One of the most exciting times to paint trees is when they are in their autumn colors, but it can be frustrating. I have seen autumn colors that took my breath away while I whizzed past them on a highway with no place to stop. Turning off the highway to the back roads brings me closer to the trees, but still not to their leaves. Walking through woodlands on these back country roads, the trees tower above me, teasing me with their splendid leaves more than 60 feet above me, while the ground is carpeted with beautiful colored leaves.

After decades of hiking through forests ablaze with the most astonishing spectrum of leaf colors, I concluded that walking through forests to capture autumn colors is futile. Forest trees grow tall to compete for sunlight and the brilliant leaves are too high up for me to form a composition to paint. The autumn opportunities are found where the forest is open, exposing the full tree and its lower branches to the sun at the edge of a field or lake or cliff.

The subject of this painting grew where an open field met the forest, presenting a rich tapestry of colors from tall maples (Acer rubrum; Acer saccharum) and birch (Betula papyrifera) with sumac (Rhus typhina) at the lower levels. And on the ground, grasses, goldenrod, and fall asters added to the profusion.

This perspective also reveals the range of color within a single tree. The birch tree’s most vigorous leaves at the top of the tree take longer to turn yellow than those on lower branches. Some upper leaves are green in the middle and yellow around the edges. I painted those with a base of yellow, followed by a smaller dab of green, pushing the yellow paint out to the edges, an effect difficult to achieve with a paintbrush.