Acrylic paint!

On Thursday, October 11th, I went to my regular twice-monthly painting class at Stella Niagara. We don't meet during the summer so this was my first painting class since June. There was a very small group at the class that day. Our project for the day was to do a mixed media project that involved watercolor paint, autumn leaves, and a Sharpie. We used the autumn leaves to make a border around the edges of the painting. You do this by getting a ruler and measuring one and a half inches in on all four sides of your paper. Then you draw the border in pencil. After you do that, you use masking tape to create an edge inside your border.
Once you have a border, you take your leaves and add paint to the underside of them. Cover the leaf thoroughly and place it on the border of the page and press down with a paper towel. Carefully lift the leaf and... voila... you've got the image of the leaf on your page! Use a variety of leaves to get different images. This border will act as a "frame" for your painting. Then, to make the leave stand out even more, paint the rest of the border in whatever color you like. I seem to prefer blue but the sky is the limit... oh wait! That's blue! Well, you can pick any color!
After you are done with the border, you can paint something on the inside of the masking tape. For the class, we painted a "patchwork quilt" of autumn scenes and things associated with autumn, such as apples, pumpkins, and skeletons.
The last step is to remove the masking tape and draw a little design in the white space that remains. It creates another nice little border effect.
So... I really enjoyed it and I decided to have a practice session. I also decided to use acrylic paint for a change. I started by making my border. Then, instead of the patchwork quilt approach, I chose to do just one image, a still life, with things that I had readily available in the house. I maintained the autumnal theme.
Here is the completed painting:

My autumn painting.

In my art class, we will make three more paintings: one for each season. The next painting will be made in January.