Birds of a Feather

Birds of a feather flock together..........................................

Another Colour Sequence

These beautiful heart shaped leaves are from the tree commonly known as Tree Pansy (Cercis canadensis). The leaves throughout most of the year are a deep red violet...in Autumn they shift to green, to yellow, orange then to red. The top leaf in the photo has already started to shift into its green phase.

Colour Sequences

Autumn is a great time to develop an appreciation of the concept of colour sequences.

 An easy exercise to 'get your eye in' is to turn back the clock and be a child again and collect some autumn leaves. Collect the leaves from one species of tree and starting from green, track the changing colours. In colder districts you will tend to get a better 'autumn display' as my Grandmother called the beautiful colours found around Stanley, near Bright, where she was brought up.

In my front yard the tree (Liquidambar) is shifting from green to yellow green to yellow then golden yellow with flushes of red. Arrange your collection of leaves in the sequence of changing colours. The challenge then is to select your palette and paint one leaf that 'calls you'. A correctly chosen lean palette, one particular red, yellow and blue will enable you to capture the subtle shifts in the colour sequences. Paint a series of 'patches' first before doing the leaf study.

Get Your Pencils Out!

Wonderful grey day in downtown Queenscliff along the shore of Swan Bay. Foggy conditions allow you to see the tones in the landscape easier. Colour is downplayed in the overcast conditions and so you can observe the essence of the subject matter....look for the mid tone...the main light and the main dark. If you cannot be on site then try a quick thumbnail from the photo to get your 'eye in'.

Look beyond the blue of 'Sally', the dinghy and again do a tonal study of this pic...see if you can ignore the colour that is calling.........( and trying to distract you! )......... concentrate on the tonal values.

Pumpkin Seed Drying

Saving Pumpkin Seed

Scooped out the seed from half of this pumpkin and spread onto a piece of paper napkin. This enables the seeds to dry out before saving them in an envelope for planting next spring. The pumpkin flesh was cubed and baked with a dash of black pepper and a 'slurp' of olive oil. It then became one of the ingredients in a couscous dish for dinner !

Easter Monday bike riding around Queenscliff

Another bit of sillyness.........Easter chicks enjoying the sea air and sunshine.................................