Autumn Leaves

I have been collecting autumn leaves.  Quite a few different kinds.  Lime, sycamore, chestnut, beech, oak and gean (wild cherry). The colours at the moment are beautiful - gold, bronze, red, yellow, orange and mixtures of all these together, often all in one leaf.   I was supposed to be at a printing workshop last weekend - it was postponed, but I still wanted to experiment with some printing ideas of my own.  So I tried some different ways of printing, using the leaves I had collected. Watercolour paint proved to be a bit thin (at least the pan type, which I normally use for painting).  Instead I tried gouache, which I have used very little for painting. The consistency proved to be much better for making impressions.  I experimented with paper textures - smooth paper worked better than rough.  The upper side of the leaves seemed to work better than the underside. Fresh leaves worked better than dried ones.  It is all subjective, I suppose.  It depends what kind of end result you are aiming for.  It was fascinating to see the range of effects that could be achieved using such a simple method.  Multiple layers of colours gave particularly interesting results. To be continued.