Bright
Wings of
Autumn Bright
Wings of
Autumn Wild West Yorkshire, Monday 4 October 2010
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5.30
pm THE
LOW sun
throws the
foliage
of the ashes
in the valley
into sharp
contrasts
of golds
and mossy
greens against
peat-brown
shadows.
The splodges
of bright
golden yellow
in the left
foreground
are a couple
of branches
of our golden
hornet
which is
covered
in small
yellow crab
apples at
present.
In recent months, the vast conifer plantations of Kielder have been more familiar to us but they don't offer the autumn colour of Coxley Valley. By the way, that grey sky behind the trees in my watercolour was actually a soft blue sky, gradually yellowing towards the horizon as the sun dipped. I used cerualean blue with the tiniest blob of yellow as I washed it in downwards, diluting the colour as I went. It never scans with the same blue cast that it has in my sketchbook. On occasions I've messed around with the colour balance in Photoshop to make cerulean look a purer blue in my scans but I think, if a drawing is intended for reproduction, it would be better to use dilute winsor blue (green shade) for a sky like that. It's a similar, but purer, colour.
After the sun burnt away the morning mist in the valley, we had blue skies all day and we've had more butterflies in the garden than I've seen for a long time. On the tall sprawling stand of michaelmas daisies by the patio, bathed in a patch of afternoon sun, seven fresh-looking small tortoiseshells were busily feeding, but there were also, Barbara tells me, a peacock and a red admiral.
Leaves
and pigeon
breast feather
from our
doorstep.
The yellow
one is a
leaflet
of rowan,
but I'm
not sure
about the
oval, toothed-edged
leaves.
On our travels today, we took a coffee break at Farmer Copley's. Lined up at two foot intervals along the flagstone top of the low wall which divides the Moo Cafe from the farm shop were pumpkins, mainly real but one or two of the large garden ornament variety with smiling faces carved in them. A six-year old schoolboy walked along the row, pausing to face each one, bowing politely to say 'HELLO!'.
Richard Bell, illustrator
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