Red Leaves in the Woods (Oil Bar Painting as of May 30, 2013)

Red Leaves in the Woods (Oil Bar Painting as of May 30, 2013), a photo by randubnick on Flickr.

I started a new painting this morning. I am using oil bars, and painting from a photo that I took in October. (I posted the reference photo here yesterday, a view of fall colors in the woodlands around Long Hill Gardens, here in Beverly, MA.) Today my goal was just to sketch out the composition. I thought that might be difficult in this case because the foliage is so complicated. It would be easy to get lost in those woods! I had printed out some copies of my reference photo, and I decided to divide each side into thirds, creating a big grid with nine squares. Then I used a ruler to divide the sides of the canvas into thirds as well. I didn't draw the grid on the canvas, but instead used pieces of blue painters tape on the outside edges. This helped by giving me some landmarks. Then I drew the basic composition in with gray oil bar, and started establishing some colors, especially reds and oranges. This worked pretty well, but I am still trying to work out the position of one of the trees. To be continued. . . .