"The Last Leaf"

This piece was my most recent submission to an art blog group I'm a part of.  It's based on the theme, "In the Falling Snow".  I wanted to do something simple for this week's project, and began thinking of what would appear interesting amidst falling snow.  My first thoughts went to color and contrast: a blue backdrop, littered with white snowflakes, and contrasted by something vibrant and yellow-orange.  Then the image came of a lone leaf floating to the ground.  For the majority of the process I operated using this color scheme.  While it worked, the placement of the leaf and some mistakes I had made earlier on caused the leaf to look out of place.  I worked at it for some time, seeing what I could do to fix it.  Eventually it came down to altering all the blues and cyans (plus some other colors) in the background to earthier tones.  This changed my point-of-view to looking down on the leaf on the ground, and as a result seemed to work better.  Enjoy!