The Colours of Autumn
As Summer draws to an end and Autumn kicks in, its time to get out there and make the most of, what for me, is one of the best months in the year. Provided we get a few sunny days to really bring them out, the colours of Autumn are what the rest of the year we are simply sitting around lying in wait for. Maybe it’s just because it always feels like a big time of change; Autumn, with it’s misty mornings and chilly evenings; time to flick the heating on; open up the grate and start building fires. Autumn always seems to treat us to some impressive sunrises and sunsets too – could it be that the chilly air actually helps to enhance these things or is it just an illusion?
Its time to start splashing about the Cadmium yellow and Cadmium Red. Adding Alizarin Crimson to those shadows will retain warmth throughout, even in the cooler areas. Don’t forget; if you really want to give your painting an autumnal feel – remember to drop in a few flying leaves, randomly swirling on a keen October breeze, and have leaves which have already taken their final flight strewn across the ground – an excellent opportunity to disperse some of those colours throughout the whole of the painting.
All the usual trees-with-foliage rule should apply. Branches should be painted in sparingly, and where they do appear, disappear and reappear again, we should believe that the bits we see are all part of the same branch – in other words; watch your continuity!
Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness,
Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;
Conspiring with him how to load and bless
With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eves run;
To bend with apples the moss’d cottage-trees,
And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;
To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells
With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,
And still more, later flowers for the bees,
Until they think warm days will never cease,
For Summer has o’er-brimm’d their clammy cells.
Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store?
Sometimes whoever seeks abroad may find
Thee sitting careless on a granary floor,
Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind;
Or on a half-reap’d furrow sound asleep,
Drows’d with the fume of poppies, while thy hook
Spares the next swath and all its twined flowers:
And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keep
Steady thy laden head across a brook;
Or by a cyder-press, with patient look,
Thou watchest the last oozings hours by hours.
Where are the songs of Spring? Ay, where are they?
Think not of them, thou hast thy music too,
While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day,
And touch the stubble-plains with rosy hue;
Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn
Among the river sallows, borne aloft
Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies;
And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn;
Hedge-crickets sing; and now with treble soft
The red-breast whistles from a garden-croft;
And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.
To Autumn
John Keats
