As fall descends on the upper hemisphere, I was moved to incorporate the colors of the season into my new work. With the circular sunflowers representing the sun, this new digital collage, Setting Sunflowers of Autumn, alludes to shorter days and earlier fall sunsets. Like the petals above, the leaves also sport yellow, orange, and scarlet hues.
In addition, I am intrigued by fractals, nature’s self-repeating forms at various scales. The center disc of a sunflower grows in a fractal spiral, so I created a green and black background texture to echo this effect.
More Autumn Colors, in Pastel
Although the pastel to the left is a pastel still-life, it was inspired by the season’s colors. To describe my vision, I wrote a short narrative after a drive among the hills where I live: in Wisconsin, along the Mississippi, autumn brings a feast for the eyes. I noticed this driving a winding road between the bluffs, rolling and climbing toward the blue sky and then plunging into the valleys below. The mid-green trees displayed sun-kissed touches of yellow, and I even noted an occasional shock of red. Interspersed among the hills were farmlands offering a scene of golden stalks of corn. Around the curve, I observed beige prairie grasses that rolled up and down the terrain.
© Betty Butler, Autumn Colors in a Vase, Digital Collage, 2023