Fun with Fall Leaves

There is nothing like the palette that autumn brings to our senses, as leaves turn from shades of green to a wide array of yellows, gold, orange and red.

This spectacular display is due to the interplay of pigments found in leaves.  As temperatures drop, trees stop producing chlorophyll, the pigment responsible for the green color of leaves.  This enables the other color pigments to shine through.

Autumn leaves are varigated in color as this change takes place and that makes it fun to paint them!   Go for a walk and notice the leaves and how they are changing.  Ours have just started to change in east Tennessee because we've just had our first few near freezing nights.  Pick up a few leaves as you walk and bring them inside and let's paint!

Select a leaf and either trace around the edges with your pencil or draw it on a piece of watercolor paper.

Mix up juicy puddles of the colors that you see in your leaf.  In the leaf I selected, I see green, red and rust. To make my green, I mix up a generous puddle of DaVinci arylide yellow and another puddle of WN phthalo blue near it to mix my green.  The other colors are WN Alizarin Crimson and WN Burnt Sienna for my red and rust.

There are many ways to paint a leaf.  In this post, I show you one way.

I wet the surface of my leaf sketch with water and paint it with my lightest color--in my case it is green-- leaving some areas unpainted.  Since leaves are varied in how their pigments change in the fall, I am only using the leaf I found as a reference for ideas and am not concerned with the final result looking exactly the same as the leaf.

Next, I drop some red and rust into the tips of the leaf, letting the two colors blend as I do this.  The damp surface of the leaf carries the pigment into other areas also.

When the surface of the paper becomes too dry, I rinse my brush and re-wet the surface again with clear water so that the water can carry the pigment beyond where I am painting.  As the wet pigment overlaps the dried green areas, I have created a glaze that will dry and show the green underneath.

When the pigment touches a wet surface it spreads and mixes with the wet color beside it.  In the image above, the edge of my red pigment at the bottom left has stopped on the dry surface leaving a hard edge.

I want that edge to be soft or blend softly into the next color, so I wet my brush, blot it to remove excess water, and brush that edge with water to soften it.

These hard edges will appear whenever the surface has dried, stopping the flow of pigment.  Whenever this happens, wet your brush, blot the excess water on a sponge or paper towel, and brush across that edge while the paint is still wet so that the pigment spreads into the damp surface and ends in a softened edge. Another way to do this--when you notice the surface has dried, dampen it with clear water before applying the next brush of color.  This keeps the pigment spreading as you work.

In my finished leaf below, you can see that some of my edges are blended and some remained hard.  Play with this and see which way you like it best.  Experiment with the amount of water and pigment so see how the paint flows.  Experiment with wetting the surface first and then with painting on a dry surface and using your damp brush to spread the pigment afterward.    

Below I've added some dark spots (sepia mixed with burnt sienna) and some splatter.  Have fun with it!

Next:  Fun with Fall Leaves--Wet-in-Wet on Dry Paper

Fun with Fall Leaves series

Why leaves change colors

Winsor Newton watercolors

Winsor Newton watercolor color chart

More posts on wet-in-wet
The science of color in fall leaves

Common Yellowthroat--The Painting

I began this painting with a varigated wash painted on wet paper using Aureolin, Indian yellow and Prussian Blue.  I wanted to capture a sense of light shining through the blackberry leaves that provide the habitat for my subject, the Common Yellowthroat.  

The Common Yellowthroat is not "common" at all, but a brilliant yellow warbler with a spunky attitude that flits around in the leafy vegetation eating insects.  While bird banding, we frequently hear them in the fields of Seven Islands Wildlife Refuge singing, "witchity, witchity, witchity".  The refuge has recently received a new name and is becoming the first state park in Tennessee to focus primarily on birds and birding:  Seven Islands State Birding Park! 

This painting was commissioned to commemorate this announcement and the conservation of a beautiful property in Knox County that is bordered on three sides by the French Broad River. Not only is diverse grassland habitat being restored and preserved for breeding and wintering birds, the refuge provides valuable research opportunities that help all species of wildlife in the area.

Once I layed down the intial wash and gave it overnight to dry, I began to define the leaves with negative painting, first painting the space between the leaves (above), and then adding some beginning detail to the leaves themselves. 

Early on, I painted the bird so that I could see more clearly how the patterns of light and dark would move the eye through the painting while highlighting the bird as the main focal point.  Color, light patterns, and shapes, all attract the eye's attention.  When the painting is complete, I want that attention to move across the whole painting while keeping the focal point clear.  

The bird is the brightest yellow in the painting and also includes the darkest dark, so that the eye is automatically drawn to the bird.  The challenge then becomes, moving the eye across the rest of the painting. Once I added color to the bird, I realized that I needed another limb to attract and lead the eye off the page to the right.

