Autumn's Grasp

The color spectrum for leaves is huge, especially in the fall. Leaves are changing from forest greens, to pumpkin orange, to a dark chocolate brown. In my color scheme, I wanted to capture this idea of autumn's grasp on a leaf's change in color. As I thought about the control that Autumn has on plants and their change in color, I thought of a hand squeezing the color out of a bright green leaf to produce an equally beautiful rose colored (and shaped) leaf. On the color wheel, the red and the green that I chose were completely contrasting to symbolize the contrast of the leaf in Spring to its transformation in the Fall. When I was selecting the colors, I decided I wanted to stay away from all the blues because I felt that blue belonged more to Spring and Summer and I wanted to focus in more on the browns and oranges of the atmosphere of Autumn. Also, because there is so much green in nature, I decided to tint the original green that I had chosen to create the second, lighter green, and then used their harmonization by alternating them between the fingers of Autumn's hand. Then, to contrast the greens, I took the pumpkin orange and shaded it until it became a muddy brown that represented the lost, withering leaves toward the end of Autumn's grasp.  Each color in the scheme represents a part of a leaf's cycle as it evolves from a green to a red to an orange and, lastly, to a brown.