It's kind of the sketching version of shooting fish in a barrel, drawing autumn leaves. As in, you can't really go wrong. But I can also walk past them thinking oh my, how beautiful, I'd love to draw those some time, and then not draw them at all.
Here's to celebrating the victory of following through on an intention, and an hour spent really meeting these leaves with whatever I've got: the jar of coloured pencils, the training of really looking at the dentate outlines and way the stalks angle, the fun of scribbling colour onto paper without gripping onto the leaves in front of me too much.
As to the reality of it's sort of pretty much autumn now, meh. I'm not in such a hurry to meet that just yet.
When I first moved to Hackney five years ago, one of the first things I did was to look up a community gardening project so that I could keep a connection to flowers and plants and the changing seasons. I found the delightful St Mary's Secret Garden and have been volunteering there ever since.
Sometimes, I ask if I can take some flowers home to paint. These ones almost painted themselves onto the page, I was so inspired by the mad flaming floppiness of the Rudbeckias and the general late autumn messiness of everything. Flowers from a florist are just not the same.
Besides the flowers, I get so much out of volunteering at St Mary's, where I work with adults with learning difficulties and mental health issues.
Last week I planted onions with G, who suffers from debilitating bouts of depression in between stretches of great joviality. It took us two hours and we planted three rows, but it isn't all about hurrying to get things done in horticultural therapy.
The white fly settling like teeny snowflakes on the cabbages, the soil cold and wintry, bursts of exuberant song courtesy of P, a client with a great love of dancing with his rake rather than actually gathering up leaves, and G taking great care with each tiny onion - we had a good time out in the garden.
Much as I love to be painting in my studio, I treasure my day at St Mary's.
Winter arrived yesterday, before I could find my mittens. How rude.
I collected this handful of fiery leaves last week. They looked even more incredible on the white of the drawing table. Roast pumpkin for lunch on the same day - perfect autumfest.
Perhaps it's just that I grew up in the Southern Hemisphere, where autumn colours are less of a big deal, but I can't believe that anyone could not go absolutely wild for fallen leaves.
Which are crunchy when raked into piles in the park, deliciously earthy smelling yes yes I know. I can't resist kicking around in them.
But the best bit, the bit I can't get over, is how each one is a such a miraculous jewel of startling, extraordinary colour.
I picked these on Hackney marshes a few weeks ago and brought a few tangled, hairy sprays into my studio.
Who knew rose hips smelled so good, they have a kind of orangey apple freshness going on. Partly explains why they are used dried in tea, I guess. And jelly, and, in Sweden so I read, in soup.
And as a treat for pet chinchillas. It says so in Wikipedia, it must be true folks.
Still working on leaf painting, but for now, this is how my leaves look.
I looked through a most worrying selection of how-to books online on greens and leaves, books on botanical illustration and the like, and there certainly are some authoritative publications around. Do this, don't do that, never mix these and so on. Like I said, worrying!
Might be better to keep looking at flower painters I love, like Elizabeth Blackadder's work.
Still, in the end, the only way to improve leaf painting is most likely to um, keep painting leaves. What say you, any ideas?
