Primary Leaves

This is a macro image of a leaf. It is basically just a zoomed in version of a leaf. I started this project by going outside and picking a few leaves off of trees and off the ground. Because it is autumn right now, there are many beautifully colored leaves all around. I cut these leaves into a rectangular shape. After deciding which leaf I liked the most I decided on materials. The leaf I ended up choosing was yellow with brown veins and two red spots on it. I chose to use watercolor for the material.

My project started with rectangle cut out of a leaf. I then copied the pattern of that leaf onto a piece of watercolor paper. I drew the veins, holes, and outlined the areas I wanted to be darker. I then found the watercolors. I mixed the colors, yellows and browns, and white to make a few different colors which I placed on the parts of the leaf that were the corresponding colors. I then blended all these colors together. After finishing the yellow I made a dark red brown color to fill in the spots. I then went over the veins in a dark yellow brown color. This whole process went very fast so I decided to make a series. After thinking about it for a bit I decided to make three, one with each primary color as the base and a contrasting primary color as the spots. Because I already had yellow with red, I figured out I would need red with blue, and blue with yellow, so there were no repeats or anything. I started with the red one by tracing the basic aspects of the yellow one so it would have the exact same shapes. Using the same process of mixing with browns I was able to make this one pretty similar. It was difficult to decide how to do the blue because I was not a huge fan of the way blue and brown mixed. I ended up just mixing a very little bit brown with the blue. For the blue leaf it ended up being a slightly different process. I still traced the main points, but I didn't just do different shades of brown. I also mixed shades of greens and blues together and each of those with brown. This one I used a different type of paint brush which I think gave it a cloudy sort of look. I had many more blue colors to blend together. I then added the contrasting color (red) and painted the veins. After finishing all three leaves, I painted little things in each that pulled them all together, like the white dot in each spot.

I really enjoyed making this project because I love the fall season and extremely admire the colors of the season. If I could change anything in the project it would likely be going over the blue, and maybe the red, leaf with a few more coats to make the colors more crisp so that the white does not show through.