Seasons of colour – May Autumns End

May – Oak leaves

It the last month of Autumn and it has turned cold, in fact winter cold and it has rained constantly for over a week.  Now before I moan too much, I must put this in context, we need rain, in fact we usually need rain, so that is good and the garden is loving it.  My problem is that like every autumn I am not ready for winter yet, couldn’t I have a few more sunny days please before it gets cold and grey.

I was inspired to do this pattern by our lovely, huge oak tree that shelters the house we live in.  Not a bad effort as it is two stories and the tree covers over half of it.  It is somehow really comforting to be embraced by this venerable old tree.  It leaves have turned but not all at the same time, some are red but others are still a yellowy-green.  I also channelled a little of mid-century design and came up with this pattern, lots of fun.

May spread in the journal

I thought I would get back to the Autumn colours after by spring toned Easter picture.

Karen

May – Oak leaves

Seasons of Colour – February

 

Cumquats Seasons of Colours

I have been wanting to do more quick drawing, a bit like the ones I do when I am on holidays, but with a little more direction.  In my usual way I have been pondering on what I could do.  It needed to be more than just random sketches and I wanted some sort of timetable for it to keep me going.

In my wanderings around the internet and Pinterest I found this lovely British designer and her fabulous blog, Sam Pickard Design and have decided to use her concept of seasonal drawings.  

My idea is to do a drawing at least every month that shows the seasonal colours and plants of interest around me, to do quick drawings, patterns etc and a bit of writing about why I choose that subject.  I want it as a bit of a diary for the year, a look at different colour schemes and some pattern ideas.  In my bookbinding frenzy I made a journal for all this to go into and I have done my first drawing for February.  Just squeaked that one in for the month.

So my first subject is cumquats, so fresh and summery. My excerpt in the journal reads.

Its the end of summer and it feels like the really hot weather is behind us now.  The garden is scorched and the trees have lost most of their leaves (through heat stress).  It has been a brutal summer with incredible heat waves for days on end and many plants have struggled to survive.

Not much colour left out there apart from the cumquat tree.  It has managed to keep its bright orange fruit, though its leaves have yellowed.  But when we went to use the fruit they were dried out inside, just not enough water for juice.  Still the colours are lovely and they remind me of late summer.

So there is my first post in my seasons of colour, I hope you like the idea and I hope my drawings get better over time.

Karen