LEAFTOBER
Happy Halloween!
This month I gave myself a project inspired by the wonderful artist Mindy Lighthipe mindylighthipe.com. It was good drawing practice and fun too. In my sketchbook, I have drawn a leaf every day from ones I found near Riverside Park, the NYBG, Fort Tryon Park, and Bethel, New York. I looked for leaves with unusual colors and or shapes and tried to capture what I could. As the month has gone on, I found my watercolors becoming more muted. In the first days, I tried for deep rich colors with lots of detail like the callery pear on the top below, but the leaves themselves got softer and more muted in their colors as the days moved along. I found some with tears, bends, and weird shapes. I purposely tried not to look for perfect shapes. I’m including a few just to inspire. Having a drawing project is a way to motivate yourself to do some drawing, even just for 15 minutes, and to end up with a portfolio that you can look through in the darker days of winter soon to come--we turn back the clocks on Sunday night. Now I have to think about what I'll do for the 30 days of November.
