This October was not only stunning for its blaze of colours and heavy fruit crop after the exceptional summer, but it was the first time I ran the course “Painting the Autumn Colours”
This was something I had dreamed of doing since “Painting the Bluebells in Spring Time” a couple of years ago. I loved the combination of going out en plain air to experience and sketch nature and then cosying up in a warm studio to produce a more finished piece.
I wanted to learn from the previous experience, though, when some of my artists got very cold from sitting outside in April and spent quite a lot of time planning how the day would go.
The first thing I did was my research. This involved lots of walking and jogging around the local area collecting great views that might be good for my artists to paint. I had to bear in mind that they needed to be sites that were close together as we would probably be walking from one venue to another. I considered asking if people had National Trust membership as that would have enabled us to enter the gardens at Mottisfont, but happily I found a good variety of scenes just walking from the studio door as we are surrounded by countryside here.
I had to bear in mind that everything changes fast in October, and a wall dripping with fiery Virginia Creeper that looked amazing one week might have only a few shrivelled strands of it a few days later!
Test driving the plans
As people would be coming with a range of skills and interests I wanted to offer some activities that would suit everyone and maintain their interest and focus for the whole day.
Collecting natural things
Everyone loves walking through rustling leaves and picking up shiny conkers. At least, I hoped so. This seemed a great place to start. (It also helped me plan a background for a commissioned painting I was doing of a black dog with beautiful conker-brown eyes; but that’s another story!)
I brought home a collection of leaves and conkers and spread them out on the table to paint. I didn’t want to just focus on an exact reproduction, but tried to create something more like a pattern, sometimes inventing new leaves, or doing the same leaf or conker more than once but from different angles to fill a whole A4 page. I did the background black to make the colours pop and create something that might resemble a wrapping paper design. It took a couple of hours and was very relaxing, so yes, a good one for a studio activity. After all, it might be blowing a gale on the day so good indoor activities were essential for the plan!
Trial and Error
As the colours grew brighter and brighter I eagerly headed out to try and capture the scenes I was glimpsing from the car while running errands. I sat by the side of a road in the on a grey day with some coloured pencils trying to capture the lines of bright yellow vines and a red tree amongst the distant woods. The colours were what really excited me, but after a few rather bad attempts at capturing them I realised I had abandoned the very useful ground rule of painting, which is to plan your composition and include a focal point. After two howlers I came up with a sketch that was starting to work. At least, I thought so! In this one the lines of the vines and the road help to create structure and the emphasised red tree glowing behind it gives it a focal point IMHO!
So that was a pretty chastening couple of hours that I will never get back, but I had emerged with a nugget of useful knowledge to pass on and hopefully my guests would not have to struggle with the same mistake!
Joyfully I now tested this theory. Back home I tried a thumbnail sketch of a piece of wall dripping with the most fiery crimson Virginia creeper. The colour made my heart beat faster just looking at it, but when I sketched it out as it was it had no impact. There was no sense of scale and the wonderful tendrils lost their magic in the way pebbles that look brightly coloured under water look dull when you take them out and they dry in the sun.
However, when I added a made up family out for an autumnal walk with their dog and and with the children playing with the leaves at their feet the picture suddenly came to life. Not only did it now show the lovely colours of the creeper, but it also showed something about the fun of October with a relatable family activity. If you aren’t convinced try shielding the view of the family with your hand and you will see the picture just doesn’t make sense any more.
This was fun!
I experimented with another thumbnail and the same theory. This time a tiny sketch of a bridge on Nine Bridges Road; lined by brown leaves and framed by branches of tall conker trees. Of itself it was of interest to me the viewer, out on a walk, but made a dull picture. Add a lady on a bicycle and it becomes a nostalgic image of freedom in the countryside, made more charming by the fact you can tell it is autumn.
I was quite pleased with the “less is more” approach to painting the flat grey sky. A scribble of grey with a broad brush created a sense of movement and interest that would have been lacking in a uniformly flat grey wash.
A slightly more ambitious project was a watercolour based on a a photograph of a pretty thatched cottage in Longstock. I wanted to set myself the challenge of painting it as it would look under a night sky, with yellow light coming from its windows and a golden tree in the garden. This was appealing to my story telling nature and was more interesting to me than just replicating the photo reference.
The focal point was now a woman opening the door to a pair of foxes. The foxes were ideal characters for the scene as they were already wearing October orange coats! As I worked on the scene the characters made themselves known to me. The elderly lady was a lovely, kind soul, but a little lonely as she is now living at home as a widow and misses the days when her home was filled with children and pets. All the local animals have a sense that she is a kind person and so if they ever need shelter or food they turn up on her doorstep! I called the picture “Hello there” as that is what she says when she opens the door. Her own cat, secure in its own forever home, watches on from its perch on an ornamental seat.
I so enjoyed this experience! It felt like I was doing the kind of illustration I had always wanted to do. Very liberating, although when I eagerly uploaded it to Facebook it got a disappointing response. I will not be put off!
Here are the final test drives I did of autumn painting activities. The first are watercolour studies of maple leaves, allowing the watercolours to run into each other wet-in-wet style and enjoying the random way they interact. After leaving them to dry completely I added veins with coloured pencils and finally added some paynes grey shadows to give them a slightly 3-D look. I was pleased with how these worked and ear-marked the activity as something I could demonstrate and that everyone, of any level, might enjoy doing.
Then there are some fun, direct experiments of just making art directly with the leaves themselves!
the day itself
I agreed the intinerary with the two lovely artists who came along to the day; checking they were ok with doing some walking and explaining the planned timings before they arrived. They were armed with sketchbooks and cameras and I had bags for collecting leaves and berries/nuts/acorns. We were very lucky with the weather as it was fine and mild, with little wind. I won’t give away all my secrets about what we got up to on the day but here are a few photos!
As you can see I had some very talented guests!
If you think this looks fun do please browse my upcoming events and courses! The next one is going to be another “Getting the most from your sketchbook ” session, on Thursday 13th November from 13.00 to 15.00