Vermillion, gold, honey, and rust, beautiful rich color, autumn. My artist’s mind fills with these colors as the leaves start to change. I could lay for an hour under the trees enamored with the shades of oranges and yellows, until our dogs come to pounce on me and lick my face. The many colors and shapes of leaves inspired me more than once this fall to create some interesting imagery. Honey and amber my colors of choice for one such photograph. Gold paint, mixing my long loved art background with photography and nature.
My thought started originally with dipping a flower in paint, kind of like a chocolate dipped ice cream cone, and taking photos while the paint dripped down. Eden helped me with the dipping. She seemed about as excited about the idea as me, an energy boosting my own as we worked to get a cool shot. Though the image we captured was interesting, I didn’t have a “Yes!!” moment of now that’s really awesome. I kept ruminating on the idea, as I thought it had potential. Now this wasn’t a bam lightbulb moment, but as I was looking at the hundreds of paint choices, thinking that gold paint might work with the yellow flowers I still had left over from the first time, I had a little thought that maybe a leaf would work with this paint. This being the middle of November at the time my hopes of finding a pretty leaf were slim but I picked up a couple that I thought could work. Sometimes it’s the idea that comes after your original idea, the one that’s hard to let go of, that leads to something much more beautiful. So I went ahead with my first idea, again dipping the flower in paint, and not quite loving it. Then picking a browned, little curling leaf to make an attempt. My heart sang, a swirl in the gold like a little undulating river, beautiful light, just enough curl to the leaf to make it interesting.