November buckeye

This November has started out dreary here. It has been an unusually cloudy fall this year. So maybe that explains the darkness of this piece. Or maybe it's because all the leaves are long gone from the tree, and I've plucked off all the seed pods because of my fascination with their shape and texture, and there is little to distinguish the tree from its surrounding.
But part of it is because of a watercolor workshop I took last week from Carol Carter. Especially the glowing backlighting.


I started with Setacolor paint on dupioni silk, after lightly sketching in the tree shape. The yellow glow was added at this point, as well as some sparkly pearlized paint. When that had dried and was heat set, I used fabric inks to do the tree--the Setacolor seems to help stop the flow of it, so I was able to get fairly sharp lines. I shaded the tree with some heat set pastels.

The stitching was done in spirals--the leaves swirling around in the autumn wind, the flocks of starlings toing and froing in the sky. The words say 'November Winds By.'

This year is almost done, and I'm already thinking about what to do next year. I like doing small series such as this, and the monthly schedule doesn't put too much pressure on. Next year's will maybe start with a design that evolves month by month. Don't know for sure yet.

But meantime, the buckeye approaches full circle--leaves are gone, the shape reasserts itself. It has gotten taller, produced a bunch of potential offspring, survived. And I have documented this, which makes me smile.