Autumn and a Leafy drawing

8" x 11" Coloured Pencil on Hahnemulle Bamboo Paper

This drawing is derived from a bunch of leaves I gathered a few days ago in our local park. I did it quite quickly with a combination of Prismacolor and Derwent Coloursoft pencils. I would have done it on coloured paper but I wanted to try out this newish type of paper. It's fairly textured and I quite liked it but I wish it was available in colours other than white. I really wanted to put a background to it but a) it would have taken forever on white paper and b) I couldn't decide how on earth to do it! I took this photo of the Sycamore tree from whence the leaves came (the lady and her dog posed especially for me to give a sense of scale..... no they didn't really, I'm lying!).

And.......following the same theme, here's a pic I took last week of a magnificently old tree which takes pride of place at beautiful Ashridge Park, not far from where I live, in all its autumnal splendour.

As I'm in poetic mood, rare for me (!), and we are having an especially colourful autumn, I'll leave you with a verse from a poem called "Last Week in October" by Thomas Hardy (1840-1928) who is one of my favourite authors.

"The trees are undressing and fling in many places

On the gray road, the roof, the window-sill -

Their radiant robes and ribbons and yellow laces;

A leaf each second so is flung at will,

Here, there, another and another, still and still."