at this particular spot because there's a small reef that juts out into the lake and the waves come at it in a crosswise pattern. Having grown up in Iowa, where we had rivers and ponds (and no waves), I'm totally captivated by waves here.

I thought I had a good grip on this painting, but the wind caught it and blew it face-down into the snow, missing the lake by inches. I had to let it thaw and dry out in the studio overnight before I could touch it up a little and photograph it.

Painting in a snowstorm along Lake Michigan kind of wore me out for a while. I'm going to be painting some still lifes in my nice, warm studio for a while. When the ice starts piling up along the shore and the sun comes out I'll go down and paint again. Expect bizarre things!