New Travels Among The Leaves

Poor Blog! It was neglected all last week while we went on a foray to the Pacific Northwest. There was too much for me to do, to consider blogging last week, and so I took a blog break.

I wish I enjoyed flying like my husband does, but I fit kind of wedged into the too small space of one of these tin cans. If they would only take one row of seats out and distribute the space evenly among the remaining rows of seats, it would make a real difference in comfort, especially to tall people. But that would mean the airline's losing out on five full fares, so I'm going to ask you a small favor: the next time you fly, have mercy on whoever is behind you with legs and please do not recline the seat.

Luckily the flights were pretty short, but coming back my “neighbor” in the aisle seat had this super-annoying habit of repeatedly pulling at her “forelock” (grown-out bangs or what ever you call that bunch of hair that is shorter than the rest). I guess this behavior must have been comforting to her, but it absolutely made me feel like restraining her hands behind her back with one of those twister thingys. But I didn’t have one of those; consequently, it just made me really uncomfortable. I mean this was extreme, because she didn’t just occasionally push back her hair or pat it to make sure it stayed where it was. After a constant one and a half-hour toying with this hair thing, no kidding, I was looking for the whole thing to come out in her hand.

Well enough about air travel. . .on to more fun things.

Although it was at least 20 degrees hotter returning to Colorado than it had been in Oregon and even though no trees have started turning, I just have this feeling that autumn will be early this year.

For the last few years, fall has made me wanting to make leaf prints. This year is no exception, and on the road back I was collecting leaves of different kinds and shapes for my projects.

What I do next is to paint the back of the leaf (or leaves) I’m using with white Gesso. Then I place those, with the painted side down, on watercolor paper and use a brayer to roll over the top side. I do this while thinking about a pleasing arrangement of leaves on the paper. When dry, the imprint leaves will be white on white paper and not be overly visible. You can use the painted leaves over and over again until you run out of paper and motivation.

The next step is to get out the watercolors, and paint over the leaves which will resist the watercolor paints. It is a fun thing to do, and other than messy, rewarding with its results.

I will be putting some of these up in my Etsy shop before long and wlll post the clickable addresses as I do. The image on your right is called Leaf Season. Click here for more info.