Fall Glory

I went on retreat with other members of my church this fall, with the subject of 'centering prayer'.

It was just at the height of the fall leaf colours, which are really special in Quebec.

Based on my photos, I have done some paintings. The aim of these paintings was to produce a work for the Visual Arts Centre fund raiser. The painting was to be 12 inches by 12 inches, and painted directly on a piece of wood given for the purpose, or on paper attached, or anything else using the wood.

I decided to do a watercolor of the leaves, and to fold it around the wood. Which meant the main image had to be in the 12x12 square, and the painting had to continue some inches around this square. This was more of a challenge than I expected, I kept putting the areas of interest outside area that would be on the face of the painting. Shown are the final submission, and the other paintings on the way.

I had initially thought that 90 lb paper would be best, since the heavier the paper the harder it is to fold around the wood block. However the lighter, 90 lb paper, is generally hot press and does not have much of a tooth, and it is hard to do drybrush effectively on this paper. On reviewing the first paintings, I decided to go with the 140 lb cold press paper, and this worked better.


Fall Glory 2
17x17 inches
90 lb hot press watercolour paper

Fall Glory 3
18x18 inches
90 lb hot press Fabriano watercolour paper



Fall Glory 4
17x17 inches
Arches 140 lb cold press watercolour paper



Red tree
18x18 inches
Fabriano 90 lb hot press watercolour paper



Fall Glory as submitted
12x12 inches on wood block, image continues on sides of block
140 lb Arches cold press watercolour paper