Fall~Inspired Mixed Media Painting...

'Leaf Notes' (2'x 2' wood panel)

...a new painting is born...

I remember being in preschool that each fall season we went on a field trip called 'Looking For Fall' ~ most of my late childhood I was perplexed with a notion of being able to actually, physically, tangibly 'finding' Fall... Today, as an artist I love the idea and I can easily say that Fall is here, especially in the Midwest. Come late summer, I slightly envy anyone who's blessed with living in the southern hemisphere....

Two weekends ago I walked the paths of the Morton Arboretum while attempting to find Fall yet again.... most of all, I've found abundance of inspiration in the form of 'live paintings' by the hand of Nature itself...

... I was blessed with an abundance of leaves that I'd brought home with an intention of somehow incorporating them into one of my projects....

I placed all the leaves I'd collected in between the pages of a phone book ~ letting them dry and preserve their original shapes... a week later I was ready to listen to the still voice of In~Spiration for an idea which ended up coming in an e-mail from an editor of Creativity Portal ...

Sometime ago I applied a thick of gesso over an unfinished painting which I'd experimented with over the summer while trying to honor my creativity in the middle of my 'hosting marathon'.... Long story short, after the gesso dried, there was some visible Polymer Medium clear markings coming through to the surface which I decided to embrace as I'd anticipated some wonderful texture developing soon... After placing majority of my dried leaves on the surface I begun to play with an arrangement.

My original inclination for the composition' rhythm was a mandala~shape arrangement, which, eventually, ended up finding its own momentum...

... finally a finished design emerged...

I spreaded the following Golden Acrylics' paint colors on my palette: Phthalo Green ( Yellow Shade), Sap Green Hue, Turquois (Phthalo), Green Gold, Cobalt Green, and Van Dyke Brown Hue.

I used a #10 Synthetic Flat acrylics brush to outline the leafy shapes of my composition by applying a thick layer of numerous colors simultaneously...

The tracing itself is a veeery messy endeavor... proceed with much paper towel at hand! I found that working in a 'one-leaf-at-a-time' manner makes the process more manageable....

The above is a complete 'negative space' traced arrangement of my leaves' collection...

Next, I prepared a variety of a fall~palette colors to be used for 'filling~in' the leaves' negative spaces... here's the list of Golden Acrylics 'credits' due: Quinacridone Crimson, Indian Yellow Hue, Green Gold, Iridescent Bright Gold (Fine), Transparent Red Iron Oxide, Transparent Yellow Iron Oxide, Quinacridone/Nickel Azo Gold, and Quinacridone Burnt Orange....

....And finally, I set out to filling in the negative leaves' spaces by applying a quiet heavy mixture of the above paints' colors while making sure that there's very little 'blending~in'. I was aiming at preserving the subtle uniformity of each individual color used.

While the final paint application was still somewhat wet, I used my palette knife to scrape off the paint over the underlying Polymer Medium background' shapes...

Though my camera didn't catch it, I applied a very thin layer of Golden Liquid Acrylics Titan Buff with a 'scraping~off' gesture using a palette knife's edge, over the previously exposed Polymer Medium texture.... Once again, I was trying to reminisce the old, worned~out, rogue climate of the season...

I'd returned to a Golden Liquid Acrylics Carbon Black, Payness Gray, Turquois (Phathalo), and a Bright Iridescent Gold (Fine) mixture that I thinly distributed over a surface of an over-sized rubber stamp depicting a handwritten text.... refer back to the photo in the beginning of this post to see the 'note~stamping' in progressssss....

On a side note, my article titled 'Are You Mistaking Arrogance For Humility?' ~ another addition to the series 'Artist's Musings On Creative Process,' has been published. Read it in full by clicking the following link: Creativity Portal

ScanCafe, the award-winning photo scanning service: rated best by CNN Money, raves from Popular Photography and pro photographers.