January day and the ice is thick and the sky feels heavy. Who wants to paint such a cold scene? I was out x-country skiing and saw this and immediately wanted to capture the cold.
I tell my students, make it warm enough to want to look at the painting! It was warm enough for me to be skiing and this means that the filtered light and low light of winter is still light and still inviting, just as is the atmosphere of this January day.

Here is "Coast Range" one of my large landscape oil paintings. "How does one stay interested in painting," my aunt asked me during a holiday gathering.
The question sounded strange and foreign. However in my classes I see such a lack of direction or at a minimum students that cannot relate "study" as part of painting.
Painting has become entertainment and therapy. Students complain that they did not "mean" to do the elements in a painting, but they don't relate "study" with meaning.