Fall

By now (mid-October) the seasonal changes are accelerating. Just a few days ago almost all of the trees along Druid Hill Creek were various shades of summer green--the dark green that says their photosynthesis machinery is moving fast as the days get short. Here and there the understory and shrubby growth were starting to go yellow-green, but there was none of the brilliant color that we all expect. This year may not be so brilliant as years past, since the Des Moines area has received quite a few inches of rain while colors are brighter when there's been a bit of drought.

"Fall," watercolor, 2016

Nonetheless, the colors are starting to emerge along the creek. There are bright yellows but the species isn't clear--possibly mulberries. But there are reds running the gamut from cool but bright crimson to rusty browns. The greens are fading and yellowing too. It's time to begin a series of fall sketches, but unlike spring, when these changes happen the weather is cooling and the wind becoming a nip at the ears. No welcoming warmth and emerging life. Instead the world is turning inward. Somehow, for me, the best images of autumn aren't those brilliantly saturated photographs you see, but instead are images that somehow capture not only the color but the emotions of the deepening season. In the watercolor sketch posted, the colors are muted but still seem bright--yellows, cool reds, and a few yellow-greens here and there are the result of pre-toning the paper with a violet color. That's a trick used by Monet and other impressionists for outdoor scenes, the theory being that violet is the complement of yellow, the presumed color of sunshine. Perhaps that works with oil paint, but with watercolor the violet subtracts from the brightness of the other colors, and dulls them too, which was the effect I was looking for. This particular scene is completely imaginary.

"Warmest November," watercolor, 2016

During that same fall season I did the watercolor to the right. It's a more or less accurate sketch of the woods behind my home studio. Despite the date of November 1, the woods had all retained their color except one standout up the hill. Although this sketch doesn't show it well, the red-orange hue of the foliage had its chroma pump-up by the bright November day. As with the other watercolor, I toned the sketchbook page first with casein. This page was a sort of terra cotta color before I began. You can see some of the paper color peeping through in a lot of places. Where I needed opaqcity (in the treeline) I used some touches of casein to cover the paper.

Another idea for fall is to try to capture the more abstract color patterns. Sometimes there isn't much variation, as above, but other times there are delightful varieties of color. This watercolor is a new one from a few days ago. I was most interested in the beautiful variation of color in the trees, but the bright red of the burning bush was also a part of this. It's about 5x10 in one of my sketchbooks.

 

Sometimes the season prompts a topic rather than a landscape. This watercolor, "Harvest 2017" is a scene of the corn harvest in Iowa. A big, green combine is cutting and threshing dry golden cornstalks on a bright fall day. The driver is sitting inside his air conditioned cab, probably listening to farm reports or country music, and paying close attention to his GPS. This particular watercolor is a full-fledged painting measuring 8x10.