Red Leaves (Oil Bar Painting as of October 16, 2013)

Red Leaves (Oil Bar Painting as of October 16, 2013), a photo by randubnick on Flickr.

Here is my oil bar painting in progress as it looked after I finished working on it yesterday. This close-in view of red leaves is loosely based on one of my photos (posted here on September 25.) I had been considering what to do about the background, which I had simplified while working out the basic composition so as to focus on the main branches in the foreground. But even though I didn't want to include each of the tangled branches visible in the photo, I didn't want to leave them out altogether. So I thought maybe I could just suggest a few branches in the background, without losing the emphasis on those main branches. I decided to do a trial run on the computer before making changes on canvas. So first thing yesterday morning, I opened up a jpg of my painting in Painter and drew some more branches with digital pastel. I felt more confident after the trial run, so then I made the same changes on the actual canvas with oil bar, using lower saturation and less contrast so the main branches would still stand out. This is still a work in progress, but I think I am getting somewhere.