This Autumn, 2022, I’ve been concentrating on mostly maple leaves with my gourds. This first gourd in this series gave me an opportunity to turn an oops into an aah. A section of three leaves broke off basically at the moment I finished painting the entire piece. At first my plan was to glue it back in place. However, this idea came to me to add it to a different area making it more three dimensional. That idea led to cutting and painting extra leaves which I then added to the base.


Continuing with this idea of taking my gourd sculptures to a new level, I have cut extra leaves on the next three gourds in this series.





The inside of #81 (above) was so lovely, I chose to not paint it.




#83 is tiny by comparison. Cutting, sanding the backs of these leaves (below), and painting them presented quite the challenge:



