New Challenge.....Another Black and White Image!!

I have had this image stored for a while from PMP (am afraid I can't find the photographer to credit so have asked on the site if anyone knows who it is). I saw a graphite drawing of it and thought it would translate really well to watercolour... this is the original reference. Black and white images are so good for seeing tonal value and if you have trouble in this area I would advise you all to get into the habit of transposing images to black and white...it also helps you choose your own palette without influences from a colour image.

So, here is another example of not having to be a slave to the reference, what we need is to look at is tones.... the colours can be whatever we want so we need to choose something which will give us a really good dark and the rest depends on how colourful we want it to be.

Two of my favourite colours mixed together on the paper are Burnt Sienna and Prussian Blue so a I decided on those for the coat and a mix of Cobalt Blue and Indigo for the jeans. I used a touch of Alizarin Crimson for the bag but apart from that used only the blues and brown. I could have used any colours at all, I was only looking at lights and darks not colour and maybe on a different day I would have chosen an entirely different palette.

With an image like this it is a good idea to keep the lightest lights white even though we can see there are no real white areas. Keeping a few whites really enhances a painting and lifts it so you will see there are a few whites left on his hat and jeans and odd little sparkles around the painting.