Above you see I have added more leaves on the right side and another limb, creating a V-shaped pattern that directs the eye downward and up again and off the page.  The red in the berries also leads the eye from left to right.

A detail of the leaves and second limb, above, and detail of leaves in the lower left corner of the painting, below.  Most of the time I am wetting the leaves lightly and adding pigment that spreads unevenly through the leaf.  As that layer dries, but before it is completely dry, I add more color that blends like that of the changing pigment in late summer and fall leaves.  When the area is completely dry, I go back in to add the accent colors that mimic the spots and uneven coloration of blackberry leaves as they mature.  

I enjoyed the detail work in this painting and all the variations in shapes and colors.  Blackberries bring an early sense of fall to the landscape, their leaves changing to a variety of colors as the berries ripen.

The Common Yellowthroat is one of my favorite birds of Seven Islands and one that I was introduced to at the banding table. This painting became a limited edition, signed and numbered print that decorated the tables at the Legacy Luncheon for the Parks where Governor Haslam announced the refuge's new name.  The original watercolor was presented to the refuge founders, Pete and Linda Claussen, to commemorate their years of work in preserving this land for wildlife and Tennesseans.

To learn more about the event visit:  Seven Islands Becomes Tennessee's First Birding Park
To see my sketchbook study for this painting visit:  Using Your Sketchbook to Jump-start Your Painting

Bird banding sketch of Common Yellowthroat
Cornell on Common Yellowthroat

Seven Islands Wildlife Refuge
Legacy Parks Foundation
Seven Islands articles published in The Tennessee Conservationist Magazine
Bird banding at Seven Islands Wildlife Refuge

Using Your Sketchbook to Jump-start Your Painting

I don't think it's unusual for artists to feel anxious when they begin a painting.  As Ann K. Lindsay, my teacher and mentor expressed it:  "Art is our heart coming right out of us onto the paper, into the world; no wonder we feel so vulnerable...."

Sometimes after I create a drawing for the painting and add the resist to protect desired white areas, I take a deep breath in preparation to begin...and I'm not ready to paint!

The hesitation can be a need to warm up and get rid of nervous jitters, a need to play a little before you get down to the business of painting on watercolor paper.  No one wants to mess up a carefully rendered drawing.  This particular painting, "Common Yellowthroat at Seven Islands" was a commissioned painting, as well.  The desire to please a customer can add a little more tension to the mix.

I also wanted to use Prussian Blue in this painting, a blue that is similar in hue to Cerulean but more transparent. I was not sure how the colors I most frequently use in my palette would mix with this shade of blue since I had not experimented, so, I got out my sketchbook.

Your sketchbook comes in handy as a wonderful tool in this situation.  Great for playing and loosening up. Great for color exploration.  And great for working out hesitations before you get started.  As you can see below in the squares and blended mixtures, I am comparing blues and adding yellow and red to check out the combined colors that result.  All the pigments you see listed are Winsor Newton paints except for DeVinci Permanent Rose.

You can create a reference for color blends and their shades by painting squares on a page that document what happens when you blend two colors in gradual steps.  The example below is an exploration of greens created by a friend of mine.  At each end of the row you will find the pure tube color; in between are the shades created by varying the amount of color added.  The square in the middle represents about equal parts of both colors.  As you move to the left the color becomes more yellow; to the right, the color shade becomes more blue.  This exercise is an excellent way to get acquainted with new colors in your palette and discover the variety of combinations that can be used to create green.  

Below you see another way to make a color study.  When making studies like the one above and below, I recommend using watercolor paper when possible.  Watercolor paper will give you a truer sense of how the colors will look in the actual painting.   

Below you see the Common Yellowthroat in my sketchbook surrounded by the trial of pigments I used in the painting:  Prussian Blue, Burnt Sienna, Aureolin Yellow, Indian Yellow, Sepia (on the bird's face and in the twigs), Permanent Rose, and Winsor Violet.

Now I'm ready to paint!

To see more sketchbook practice visit:  Sketchbook as a map and Yellow Glow Behind the Robin

Watercolor cards for reference
Common Yellowthroat sketch in ink and watercolor
Cornell on Common Yellowthroat

New Hummingbird Note Cards!

This is one of my favorite times of year!  It's the time when local Ruby-throated hummingbird juveniles are out of the nest and moving around, and northern males are migrating through, fattening up on insects as they get ready for their long migration journey across the Gulf of Mexico.

The males leave first and are usually gone from east Tennessee by the middle of September.  Amazingly, that is only a couple of weeks away.  They will be followed by the females who have finished nesting, and the juveniles will leave last, along with the late nesting females.

In the spring I refurbished my hummingbird garden and added more hummer-attracting plants--cardinal flowers, black and blue salvia, autumn salvia and pineapple sage.  Pentas, lantana, and butterfly weed are more for butterflies, but they attract hummingbirds too.  I then topped the garden off with nine hummingbird feeders.

