Day 29 of 30 Paintings in 30 Days: “The Colors of Fall” mini acrylic on canvas paper, approx. 1″ x 2″

I love the fall,
Refreshing time of year,
Exchanging short sleeves for a shawl—
The chilly mornings tell me winter’s near.
Euphoric highs—
When leaves of ruby shine
Against the cloudless sapphire skies,
A perfect complement to emerald pine.
Beneath my feet are russet, gold, and tawn,
First colors of the sky at break of dawn.

Here’s a painting to remind us of the days when we appreciated the cooler temperatures that brought relief from summer’s oppressive heat. It seems we are always waiting for the next season to come, never quite content with the one at hand. C’est la vie.

This micro painting is a composite from a photo taken at one of my favorite parks in my old hometown. A gravel path encircled the lake, the length of which fell just short of 5 kilometers when you went around twice, which made this spot a good place to practice for races. My children also fished here a few times and played with their remote-controlled boat. We walked around the lake more times than I can count, and we ate many a picnic at the tables scattered around the lake. I have taken literally hundreds of photos on this scene, and we also painted here when we took an art class together. (My one and only official art class was one I audited while my children attended for credit.)

The lake on this particular day looked like a sheet of glass in places, as the wind was almost perfectly still and the overcast sky softened shadows. I gave the sky some color, but in the photo it looked perfectly white. I’ll have to admit the pampas grass and cattails were hard to paint on so tiny a space, but overall the painting looks better in real life than it does in this blown-up image. Bear in mind that each of these recent paintings is about the size of my thumb.

Acrylic on canvas, created with a palette knife and brushes, 8×10

The painting above has nothing to do with the challenge, but I decided to share it because the subject is the same lake as featured in my mini. In fact, it’s from the same day. At the suggestion of my teacher, I added a thickener to the paint and used a palette knife for most of it, but some was done with a brush, such as the red maple leaves on the left. This painting was done in 2011.

Here are all the miniature paintings I’ve completed thus far.

Yesterday I gave you a sneak peek at today’s painting, and today you get a sneak peek at tomorrow’s work. For the benefit of you who do not know, this is the Pensacola Lighthouse and the Blue Angels. This incredible team of pilots is stationed here at NAS Pensacola, so we get to see lots of air shows. One thing I love about the Gulf coast beaches is the sand that is very nearly white, especially compared to the East coast sand. It’s very beautiful.

I’m not quite sure how I’ll handle tomorrow’s post. For the challenge, the final day is not a painting day per se, but rather we are supposed to share a collage of all the work we have done this month. I may or may not do that, but may instead opt just to share my newest painting. We shall see.

If you are interested in seeing the other entries, you may check them out at the linkup.

“The Colors of Fall” copyright © 2018 Angela Umphers Rueger – All Rights Reserved