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It’s looking like Autumn.
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Posted
Over the past few weeks everything in the garden and out in the countryside is starting to look tired and worn out . It’s been a very long hot summer period and plants, trees and even people are feeling exhausted and run down, make worse by the long dry season we have had . I don’t usually start to think of autumn or painting an autumn scene till mid October time usually but I’ve succumbed to the temptation to get one started. Going for the easy option and doing a an early woodlands scene , imaginary using my knowledge and experience of beach woods .
Basic sketch of the main trees excluding the branches , I’ve done the sketch a bit darker so it stands out for the photos , normally I use a putty rubber to lighten it .
Added a blue background to show through the branches and leaves, use Cobalt blue for this one , while it was wet I decided to lift some out with a flat brush to give the sun ray effect. I don’t normally do this at this stage and lift out the paint much later in the process, no idea why I chose to do it now , just felt that I wanted them put in now . Will probably need to redo parts of it as the work develops, as there is a risk it won’t look good . I then started on some of the details, working left to right to avoid getting my hand on wet paint and smudging it .
All the detailing so far is with quite wet paint and using a fine rigger , I realised the other day how much I use the riggers for drawing , not just the tip but the sides as well .
Added a blue background to show through the branches and leaves, use Cobalt blue for this one , while it was wet I decided to lift some out with a flat brush to give the sun ray effect. I don’t normally do this at this stage and lift out the paint much later in the process, no idea why I chose to do it now , just felt that I wanted them put in now . Will probably need to redo parts of it as the work develops, as there is a risk it won’t look good . I then started on some of the details, working left to right to avoid getting my hand on wet paint and smudging it .
All the detailing so far is with quite wet paint and using a fine rigger , I realised the other day how much I use the riggers for drawing , not just the tip but the sides as well . 
Posted
I’ve done a little bit more this morning, stating to add the understory, the ferns showing a variation in colour as I proceed.
It’s a small painting and I finding that I quite enjoy working around this size 30x10.5 cm, I don’t work large scale the biggest I have worked is A3 , I do use A4 quite a lot and pad I have which is slightly larger than A4 .
Posted
You have produced a fine painting here Dixie, and I do like the longer narrow paper. As regards the changing colours of our trees, I did a painting last year of the autumn colours beginning on the tree outside our house. I checked back to the date of the photo I used because this year seems early and there is a difference of exactly four weeks in the date of last year and this, presumably because of the heatwaves and lack of rain. You being a tree person would know all about this!
