The past couple of weeks have amounted to a spell of Indian Summer in Iowa. We've had mostly sun and warm temperatures, breezes but not many fro the north. It has been perfect for the plein air painter and I've managed to spend a lot of time painting at Gray's Lake, a couple of miles from my home studio.
The trees around the park and on the lakefront are still the dark green of deep summer but the intensity is fading. Here and there ancients with trunks five feet across are changing. A couple of weeks back the very earliest of autumn colors began to peep through, but now there are bright yellows, butter yellows, bright reds, dull reds, and rusts. And because there has been abundant rainfall not long ago, most of the leaves are still in place.
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| "North Shore, Gray's Lake," oil on panel |
It took two sessions of two hours each to finish "North Shore" because the light changes so quickly. This big survivor stands tall on the north side of the lake and seems firmly rooted, unlike its neighbor. The autumn light streaming across the scene left to right made the yellowing foliage more striking.
True Indian Summer is said to follow a frost, but we've yet to have an overnight low below 38 degrees, so if our luck holds, this may only be the first of more warm weeks. Fingers crossed.
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