Pick Up Stix - Nature's Still Life #11

This one was alot of fun. I tried to use the repetition of the twigs to give a sense of pattern and depth. Figuring out how to make the shadows fall across the leaves was kind of an interesting mental challenge as well.

The tricky part with this painting was that at one point my leaves were pure hues and tints and my rocks were pure neutral greys. Althought it looked interesting, it was far from unified. I then spent an entire day upping the intensity of the rocks (which resulted in some much better color variation) and toning down the intensity of the leaves. I think the painting is much more harmonious now, but hopefully there is enough variation that it is still interesting. I also think having a strong value pattern really helped.