Red Leaves (Oil Bar Painting as of Sept. 26, 2013)

Red Leaves (Oil Bar Painting as of Sept. 26, 2013), a photo by randubnick on Flickr.

Today I got started on this painting, which is loosely based on the photo that I took on November 20, 2011. This is one of my favorite shrubs because it turns bright red in late fall. I think it is called "burning bush." Yesterday I created a close crop of the original photo to use as my reference. This morning I just worked out the composition and placement with gray, and then added a little bit of red when I started to get lost in all the lines. This is oil bar on a small canvas (8 x 10"). I want the leaves to be close to "life size" on the canvas.