Awesome Autumn Acers

In this vibrant, seasonal tutorial I will show you how to achieve a beautiful layered look using Acer leaves as the main attraction!

The idea for this tutorial came from a lovely walk around the gardens of Scotney Castle in Kent back in October 2022! It must have been a very temperate autumn as the leaves had turned to an absolute riot of colour. But a cold snap had probably frightened all of these beautiful leaves off the branches overnight and transformed them into an exquisite carpet of colour. Luckily I spied these beautiful leaves whilst they remained unsullied by heavy rain or tramping feet - just perfect for painting!

As you can see, the colours on the leaves vary from greens to rich oranges and fiery reds as though Mother Nature had painted them herself! This beautiful transition of colours was the inspiration behind this tutorial as there's no better medium for describing vibrant, transitions of colour.

To recreate the feeling of softly shifting colour we will work wet into wet, blending colours on the surface of the paper before any drawing!

Once dry we can use real leaves to draw around (or templates) to compose our leafy layers.

I will show you how to build up each layer working onto dry blending colour together as we use the negative space painting technique ~ this involves painting around the leaf rather than onto the leaf. This creates a silhouette effect.

Using this technique to add more layers will result in a beautiful carpet of richly coloured leaves, which have a layered appearance.

To complete the painting I will show you how to layer a little more colour to the palest leaves to add the finishing touches.

To find out more about this project take a peek at this short video.

This technique is actually quite simple - it just needs a little time and care - so it’s great for a slow, relaxing afternoon of painting. So if autumn rains on your parade and you can’t get outside to enjoy the fallen leaves in real life - why not spend a rainy afternoon surrounded by colour and nature inside!

If you enjoy this technique - why not expand the idea and try out several paintings with different leaf shapes or perhaps montage your favourite leaf shapes into one painting for a woodland floor effect.

A great way to start your own version of this tutorial would be to take an autumn walk and collect some leaves of your own. Or if you're lucky enough to have an Acer in your garden you can make a truly personalised painting. Once your leaves are collected, you can sandwich them between sheets of kitchen towel and press the leaves inside a book overnight. The leaves will have dried out a little by morning and be flat enough to use as templates to draw around - leaves that are pressed for longer would still be be ok to use but they can become very brittle making it harder to draw around them.

Happy Painting!