Catalpa Leaf Print – The100DayProject, days 65-71

Northern Catalpa Leaf Print - Torn Paper Collage

I dug up some more leaf prints made during my leaf-printing spree last year. There were two prints of the same northern catalpa leaf. I left the more distinct one untouched and filled in around it with bits of torn paper. On the much less distinct print, I outlined it and went over the veins with a gold paint pen, then started filling it in with collaged paper.

This part is taking me an agonizingly long time. I don’t really know why, though I might just be tired — my work moved to a new office this past week, and I need to get up earlier now. It didn’t occur to me until late in the week that this also means that I need to go to bed earlier, not just get less sleep. (Duh.)

Northern Catalpa Leaf Print - Torn Paper Collage

Once that leaf is filled in, I’m going to need to work out a way to make the veins more prominent. The original leaf was huge, and the veins gave it a lot of structure, so I don’t want to completely lose all of that in a mass of paper bits. This photo gives an idea of how enormous and vein-y northern catalpa leaves are, if you haven’t seen one. (Not my giant man hand, Swiped from Wikipedia.)

Northern Catalpa Leaf
(Northern catalpa leaf. Photo © Jeturcotte, licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.)