Work In progress: Autumn arrangement

10/15: Autumn arrangement, oil on canvas, approx. 6x10 in.

I felt sluggish all day yesterday and could barely get this far on this piece. I spent only an hour but a long, slow hour, and my mind didn't seem to be at full power. Hopefully I can make something interesting out if this mess. I'm not looking forward to painting the little pine cone in front, or all the bark on the stick (like in the piece before). A subtler challenge might be to make sense of the stick with its cool undertones in front of the hot red leaves and pine needles in back.

It was interesting when I looked up "autumn arrangement" to find pretty flowers and harvested fruits and vegetables, and here I've set up some dead wood that I "harvested." It just shows what I find more interesting - some fallen things as they might have "arranged" themselves on the ground, waiting for an 18-month-old little girl to squat down to investigate.

Old English word of the day:

hærfest [hâr'-vəst]: autumn; this also came to mean the
month of August.

Hærfest derived from the same Proto-Indo-European root as did the Latin carpere (to cut, divide, pluck - "carpe diem").