Leaf Prints

15 December 2013

After the recent strong winds most of the trees are bare and leaves have swirled their way into sheltered spots such as along the low wall of the herb bed on our back lawn and, slipping under the door, into our garage.

My first approach was to roller black acrylic paint on the leaves, so that the paint only made contact with the raised veins. This produced only faint incomplete prints so I used a hogshair brush to apply the paint over the entire leaf.

I placed the inked-up leaf carefully on the sketchbook page, covered it with a sheet of scrap paper and rollered the leaf firmly so that it made contact. I found that I got equally good, perhaps better, results by pressing the leaf down by hand through the scrap paper.