THIS ONE or THAT ONE....Let's talk about colorful grays

 

These two bitty sketches are preliminary work to see if I want to do a full 11x14 inch painting of the source photo.

 

I started out layering in an acrylic wash of hansa yellow over both my 5x7 canvas boards. On THIS ONE I grabbed a couple of my used paint palettes and lightly daubed on brush strokes of mixed colors.....mingling warm and cool colours for a grayed effect. I didn't go too dark in value so's I could use brighter colors in the shadows. On THAT ONE I layered in a medium red and a pthalo blue glaze in varying values over the hansa yellow to make an optical gray, going a tad darker in value to allow for more colourful “bounce” lights.

 

After this dried, I went over both sketches with more opaque colours to see how far I could push the backlit effect.

 And finally I rummaged around in my studio and pulled out my trusty, “highly technical” view finders......i.e. two pieces of cardboard cut in “L” shapes. I focused in on the people more in THIS ONE and more on the long view of the scene in THAT ONE. I liked the highlit awning and backlit shadows of the figures and streetlamp. The play of grays in the shadows would allow for a lot of interesting side by side color combinations.

Either way I go.....or even if I do this as a full painting.....it's been a fun experiment.