I loved autumn with the kids! Around the beginning of September I was looking forward to the cooler days, the turning of the autumn leaves, and all the fall activities of pumpkin patches and Halloween. At some point when October hit and we were in the full swing of Autumn I decided I wanted to try illustrating our autumn and so Victoria and Parker Celebrate Autumn was born.
Our autumn was full of so many wonderful memories. Highlights were definitely Thanksgiving, visiting the pumpkin patch, pumpkin carving, Halloween, and the million and one fall walks we would take every afternoon.
The biggest source of inspiration for this project was real life experiences I had with my family ~ thanksgiving dinner, going to the pumpkin patch, what we would see and do on our afternoon fall walks, pumpkin carving, halloween, etc., Every thing we did I pulled inspiration from.
The second source was definitely Rebecca Green’s illustration work. I originally found her through Pinterest when I was looking for inspiration in visual journaling and I continued to fall in love with her paintings and general illustration work.
Originally I was going to create a multi-page illustration. One spread would focus on fall outfits, the pumpkin patch, thanksgiving, etc., Between my October journal and my sketchbook I sketched out various aspects of what I was envisioning.
Sometimes I would get ideas when I was playing with the kids so I would sketch out in crayon what I was thinking so I could refer back to it later.
I made a couple full page illustrations which I was liking at first but then I eventually found that it was missing something ~ texture and lushness from paint.
When I realized I missed the lushness of paint I decided I was going to approach it with a multi-media lens. Paint as the base with colored pencil and Neocolor II for details. So, over several evenings I played with compositions, colors, textures, etc.,
It was around this point that I loved certain aspects like the trees and ground but didn’t like the concept of only covering a single topic for each page. So, I decided to scrap the multi-page illustration approach and go for maximalism…and I LOVED IT!
I made this sketch and loved how it was coming together so I decided to do a smaller study in my sketchbook.
At first I was going to just leave it as a small study in my sketchbook and move onto a different project but I really wanted to do something bigger and more final. So I picked up some Strathmore Mixed Media paper and I did another painting which I am so glad that I did.
I love the final result! I have a lot of learning when it comes to composition, sketching, basics of painting and color mixing but the thought behind the whole painting was a cumulation of everything I experienced and learned from October:
My kids are dressed up as Bluey characters based off our actual Halloween costumes this year
Parker is holding sticks in his hands with a pile of rocks, leaves and acorns around him, based on our fall walks and mornings at the park where Victoria would give us various things to hold
The pumpkins are based on the actual pumpkin faces we carved before Halloween
The buildings are inspired by the buildings at Davison Orchard where we always go year after year to get our pumpkins
The fall foliage in the background is based off the actual trees we loved to admire when we would go for fall walks
Some elements of the final painting are of course fictional:
Parker and Victoria are having a fall picnic with Toto and Cow (Victoria’s stuffed animals)
The table is set with Halloween candy, cinnamon buns, pie and mashed potatoes
The Okanagan doesn’t really glow with that many orange, yellow and red trees for autumn. It’s mostly pine in the mountain so it is an exaggeration.
Lastly, it’s an cumulation of everything I learned (a lot of which is from Rebecca Green’s Dessert Club):
Color mixing to get various hues
Line work
The smaller study helped me figure out what I wanted to change with the final painting. The color of the buildings, the textures of the grass, the colors of everything.
Currently, this painting is hanging above our play area in the living room and I just love looking at it everyday. Like I said earlier, looking at it reminds me of everything our autumn was and I am excited to do something similar for December/Christmas!