[8][9] In late November Thomson returned to Toronto and moved into a shack behind the Studio Building that Harris and MacCallum fixed up for him,[10][11] renting it for $1 a month (equivalent to CAD$26 in 2023).

[16] The smaller sketches were done en plein air—in this case likely painted a little north of Hayhurst's Point on Canoe Lake[17][18]—through the spring, summer and fall.

[19] The larger canvases were instead completed over the winter in Thomson's studio—an old utility shack with a wood-burning stove on the grounds of the Studio Building, an artist's enclave in Rosedale, Toronto.

[14][20][21] Curator Charles Hill has written that the Sketch for Spring Ice was almost certainly done with A. Y. Jackson's 1914 canvas A Frozen Lake in mind.

[23] The composition recalls Thomson's earlier work from his design career, using a group of trees in the foreground to establish a lake and low-lying hills in the background.

[25] In the Sketch for Spring Ice, a gentler rise to the left instead establishes the foreground with only a few brushstrokes used to paint the brown ground.

Charles Hill has further written that, "the relationship of foreground, middle and distance is more fluid than in Northern River, opening the view of the water and far shore.

Margaret Fairbairn of the Toronto Daily Star wrote, "Mr. Tom Thomson's 'The Birches' and 'The Hardwoods' show a fondness for intense yellows and orange and strong blue, altogether a fearless use of violent colour which can scarcely be called pleasing, and yet which seems an exaggeration of a truthful feeling that time will temper.

"[31] A more favourable take came from artist Wyly Grier in The Christian Science Monitor: Tom Thomson again reveals his capacity to be modern and remain individual.