Leaves like Georgia O'Keefe

Another interesting session at my drawing evening class. We'd been asked to bring leaves in and I'd collected loads at Kew but not as many as the tutor-the tables were smothered with them, quite a sight. After a brief exercise in using complimentary colours for shading, we had about an hour to choose some leaves, look at the colour and paint them in either watercolour or acrylic. While we could have observed just one leaf in detail, she encouraged us to do a layered leaf study in the style of Georgia O'Keefe whose work she had some images of. I wasn't so familiar with these as the close-ups of flowers and desert imagery and eagerly took up the challenge. I liked that it was moving away from botanical accuracy into abstraction. More of that next week - we'll be doing Rothko-esque colour fields but with newspapers and acrylics. Can't wait!
Great Quote from O'Keefe: "I hate flowers - I paint them because they're cheaper than models and they don't move".