Leaves on the Breeze

Seeing a picture

It's fun to take random paint marks on paper and see what it can become. This is another one of my watercolour tester sheets that I have transformed into a new image. The paper combined two types of mark making, brush strokes and paint splatter, in a colour palette of greens, greys and blues. The angle of the paint splatter made me think of the leaves of a tree being blown away on a strong breeze, so I carefully painted in the trunk and branches of a tree. I curved the lines to depict the movement of the tree swaying in the wind.

The longer lines of colour at the forefront against the splash of blue made me think of long grasses growing around a pond. The scene that I started to build up in my mind was of a view I had seen earlier on in the week. A large tree was growing next to a mill pond, the autumn winds had been shaking off its leaves which were beginning to scatter across the floor like a technicolour rug across the grass. It's amazing how a few random marks on paper can build into something more!

'Leaves on the Breeze'

Koh-i-Noor watercolours on watercolour paper.