After a hard freeze last week, most of the the colors are gone outside. It’s sad to see all of my flowers and the rest of the yard getting ready for winter hibernation. I’m glad that through art we can continue to capture the beauty of nature no matter what the season!

A couple of years ago I captured the sun setting through one of our trees.

Even though the leaves of these trees don’t turn bright colors, there was so much amazing texture in this shot, I decided to try expressing it in watercolor. Here is my painting:

Then I wanted to paint some very colorful leaves and used negative painting to capture them. I first painted a wash of colors for the base and then used negative painting to define the individual leaves. The last step was painting veins to add detail to the leaves. Negative painting is a fun process to try!

Last month my granddaughter and I were given the opportunity to take a pumpkin painting workshop with local artist, Mary Evelyn at a lovely little flower shop called Flowers by the Stemmery. This shop is a very inspirational place to create! In this paint project we used acrylic paints and paint pens. I’ve always thought when I’ve seen photos of white pumpkins that they had been painted white. Perhaps some are, but I actually painted on a natural white colored pumpkin. We had choices of white, gray, yellow, orange, and even pink pumpkins to paint on! Who knew they grew that way?

My finished pumpkin! (above) My granddaughter’s pumpkin! (below)

How are you capturing the beauty of fall?