Autumn

One day, looking out the window in my third floor apartment, I saw leaves waving in the wind. Colors of these leaves were changing as much as the weather was. It represented the autumn was coming. I used to live in tropical country Vietnam; therefore, I rarely observed anything like this before. That is the reason why I made the picture about the color changes of the leaves. Before making the picture, I asked myself some questions. For example, which color should I use for the background? Or how can I express what I want to emphasize in the picture? It was hard at the beginning.
First, because I wanted to emphasize on the leaves and mix between abstract and real life, I planned to make the background white or black. Then, I have thought about some pictures that I saw in the Rothko Chapel. I decided to paint the picture into three pieces. In each piece, the background had different colors but with the same dark tone to make the leaves more attractive. Beside the colors of the background were warm. The picture is mixing between the warm and cold. It sounds like autumn, which is the mixing between summer and winter.
Second, because of dividing the picture into three pieces, the composition of the leaves was my other consideration. I wondered how to make the picture balance. Then I thought about one piece for still living leaf, one for dead leaf and one for the tree body. I painted the picture piece by piece. Therefore, at the end, I made the adjustment for these three pieces.
Third, to show the change in colors of these leaves, I had to make the smooth transition between dark and light. As taught in class, I imaged which are dark or light small boxes and then paint from dark to light. I wanted to control the color transition. That was not an easy task. The first leaf is the most vital. Therefore, I made a half of the first leaf look more real by choosing green and light yellow. However, I painted the other half with middle dark yellow. The rest leaves are almost dead. I painted the dark yellow for these leaves. In these leaves, there were some areas already dead. I used my finger to paint those dead areas.
Fourth, I intentionally made strong highlight in my picture to bring life into leaves and the tree. Because of the dark background, my yellow leaves are standing out from the picture. Moreover, I used little white spots along the tree to create the three dimensions for it. I copied the style in one of the picture I saw in Museum of Fine Art. I used the dark background combine with the highlight color. The viewers could feel the depth of the picture, and the main points were becoming more attractive to the viewers.
I put many efforts to bring the autumn into the picture. When looking at the picture, it made me remember the article “The last leaf” that I read since I was high school. Moreover, I wanted to keep a moment about autumn in the U.S.