When I did this plein air painting, I confess, I felt compelled to paint the fence into the scene simply because it was there. Once back in my studio, I applied the concept of sweeping away the clutter in order to simplify. I asked myself, “What can I take out that would not be missed?” I decided to remove the fence. If you had never seen the reference photo or the setting itself, you would not even know the fence was absent.
It’s a good policy to have a patch that is void of detail right before the center of interest to bring relief. You can compare this to a carpet in a living room. The white snow void on information right before the house serves as the rest area in this painting.
Think of your painting as the background for an animated movie. The viewers don’t need details to put the story together. The mind will add grass strands. I drybrushed some texture in to create the illusion of clumps of grass.