Calling Citizen Artists

Seems like there are "citizen" everythings these days. Citizen ornithologists count birds, citizen herpetologists count snakes, citizen anthropologists track our ancient ancestors, citizen archeologists seek departed dinos. Hopefully citizen architects and engineers are not designing our high rise apartment buildings. 😟 

I'm just after your eyes.  Yes, I am still working on the 4' x 5' drawing I have decided to call Carriage Ride. And while the delightful 1977 children's book by Nancy Willard and illustrated by Tomie dePaola that I used to read to my daughters exhorted the notion that "simple pictures are best" I have been unable to follow it in Carriage Ride.

You may remember this version of it:

Well the blank spaces at the "top" and the "bottom" were destined to have some sort of botanical treatments in them.  The bottom one looked like this:

With the "bottom" now on the left.

Here is the issue I wish you to consider. Here is a closer look at the botanical treatment that is now finished:

And here is the cartoon for the opposite side - bottom or whatever:

It was my initial idea to fill that cartoon with Fall colors; orange, red, russet,  - stuff like that. However it now strikes me that given the abstract structure of the "leaves" in the cartoon that the completed treatment would not read as autumn leaves, but more like a forest fire.

So that's it my citizen artists. What's your take? Feel free to copy that last image and color it with "fall-ish" colors and see how it looks. 

Take your time. I've been working on this drawing since way before Thanksgiving. By now Christmas seems an optimistic target! 😅