Jim O'Neil's photos with the keyword: cold

I'll tell you one thing man, it'll be a cold day in North Pole Alaska before Obama gets elected to a second term -or Romney gets elected to a first term! :-) Actually this old thermometer is showing it, at -23 degrees to be a little warmer than it actually is right now. My two electronic, solid state, thermometers are both reading -28° F (-33°C). Oh well, I guess I'd better put on my parka and mukluks, start the Jeep, let it warm up a bit and head off to the polls to vote.

Today it's a little cool out down at my river shop, around -39°. What a difference a quarter mile makes, the temperature up here outside my house is way up around -31°F. ! :-)

It's actually too warm (-20° right now) to freeze a towel hard as a board in less than 30 seconds, -but Tomokosan, after twirling it for about a minute got it pretty rigid.

Last year I talked about trying to paint watercolors outside at -20° F., -but didn't do it. Well, today, inspired by a post in EDM about sketching in the cold, I gave the watercolors a try. The temperature is -30° F> (-34°C.) today. I put on my parka, arctic boots, wool gloves, grabbed a sketchbook some pan paints and a pan of vodka (instead of water) and headed outside. Using my woodpile for an easel, I found my greens mixed quite well with vodka at that temperature but the blues and crimsons just wanted to stay in the pans. I was surprised that my brush stayed quite flexible throughout the 20 or 30 minutes that I was outside. The cold and vodka does seem to lead to softer, less vivid, colors on the paper and the way the colors diffuse is quite different from normal. No, I didn't drink the vodka! ;-)