Autumn. It’s always short, but in 2018, it was incredibly sweet in Muskoka! And I was taking it all in, as usual, whatever I could get of it. The last time I experienced such extreme autumn colour was way back in 1997, when I was on my honeymoon in Algonquin Park. 

This is what happens when you feast with your eyes…

What goes in must come out, and thankfully, I was feasting on beauty! I called it “Lakeside Trail.” It’s an acrylic painting on a 36″ x 24″ canvas, with a whole lot of colour and textured granite rock and lichen.

Here is the full size painting:

Wanting to do justice to all the beautiful autumn colours, I found myself a little lost in the leaves, so to speak. Alas! Those leaves were all on the ground before long, but I had taken plenty of source photos from which I could create a scene. 

The path alongside this lake takes the hiker past the outcrop of granite and up into denser forest and to a lookout. Meanwhile the sun shines through the trees, creating a highlight on whatever autumn leaves it can reach. Watch your footing with all those rocks and tree roots!

Something I noticed along the way is my muscle memory for too much detail, an unwanted tendency toward perfectionism that I’ve been trying to shed from my early days as an drawing artist. For too long I resisted the paintbrush because of perfectionism, since I thought my pencil tip lent me more precision, but perfectionism robs me of joy. I found myself battling this tendency in the making of this piece, and I had to keep reorienting myself. It has turned out to be quite a fusion of styles!

That said, I am mostly pleased with it. I found a way to incorporate texture without losing all the details, so I am content.

But the colour! Now that is what excites me about this piece! Layers and layers of colour!

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