Leaf Compositions

Toward the end of his life, Henri Matisse created shapes by cutting them out from colored papers. His works of this period are called "cut-outs." Matisse could array a set of simple shapes, such as in “La Gerbe”, to produce a delightful composition.  Today, we have Photoshop. I scan leaves and play with Photoshop's layers and difference filter.

Leaf Mash Up

For “Leaf Mash Up”, I started with a “J” form of White Oak leaf, made copies on several layers, and obtained the multicolored effect with the difference filter. The interesting thing about the difference filter is that you are not sure what will come out when you use it, and the surprise can bring delight.

Curved Red

“Curved Red” employs a Red Oak leaf, which I copied twice and rotated each copy. Again, the Difference filter is responsible for the coloring.

Ginkgo

I liked the colors that came out in “Ginkgo”. Here there are only two layers, the base and its copy, rotated 90 degrees clockwise.

Maples

 “Maples” uses red and Japanese maple leaves, superimposed.

Pin Oak Study

For “Pin Oak Study”, I rotated a pin oak leaf eight times. The difference filter creates the “interference” effect, somewhat as in the crests and troughs of colliding waves.

Swirl

“Swirl” is a red oak leaf rotated and superimposed on itself, with a gradient background.

Seven Red Oak Leaves

Oak trees of the same species produce leaves that differ remarkably from one another. In my limited experience, White Oaks attain to the widest variation, but there is also noticeable variety among Pin Oak and Red Oak leaves.

A and B represent the characteristic shape that Red Oak leaves take on. The leaf blade comprises a usually wide base and an elongated midsection. The base has two pointed lobes, which spread outward. Sometimes the lower lobes are rather stumpy, as in A. Sometimes, as in B, the lobes arc gracefully. The midsection can be short or, as in B, quite long. It can also become elaborated, as in C, with multiple, pointed projections. Some leaves have two sets of lower lobes, as in D and E. But E differs greatly from D with regard to the curvature of its lobes. Did these lobes reach out from underneath a covering branch for greater sunlight? Oddly, in E the second lobe on the right curves downward, or inward with respect to the tree trunk. In F the midsection curves even more than in E, as does the right lobes that corresponds to the downward directed lobe in E. . The twisting G is almost deformed. It would be hard to recognize G as a Red Oak leaf.

Ten White Oak Leaves

I have arranged ten white oak leaves in an array to illustrate the wide variety of shapes these leaves can have. Although B exemplifies the shape most often presented in botanical books and web sites as the characteristic lobed form for this species, the examples here demonstrate the wide variations of this leaf's lobes. The leaves vary not only by the number and shape of the lobes' substructures but also by the curvatures of the lobes. The lobes can be quite simple, but for the most part they are interestingly elaborated. Sometimes, as in J, they are uniquely wild.

Perhaps A had not reached its maturity before it fell to the ground. Its lower lobes are articulated, in conformity with the standard white oak model, but its upper lobes are clustered about the leaf blade, forming a mass that is not fully articulated. In B, all lobes are clearly delineated. C's lobes have begun to form sub-structures, although these are barely noticeable. Substructures become a bit more articulated in D, while E's lobes take on a curvature that emphasizes the substructures. F's lobes have multiple substructures, as do G's, where they are more clearly formed than in F. The lobes of H are even more highly elaborated. Leaf I retains a fair amount of elaboration in its lobes, but the lobes are narrow and subject to drastic upswings. In J, the narrow, elaborated lobes, seem to take on a life of their own, bending in all directions. With the exception of A, which I think might be an immature leaf from a tree whose leaves look mostly like B, each of these leaves has a shape that is characteristic of the particular tree from which they come. J has the most unusual shape I have come across in a White Oak. Other leaves from the “J” tree also have weirdly configured lobes, each one varying a little or a lot from the others. In another posting, I will display several “J” examples.

