More before they fall

I am continuing my leaf paintings. Yesterday, I picked a bouquet of leaves before deciding which ones to paint.

In the end, I chose to paint the leaves and berries of a beautiful shrub called highbush cranberry (viburnum trilobum).  I grow it in my garden but also have noticed it growing wild in neighbouring forests.  The berries on this bush are lovely.  If I'm very lucky, the berries will stay on the shrub long past when the leaves have fallen. They are particularly beautiful when covered by frost or a thin dusting of snow. Unfortunately, I rarely see them in that state as sometime soon I expect a roving band of marauders to swoop in and steal my ruby treasures.  I am referring to those masked bandits, the cedar waxwings.

Watercolour on handmade Saint-Armand paper

As I was painting this, it was reminding me of a painting I did a few years back of some tangled branches of bittersweet.  I dug it out of my portfolio to show you. It is HUGE by my standards. Everything's relative. :)

Detail of Bittersweet painting on Arches 140 lb. watercolour paper

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A little aside:  I love Google! I could not think of the name of the cedar waxwing (brain freeze) so I typed in "bird mask eats berries flock".  Cedar waxwing popped up as the first entry.