December 7, 2025
My search for still-beautiful Autumn leaves, half hanging, half fallen to the ground, took me to Albuquerque where temperatures hadn’t yet dipped below zero. Striking ‘gold’ in a large vacant parking lot next to a Disc Golf course, are at least 30 full-grown Sycamore trees with what looked to be full canopies of foliage still clinging tight. But for all the leaves yet to fall, there must’ve been 50x that number covering the ground. The morning breeze was causing the recently-fallen leaves to skid across the pavement in jerky movements, coming to rest in the parking lot’s gutters.
It was in these ankle deep gutter piles where the range of leaf sizes, colors and patterns were found. These 1” to 10” broad, palmately veined and ragged-toothed leaves appeared locked together like pieces from a newly-opened 5000 piece jigsaw puzzle. And, oh my! The lid to the box just blew away! Now I was faced with a dizzying jumble of multi-colored golden-yellows, burnt oranges, Ruddy duck rust, fading-to-spring greens and saddle browns. It was from these ankle deep gutter piles that I collected Autumn leaves for this project.
Lost in thought, I overlooked the white noise of the city ……. traffic mostly, constantly humming and impatiently honking ……. until a painful ringing in my ears invaded the relative calm of the morning. No longer able to think, I turned around and found an invasion of leaf blowers! Never was there a more loudly screaming, obnoxiously noxious sound. Coming closer and closer, louder and more insistent, their ear-muffled and gas-masked operators approached without hesitation, each blowing away (to where?) every bit of the “unsightly and offending” leaf-litter in their path.
Dang-blasted!
It finally dawned on me this Friday morning that the vacant parking lot only opened for use on Sunday’s. Not agreeable to working weekends, the leaf blower operators were determinedly cleaning up the “messy” lot for the regular Sunday crowd. I was in their way.
Saving as many fallen Sycamore leaves as my collection bags could hold, and silently wishing all remaining leaves a happy landing somewhere on a nutrient-needy plot of land, I ran for the quiet of my car.
My Fallen Leaf Project
Using Sycamore leaves collected from that vacant Albuquerque parking lot, I tried my hand at a new technique; combining watercolor layers with layers of colored pencil. Using my new set of Van Gogh watercolors, I began each leaf with a layer of plain water followed by a light base layer, mixing Azo yellow medium with a touch of Yellow ochre. The bottom leaf (which was the underside of the top leaf) was duller and lighter in color, calling for a bit of Permanent lemon yellow. Allowing that layer to dry, I used various earthy colors from my set of Faber-Castell Polychromos colored pencils over the watercolor wash, mixing and matching the colors of my pencils with the actual leaf colors. This step tended to leave some areas uncolored with the pencils, so I applied another watercolor wash with Sap green, Burnt Sienna+Yellow ochre, and/or Madder lake deep+Azo yellow medium. I finished each leaf with a Dark sepia colored pencil outline, tipped the leaf margins with Dark sepia, and added shadowing first with Payne’s grey watercolor then Dark sepia colored pencil.
The leaves were painted on 140# Canson XL Watercolor paper
If you have and questions or comments, please let me know. If you use this combined media technique, any tips you’d like to share would be greatly appreciated too.
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I’d like to send a shout-out and my deep gratitude to Wendy Hollender, botanical artist/illustrator/teacher extraordinaire, who announced in her newsletter free access for over a week to 19 of her bite-sized video lessons. Designed as companions to her book, The Joy of Botanical Drawing, each lesson focused on a different botanical subject and how to artistically render them using watercolor and colored pencil combined. I’ve always wanted to learn this technique and gave it a try with her leaf examples and then mine. Incorporating both media into the same painting was very challenging and way out of my comfort zone.
Thanks so much Wendy, for such wonderful lessons and your fabulous companion book! With lots more practice, my goal is that some day my botanical art looks as natural, skilled and professional as yours.
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As always, Thanks for stopping by!
a curious nature 
Great job on the sycamore leaves, Barb. The texture, color and shadows are beautifully done. I love finding sycamore leaves– they are often much larger than my sketchbook paper will fit. Glad you escaped the leaf blowers. I share your annoyance with the noise of them!.
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Jean! Thank you so very much for the feedback on my leaves! And on leaf blowers. I enjoyed Wendy’s lessons, but she makes it look so much easier than reality. Just like your beautiful work ….. you also make magic look easy!
