Wednesday, January 9, 2008

Autumn

I had been grinning like an idiot on one of my autumn walks with Moomin Light because the Bradford pear trees in our neighborhood had just a few hot colored leaves, in yellows, oranges and reds, in the bottom half, and their bare black cages of branches, recently wet, stood against an autumn blue sky. I loved them.

Later in the walk, a family of crows flew over, skylarking about in the wind, and I realized how much crows mean autumn to me.

So this painting was conceived, and fell together quite quickly. The tree branches and trunks within the globe of the pear are done with ink - the rest is watercolor. I am the front crow in this painting. I'm not usually in my work, but after I painted the crows, before tackling the ink and sky in the tree, I realized I was him, gleefully fleeing, loudly exulting in speed and flight, and a tight pass by the tree before soaring out into the valley.

The third painting I did last week is for the book illustration project I've been doing since February 2007. Six paintings done; one to go, and I've already started it.

3 comments:

DebD said...

That is so beautiful. It made me smile and think of getting away.

Steve Emery said...

Thank you! I just changed one of my frames in the office at work to hold this one - and I'm really enjoying having it there. It and Cats and Koi are both there, side by side, until I change them out. I do almost all my square pieces 19x19 (as large as my Arches paper allows given the margin needed for wetting, stretching, and stapling to a board before painting) - so they are interchangeable in the frames.

DebD said...

That is so cool that you can do that.