Red Leaves in the Woods (Oil Bar Painting as of June 1, 2013)

Red Leaves in the Woods (Oil Bar Painting as of June 1, 2013), a photo by randubnick on Flickr.

This is an oil bar painting in progress, loosely based on a photograph that I took in October at Long Hill Gardens. I started the painting a couple of days ago, and have been struggling with the shape and placement of the tree in the middle of the canvas. Last night I used my Painter software to do a little digital trial-and-error (drawing over an image of the painting with digital media.) This is a lot easier than making repeated changes on canvas in oil. This time, I didn't find the perfect solution, but the process helped to clarified my thinking. So this morning, I got out my oil bars and I changed the tree on the actual canvas, bringing it closer to the shape I originally sketched in on the first day, but moved the tree a bit to the left to get it out of dead center. Then I added some more trees, using the reference photo to figure out the placement.