manipulation and inspiration

It's a gray, warm autumn day here. So it's kind of hard to take a detail picture, but then that's not really what I was after. I wanted to show some of the inspiration for the piece I've been talking about. This is shot looking west from my driveway.

We here in west central Illinois tend to have dreary autumns. It hasn't even rained much here lately (we're in a drought), but we have all these long, darkish, gray days. As the leaves fall off the trees, the only ones left are those are the oaks, which turn a rusty brown that in the height of autumn seems dull, but now that it is the only color left, it seems warm and cozy. So the spots of orange and brown pop out against the gray of the tree trunks and branches. That's what I'm trying to capture.

And I am quilting away on it, between the chores and errands and etc. of life. It's fairly densely quilted so far, that may change as I move across the piece. I just hope I have enough thread to do the whole thing, and avoid my usual problem of running out of a color 4/5 of the way through a piece. Planning ahead is not my strong suit in art.

And there are still bits of a dull acid green about, small trees that haven't given up for the year, the duckweed floating in a pond. So I may find a way to work bits of that color in, maybe some hand stitching. In any event, this is a major piece for me both in time it's taking, in size, and in what it's taught me about where I want to go next.