Challenge - Airport Travelers

Airport Travelers challenge from Different Strokes From Different Folks
7" x 7" acrylic on masonite panel

I did this one in two stages. First, I painted the scene in 5 values only: black, white, light gray, medium gray, dark gray. However, I used green instead of gray—Hookers Green with some Burnt Sienna to tone it down. I was going for a graphic approach, in fact at first I was leaving a little white space between the areas. It looked quite a bit like a paint-by-numbers :)

I scanned that step, as I wasn't sure whether to leave it as-is or add color. Then I used watercolor pencils to put just a slight warm or cool cast on different areas, and a few denser areas of color, such as the red bag and the yellow hair.



It's such a dark photo, with high contrast. I found the five values were quite extreme: the two lightest were very far away from the three darkest, and the middle value was still very dark. I cheated a little bit on the floor—really it was the same value as the darkest shadows, but I wanted it to separate from the suits, so I mixed up a half-step value for it, somewhere between 4 and 5. I think adding the cool and warm colors helped bring out some definition from the dark areas, although I like the monotone of the all-green version.