Autumn ....

I am returned from sunny climes, but for some reason the jet lag absolutely clobbered me this time, so I'm still catching myself up and feeling dazed and confused.

Anyway, perhaps with the echo of the sunshine still in my mind, I painted this page a golden yellow - which was then given texture by blotting the wet paint with a wet wipe.  Hunting around in my collage I found a sheet of pumpkin images ... and with multi coloured autumn leaves blowing past my window, my subject was provided!

Below you can see the effect of my usual technique of outlining the images in black and adding a shadow.  The leaves were made using a rubber stamp I've had for around 20 years - one of the most useful I've ever bought, but horribly fiddly to cut out.  At this stage I suddenly noticed that I'd missed the "n" off Autumn and panicked.  However, I put a coat of gesso over most of the "m", then painted the gold/yellow over the top, and finally drew the letters in smaller.  There are few mistakes that gesso can't fix!

So there you are, my own particular ode to Autumn, which while beautiful is actually a bit of a shock to the system after temperatures topping 90 degrees when we were away.  The shops were still full of pumpkins but we were in the USA.

I DO love this time of year, and it felt good to record and take time to enjoy that.  Am I the only one whose thoughts turn ahead to Christmas even this early?  I've already got preparations in hand ... but that comes from having very little money when our children were young, so that we absolutely had to spread the cost of it all from September onwards.
Yours dazedly
Rosie X