Every time I have the opportunity and there's good light, I plant myself near the flowers and enjoy the challenge of capturing a hummingbird in flight, nectaring a flower or sometimes while they're perched on the feeder--fun, funny and beautiful!  

All of this hummingbird watching stirs a deep love and enjoyment of hummingbirds and inspires art.  

We have just spent a day of celebrating hummingbirds at our Wonder of Hummingbirds Festival sponsored by the Knoxville Chapter of the Tennessee Ornithological Society and Ijams Nature Center in Knoxville. Visit by blog post on the festival and check out the T-shirts the volunteers are wearing!  My male hummingbird study, created about this time last year, became the logo art for the festival and was printed on the festival T-shirts and the banner!  (above)

To visit more hummingbird art on this blog visit:  hummingbirds.

Wonder of Hummingbird Festival August 24th--TOMORROW!

Join us at the Wonder of Hummingbird Festival tomorrow, August 24th and Ijams Nature Center, Knoxville Tennessee.

A fun, exciting event that will be filled with hummingbirds!  Hummingbird banding with Mark Armstrong our very gentle Master Bander of songbirds and hummingbirds, expert speakers on several different nature subjects including bluebirds, hummingbirds, bears and wolves, vendors with plants and nature crafts, lots of food vendors and wildlife demonstrations!  Great fun and education for the whole family!  

Visit this link to get more information and complete directions:  Wonder of Hummingbird Festival

To visit more hummingbird art on this blog visit:  hummingbirds

More information about hummingbird banding and hummingbirds.

The Hummingbird Days of Summer

Breeding season is coming to a close for hummingbirds in our area, except for a few late nesters.  Lots of juveniles are visiting the feeders and hummingbirds from northern areas are starting to migrate.  This is when activity at nectar feeders and in gardens becomes very busy and its also my favorite time to paint hummingbirds!

The above hummingbird visiting a black and blue salvia is one of my sketches this season.
Below, a male hummingbird visits the black and blue blossoms.  (Some varieties are the deep blue below, others look deep purple.)

Besides enjoying myself, I'm getting ready for the Wonder of Hummingbird Festival in Knoxville, TN, August 24th at Ijams Nature Center.  We will be celebrating hummingbirds and their migration with Mark Armstrong, Master Bander, who will demonstrate how he bands hummingbirds so scientists can discover more about the health and behavior of the population.

Peregrine Falcon Watercolor in Tennessee Conservationist Magazine

When I submit an article to the Tennessee Conservationist Magazine, published by the TN Dept. of Environment and Conservation, I never know which photos will actually go into the article.  I send a good selection and the editor makes the final decision. Whenever possible, I include a watercolor of the bird that is the subject of my article but it is not a given that it will be published.  I was delighted to see that my watercolor, "Peregine Falcon", was included in the article that spanned five pages, and that the article also  captured the cover headline!

This watercolor began with a sketch that you see below, a practice to help wrap my mind around the shapes and expression that is characteristic of this incredible falcon. I had recently encountered a falconer showing this species on my trip to Alaska at the Sandhill Crane festival in Fairbanks, giving me a great opportunity to observe the bird up-close and take some reference photos.

The Peregrine Falcon's recovery in North America is one of the greatest conservation stories in our nation's history.  After the bird's devastating decline, largely due to the widespread use of DDT after WWII, the USFWS reported that there were only 324 confirmed pairs of breeding Peregrine Falcons nesting in all of North America.   

In Tennessee, breeding Peregrine Falcons had disappeared by 1947 and it wasn't until 50 years later that Peregrine Falcons were again discovered breeding in the state.

In the images below you can see how I approached this painting.  The sky was created by wetting the paper around the falcon and applying ultramarine blue to the wet paper leaving plenty of white for clouds.

As I often do, I put some detail in the face as I worked on the feather details.  I do this to make the subject come alive and add energy to the project while I work.  At other times, the additional detail gives me more of an idea of how the finished painting will look and helps guide my color application and lights and darks.  

Below, I begin to work on the rock surface where the Peregrine is perched.  I did not have a specific reference for the rocks but did look at rock treatments by other artists to give me some ideas.  I used warm colors to describe the boulder to balance the grays and blues in the bird.  For the boulder detail, I followed the lines of paint to shape a natural rock surface.

To finish, I added more definition and shadow to the feathers, sharper lines and individual definition to the rocks, and added some tufts of grass.  (See finished painting at top).  The Peregrine Falcon was one of the first species added to the endangered species list in 1973 and was finally removed in 1999.  In 2012, the USFWS reported that from 2000-3000 breeding pairs of Peregrine Falcons could be found in North America.

Links and Resources:
TN Conservationist Magazine--The Peregrine Falcon in Tennessee