Painting Autumn Scenes

At the end of last year I had a lot of fun painting Autumn scenes. Autumn brings glorious colours, moody skies and dramatic lighting, there’s also  interesting textures of leaves, branches and grasses. It’s lots of fun to capture the changing landscape in Autumn. Because it’s not too cold, you can venture out without freezing on the spot!

Capturing the changing landscape

While painting Autumn scenes on location you can almost see the leaves turning red and yellow under your very eyes. The weather is moody and changeable and the low afternoon sun creates long shadows.

I try to communicate these emotions in my sketches.  I used colour, paint splashes in addition to pen and pencils mark to create quick sketches.

Painting Autumn scenes successfully

If you fancy painting Autumn scenes yourself, here are a few tips to help you make a success of it:

• Sketch quickly because the light and weather change fast at this time of the year
• Focus on feeling the landscape rather than accuracy – paint intuitively
• Use brush strokes and pen mark to describe the texture in the foreground and middle ground
• Exaggerate colours a little
• Keep your sketches loose and lively
• Practice, practice and practice some more
• Finally have fun!