I also love the huge sycamore leaves, and can relate to them falling off a spread of sketchbook pages. But it’s fun to try. Have you ever painted sycamore tree bark? Someday I’ll give that a try!
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I painted a sycamore in winter a few years ago and enjoyed the challenge of the white and peeling bark. Try it! https://jeanmackayart.com/2022/11/26/magnificent-trees/
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Wow! What a wonderful Sycamore tree painting. I will give it a go when all the leaves have dropped so I can focus on the bark. Thanks for sharing, Jean!
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What fun you had with the leafs. Hope you played some disc golf too. It is a really great game and I so enjoy it. We have a disc golf course here on our property too. One of these days you will make it up here to my mountains for some great exploring and bird watching too. The winter birds are here now. ( Jays, crows, magpies and juncos mostly). We got a couple of inches of snow out of the last storm, but a lot melted today.
Happy Holidays to you.
Sue
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Thanks Sue! Didn’t play disc golf, but Luna and I walked around the course. Seems like a nice one too. I knew you played, but wasn’t aware you have your own course! That’s awesome. Yes, someday we will explore your area; maybe this coming year? We also have the same winter birds without magpies. Love those guys. And we also got lots of snow; 6” undrifted. Still lying around and it’s been cold. Thanks for following my posts. Leaf hunting was fun. Have a great week.
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Beautifully written 🤩 I love the part where you were enthusiastically collecting every leaf possible.
On another note, I wasn’t aware of the fact that a brand called van Gogh paints actually exist – such a Beautiful tribute to the artist and user alike. Plus that Faber castle pencil set is the stuff that dreams are made of ✨
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Thanks so much for the great feedback on the leaf post! I’m delighted you enjoyed the narrative. High praise coming from you! I’m enjoying the Van Gogh watercolors; quality seems good. I love the Polychromos! Makes creating with colored pencils seem like oil painting. Have a wonderful week!
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Your technique of colored pencils for fine detail over top of the watercolor is brilliant, Barb! They look like they could just blow off the page (I have a pet peeve with the constant drone of leaf blowers, too!) I had a similar find on the weekend at a light rail station parking lot — there were piles of very large Ginkgo leaves! I grabbed only one to take home and press and am wishing I had grabbed a pile and a photo of the pile. They are such a beautiful, unique shape. Thanks for inspiring us to see beauty even in the most unlikely of places!
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Thank you and wow! Your comments about my leaves were so awesome, Karen! Especially about those in unlikely places. Oh that’s a shame about the ginkgo leaves. Too bad you only grabbed one. Wish ginkgo grew here …. They have very cool leaves. And Grrrrrrrrrrr – I really hate leaf blowers. Such a pointless, noisy, polluting invention. Grrrrrrrrr!
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HI BARB,
YOUR LEAF PROJECT IS INTERESTING.
I HAVE A QUESTION. AFTER PAINTING THE LEAVES, HOW DO YOU CONSERVE THEM, ALSO, WILL YOU ADHERE THEN TO THE CANSON PAPER?
THANKS FOR ANSWERING, MURIEL – I MAY TRY THIS MYSELF AS I ALSO COLLECT LEAVES WHEN I SEE GOOD ONES LYING ON THE GROUND. I EVEN TAKE SOME OFF THE TREES BEFORE THEY FALL OFF AND ROT.
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Oh my! I must not have been clear regarding my leaf project. What I’ve done was after collecting the leaves, I used them as models for my painting. They were sketched on paper and the watercolors and colored pencils were used on the paper, not on the leaves themselves. From your question, it sounded like you had the impression the painting was done on the leaves themselves. I have used ink designs and paint on collected leaves before tho. To preserve them I laminated the decorated leaves. That approach makes for wonderful bookmarkers or inserts in greeting cards. Let me know if I misunderstood your question! Thanks so much for the comments and for following!
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BARB, YOU UNDERSTOOD MY QUESTION CORRECTLY. I DID THINK THAT YOU PAINTED DIRECTLY ONTO THE LEAVES. THANK YOU FOR THE CLARIFICATION.
THIS WAS INTERESTING AND SINCE I COLLECT LEAVES AND PRESERVE THEM USING HAIRSPRAY, I WILL TRY THIS PROJECT DURING THE WINTER, WHEN I AM READY.
THANK YOU FOR A NICE IDEA!
MURIEL WordPress would not accept my reply because I do not have an account there.
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Thanks again, Muriel! I received your reply just fine, and wish you good luck with preserving fall leaves.
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