Waiting for the Bus - Cape Town

This is for Virtual Paintout March 2011 challenge, Cape Town, South Africa. It's oil on 10x12 canvas board.

This month I almost ran out of time to paint with the move, renovations and all the distractions that come along. I finally got myself to sit down to look for a scene and paint it. I found a group of school kids at the Table Mountain Reserve in Cape Town, and saw these three boys sitting around waiting for the bus. (ref photo) I thought it was interesting because of the three boys against a scenic background, while one boy sat on a trash can, as well as the light vs dark contrast and red vs green contrast. I added an extra person on the right to add additional interest to the composition.

Because of the darker tone of many of the elements in this painting, I prepared my canvas with a brownish black acrylic ground. The background, including the mountains and city, was painted using various shades and tones of grey. The foreground people are painted using more intense color, such as madder, alizarin, ultramarine violet, raw and burnt umber, prussian blue, Winsor red, vermilion, lemon yellow, naples yellow and white.