Mystery Girl Detective in Purple

While I worked on the sketch for this painting I listened to a mystery audiobook with a female detective so when it came time to do the painting, I decided to make her a detective in a dark subway or tunnel. Using a limited, complimentary palette of mostly purple and yellow (because of her hair, see reference photo below) I put her in a purple trench coat.

The teacher for this lesson on Sktchy Art School is a big fan of patterned backgrounds, as you can see in this link to her painting. She used “Acryla Gouache” in her demo, which I have tried and don’t like. It’s basically just opaque and matte acrylic, not “real” gouache in my opinion.

In the sketch above you can see that I indicated the divisions between the shadows and light areas. I’m trying to focus on keeping my value families separated, keeping the darks together separately from the lights family.