Matisse's Leaves

On the left, a photograph of white oak leaves lying on the street. On the right,"La Gerbe,"an image composed by Henri Matisse, who used leaf forms in many of his late works composed of shapes he cut out of paper. Here the artist has arranged his leaves so that they appear to fly outward from a point at the bottom of the composition. The leaves have a dynamic energy lacking in the somewhat haphazard group of leaves lying on the street. Perhaps Matisse's leaves are swirling in the air.

The liveliness of Matisse's composition emerges not only from the artist's arrangement of the leaves in relation to one another, but also from his depiction of each leaf's shape. The leaves share an overall similarity of shape and their simple, smoothly rounded lobes identify them as white oak leaves. But like white oak leaves in nature, Matisse's leaves are all a bit different. The multiple lobes of the leaves spread out in subtly different ways, generating a vibrant multiplicity of contrasts between the leaves. In addition, the broad and deep sinuses of the leaves create negative spaces that play leaf against the uniformly colored background. The interplay of figure and ground reveals the dynamic patterning inherent in the sinus-and-lobe shape of the individual leaves. This kind of visual play is not available in leaves of solid form, such as the tulip poplar.

Matisse has also achieved liveliness by varying the number of lobes on his leaves. Some of these structures are multiplied beyond what is found in nature, but this might be considered a reminder of the variations such leaves can achieve. Matisse has also morphed the basic leaf form to insert several human hand-like forms. Leaf Jumpers, a children's book, refers to the “stubby fingers” of the white oak leaf.

from Leaf Jumpers by Carole Gerber.     Three hand forms among Matisse's leaves

Illustrated by Leslie Evans                             “La Gerbe”, 1953

 A white oak leaf can sometimes bear a resemblance to the whole hand. The leaf below spreads its lobes from a central mass, as fingers spread from the palm. This is not a normal shape for a white oak leaf. Did Matisse find a leaf like this one? Or did the “demands” of his composition dictate the artist's departures from the basic leaf shape?

 

Autumnal Tints

In the fall, I become fascinated with leaves. It's not so much their vivid changes of color, but their infinitely varying shapes that I find intriguing. But let's start with color, since this is the quality most people experience when they look at autumn trees.

We're struck by the vividness of the warm spectrum when leaves turn from green to red, yellow, and orange. We know that trees change color every autumn, but the experience still comes as an aesthetic surprise. Masses of red, yellow, and orange. The autumn spectacle. In Autumnal Tints, an essay published in 1862, Henry David Thoreau reported his observations about the changing colors of trees in and around Concord, Massachusetts as the fall progressed to winter. Thoreau was particularly taken with the color red. Vivid red maples appeared in the early fall: “the red maple is the most intense scarlet of any of our trees....A large red maple swamp, when at the height of its change, is the most obviously brilliant of all tangible things....”

The sugar maple rivaled the red maple in brilliance. At the end of the season, the scarlet oak displayed red foliage that matched the maples. Michael Sargent, who lives in Vermont, about 200 miles north and west of Thoreau's Concord, took a beautiful photograph of a sugar maple leaf in October 2008.

Looking at autumn trees from a distance, we tend to see only solid blocks of color. A closer view reveals variations in the coloring of individual trees. From up close, the leaves of an individual tree vary in their coloration. In the early stages of color change, leaves are often patterned in striking ways.

This fall I collected and scanned leaves that caught my eye because of the their individual color variations.

In this row of three leaves, the second, a white oak, displays the partial "de-greening" that occurs in fall as the green chloroplast cells die to reveal red that is a sign of anthocyanins, chemicals that help protect the leaf against receiving too intense light. The Wikipedia entry for anthocyanin tells more.  I could not identify the first leaf, but its patterning is distinctive. 

The third leaf is another from another white oak tree. (Notice how different it looks from its white oak neighbor.  I will discuss leaf shape in follow up posts.)   This leaf seems to be consumed by fire, with only its primary vein structure intact.

The first four of these two groups come from Bradford Pear trees.  I have never seen leaves with such unusual patterns.  The second group are Red Maple leaves. All these leaves were collected within a two to three week span in my neighborhood approximately eight miles southwest of Washington, D.C.