I spent almost a full day last weekend raking leaves off the trail. Sure, we moved some dirt too, but we mostly raked leaves. When we took a break to heat up taco meat on the camp stove, one of my buddies pointed out that the shredded chicken we were eating was exactly the same color as the carpet of leaves we’d been battling for hours.
He wasn’t wrong, but to me, those leaves looked more like a canvas. I’ve been hankering to do some physical painting, so I decided to paint a little comic on some leaves. That ended up being a real pain in the butt.
I collected my leaves along the path that I ride to the trails, and then stuffed them all into an old mountain bike magazine to dry out and flatten overnight. I pulled one out the next morning, and started doodling on it during our weekly NSMB content meeting. It was a delight to draw on, and handled a variety of inks very well. I was stoked.
But, after I’d laid out my comic and started drawing it out on leaves, frame by frame, I realized that the first leaf had been an outlier. Every other leaf I tried to draw on gummed up my pens and didn’t take ink well. So I collected a bunch more leaves, and painted them all with clear gesso, which gives a toothy surface to paint or draw on. While they were drying, I cranked out another comic in my traditional way, on the iPad.
Once the leaves were gessoed, they still didn’t take ink and paint as well as I’d hoped, but here’s the end result.
I inked up a front tire and rolled it over a leaf for the last frame. Can you guess the tread?
Anyway, it’s time to load up the Trail Boss and go rake some more leaves!