Boardwalk Showers part 23

The biggest thing yet to be worked out before today was the coloring of the floor. I had been thinking of coloring the whole thing with the same reddish color used in the horizontal tile stripes, and briefly, the lockers. However, that's a lot of area to lighten later if I didn't like the results, so rather than commit to that, I went with a temporary test. The piece of paper I used for my proof is large, with wide margins on all sides of the print. I tore off a wide strip, then used scissors to cut pieces that roughly corresponded to the negative shapes of the floor. I colored these with the red color (see above) and then after they dried arranged them on top of the print, shown below.

It didn't bother me as much as the original coloring of the lockers, but I decided that the results would make the whole print darker than I had envisioned. So I removed the pieces and went with my alternate plan. I put that reddish color on the bench, to balance its use on the wall tiles. Speaking of which, one of the possibilities I had been considering was using two different colors on those horizontal stripes, with the top one being darker and/or bolder. Tested a few possibilities with more cut paper strips- a dark reddish brown (like the later version of the floor in the janitor print shown yesterday), or a more traditional red. I decided that the image could use some bolder color, so put a wash of red over the row of tiles. I mixed up two versions of a light color (both with varying percentages of white, ochre, and different yellows and browns), and put the darker version on the rest of the wall, the lighter version on the floor. The results of the day's work are shown below.

As I made the decision to make the floor light instead of dark, I considered a compromise of sorts- mix some dark tiles in with the light ones in some kind of pattern. I like using checkerboard designs, but I think it would be too much here. I took a break to walk around the building to see if I could find any interesting possibilities- most of the rooms with tiles had floors of one color, except for two maintenance closets that had a strip down the middle in sort of a ladder pattern. No need to decide this today, so I'll be on the lookout for possible tile patterns wherever I am in the next week or two. The next step will be to start adding some bolder colors and cooler colors in the few remaining uncolored shapes.