20130920 - Fall Leaves

Well, I'm back from class with a finished painting. This week we were working on fall leaves. I decided that I wanted to mix pen & ink along with watercolors.

I used my Noodler's Ahab pen along with Noodler's Ink Whalman's Sepia. Sepia just seemed to be the perfect color for a fall foliage watercolor. So, along with a Pentel Aquash water brush, I created the basic outline for the watercolor painting.

The painting for the class is based on an old photograph of a painting from an old magazine (or catalog). The original photograph had a fairly muddy background.

While it's colorful, it really lacks definition. It may well be that in person it is more interesting than this photograph presents. That often happens with paintings. The devil is in the detail and in this case a lot of detail is lost in this photograph.

So, I decided to clean it up and make it a little more abstract. Since it is based on another work, I can not claim credit for either the composition or even the work. I won't be selling this. But I do think that my interpretation is less busy and more interesting.

As I've noted before, sometimes our role (in life and art) is to highlight those things that are important. I don't think a slavish adherence to realism is as important as that ability to spotlight things that are important to us and others. So, when you look around take note of what's important and ask yourself if you have highlighted it enough for others. Are you encouraging others to see the world in a new light?