New paintings and regular art updates.
I’d better sweep up
The winds got up
And blown the leaves
All into weaves
The hedge is bare
And trees now dare
To share naked twigs
As branches do jigs
Dancing in the autumn air
Bright colours that dare
Descend to meet
Your slipping feet!
Our fig tree that grows alongside the house is well sheltered and has got rather tall this year. The leaves are really big and are just starting to fall off. The one on the ground still looks healthy and green. The laurel bush is towering over everything and really needs cutting back but we don’t have the skills or the strength to do it.
So all in all the garden is thriving. We need to maintain it bit it’s our wild haven. I will maybe post more photos as the year turns.
I did this painting a few months ago in metallic watercolours which are lovely, but I can’t find them now. I wanted to use them a few times but I think I put them somewhere ‘safe’ but I have so much art stuff, old paints, pencils, pens, that sometimes I can’t find them. Yes buying to many art supplies is bad. It’s consuming too much perhaps, but I try and balance that with other purchases.
I want to try and paint on black paper and I thought these metallic paints would stand out better against it. I shall go on a hunt for them. My idea is to paint gleaming frosty leaves to celebrate the autumn chills.
Pattern made from four duplicated photos of autumn trees. When the leaves fall and disintegrate they get taken down into the soil by worms or are eaten by insects, or lie as a mulch on the soil surface helping keep it warm. Hedgehogs and other small mammals hide underneath them keeping warm and out of the cold wind.
I do wonder if the soil level would gradually build up as leaves fall year after year. Is this what biomass is? It’s funny what you think about trees….
This was a real leaf today. Its a bit blurred, but the colours are accurate. I walked around a local lake today, only a week later than I intended, but it did me good. It was grey and overcast, there were not many bright leaves, but right at the end of the walk I saw this. Half disintegrated, but colourful and cheerful on a gloomy day, it bought a smile to my face.
I didn’t venture out today because its really cold and I’m still a bit unwell. I was scrolling through my photos from the summer and came across this double hanging basket next to the house. It grew and grew and was magnificent in July and August. Now? The frost came last night, a glaze of white on the tiled roof opposite. I think all the baskets will wilt, the delicate annual plants are starting to wither, but the slightly woodier ones like fushias are still there.
Photos of the back to follow, and if I get out into the autumn landscape before all the leaves fall I will post some shots of the trees locally.
I usually look out from underneath trees, but here I looked up and took a photo of twisting branches and limbs. Then I tried to paint the leaves. Dark towards the trunks, lighter where they reach out into airy space. Leaves are amazing. Because they can move towards the light (phototropic) they can move into the gaps where the light gets through. Like a jigsaw puzzle, filling in the spaces. Then suddenly in autumn deciduous trees drop their leaves as the cold and wind catches them out. Great blankets of leaves are now lying below the local trees. Crunching through their crispness is one of my favourite things before they turn soggy in the cold rain. Glorious!
Standing tall
Tanding strong
Staked against
The blustery wind.
End of October
But you are
summer sun?
How did you survive?
Oh, no frost
No ice
Just warm winds
Dragged up
From the azores.
You are a late
Summer sun
Still in glory.
Today’s #bandofsketchers prompt was autumn…. I imagined a wet autumn leaf because I didn’t feel like going out looking for one! Felt pens and silver ink.
I do like challenging my visual memory to draw things like this, thinking about how colours change on leaves. The texture of them, how the veins run in them. It might not be accurate but its fun.
Still growing
Flowering, expanding
Drinking in light
Leaves green and patterned
Delicate petals
Give calm delight.
I hope they continue
Until the frost
Destroys
Mallaband-Brown