Autumn Leaves

I cannot endure to waste anything

as precious as autumn sunshine by

staying in the house. So I spend

almost all the daylight hours

in the open air.

Nathaniel Hawthorne

I like the way that boy thinks!

...and as an aside.....when I was very young, my cousins Paula, Marianne, Marybeth and I would play a card game with Grandma Rose at her kitchen table. It was called "Authors," and I learned all the classic authors and what they looked like while playing that game. Well......old Nathaniel Hawthorne had incredibly blue eyes, and when that card would come up, Grandma Rose would say, "there's old Blue Eyes again," and we would laugh and laugh. To this day, when I read something written by Nathaniel Hawthorne...."Old Blue Eyes" comes to mind, and I smile. (Do you remember that Paula, Marianne, and Marybeth?)

About the leaves...

I'm taking a watercolor class called "An Imaginary Trip Through Autumn," and Laure Ferlita is my teacher. If you read my blog regularly you probably know Laure from comments. Her blog is Painted Thoughts Blog. If you're thinking about getting into watercolors, or you want to take an online watercolor class, head over to Laure's Imaginary Trips Website. I just started the "Autumn" class, and I'm finishing up the "An Imaginary Trip to Paris" class. She's a great teacher, and I'm learning a lot about painting on site and using watercolors. If you join, maybe we'll be in a class together! I know one of the classes coming up is "An Imaginary Trip to England," and "An Imaginary Trip to the Beach." I'm going to take both of those classes.

Here is the latest from my Paris class. You can see the subject matter is really interesting and fun. This is the Queen's Hamlet at Versailles...