It has been a long, hot summer, and I've found immense joy in it. Yet, even my favorite season must come to an end, and even though the temperature drop always saddens me, there are many things I love about fall...especially the colors.
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| Fall Fae Silk Painting |
I wrote last about inspiration and how what I make changes as I move through the process of creation. The last piece I made was flowers in autumn colors. As the temperatures drop and the pulse of nature slows, the trees become beacons - golden beech and firey maple. Yesterday and today, I drew my inspiration from autumnal colors.
The temperatures outside haven't dropped significantly yet, but I feel autumn in my soul.
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| Autumn Dancers Silk Painting |
The first piece that I worked on, I hated. I didn't do sketches for these, but just drew the designs directly onto the silks with my resist. Initially, the fae figure had too large of a head, too strangely proportioned a body, and no background. I made the head smaller, the waste larger, gave the skirt extra layers, and added abstract background lines...and filled the entire thing in with autumn colors. She sits beneath a stormy sunset, and I was so happy with the final piece that I decided to do another today.
As with the first, I put the resist directly to silk with no sketch, and as with the first, I hated this piece initially. Once I filled in the entire background with branches and leaves, I decided that it was going to turn out alright and began painting. It took hours to fill in the background, painting each leaf with multiple washes to give the fall leaves a realistic color gradation. I kept the figures super simple, dancing in the filtered golden light of autumn.
Fall.
