Leaf skeleton

I have this fascination with leaves, almost as serious as the one I have with circles. Last week I found a leaf skeleton while walking and have been taking pictures of it ever since. It's a rather large leaf, the picture below shows it on a piece of copy paper and it pretty much fills the page.



I've pressed it between books trying to get it really flat. I want to get some really good pictures of the leaf structure or veining, but because it is so delicate and won't lie completely flat I get shadowing. I've also tried to photocopy it an have the same problem. The shot below was a close up that I then cropped, so it is magnified quite a bit.



I would like to enlarge the image a lot more and make some thermofax screens, but I need a cleared,darker image for it to work well. I suppose I could sit down and draw what I see, but I'd rather have a good copy of the real thing. I'm open to any suggestions.

Of course part of the reason I'm obsessing over the leaf is that it is a great way to avoid what I really need to do; clean up my reading corner of the studio! At least find a place for the stack of books on the storage chest. There are many books in there that I know I'll never use again but I'm having trouble parting with them. I thought it might be good to donate them to the local library so that if I did want to read one again it would be available. Doesn't work that way at our library - any books donated end up in the annual library sale and get sold for about 50 cents each. There's also another bookcase out in Studio B, it's filled with books pertaining to surface deign.



There's also a used book store in town, the owner has an interesting payment arrangement. You get credit for books that you bring in to use on ones you purchase, but it's only a certain percentage of the cost. I've never quite figured it out and have never been able to use up the "credits" I have. So I think my plan may be to go thru what I have and offer them for sale here on the blog, see if anyone is even interested in what I have. That means I have to stop playing with my leaf and get that corner organized!