Fall Leaves Watercolor

Watercolor oak leaf on a book page. Inspired by this craft (via). The owl is super cute, but I was especially drawn to the leaves in the background.

I can't draw too well, at least not in a realistic way, but I just recently got this coloring book (from here):

Lovely, detailed black and white leaves of all kinds in varying sizes. I chose an oak leaf, and used my lightbox to trace the leaf onto a book page with pencil.

(I have a number of old, falling apart books that I keep in my craft room for this very purpose. This page happens to be from an old linguistics book. As a not-terribly-interesting side note, I actually majored in linguistics in college - though this particular book is something I acquired later, for crafting).

Once the leaf was traced in pencil, I went over it with a fine tip pen (a Uniball pen - I love these pens - that is great for use with watercolors. It doesn't run).

Then I used various shades of orange/yellow/brown to paint in the leaf.

The colors aren't as dynamic on the screen as they are in real life. But let me tell you, I am so pleased with how it turned out. I need to figure out what I want to do about framing, and then it's going to be a gift for my guy. Oak trees are his favorite.