Supermarket Rubble part 9

This part of the country is enjoying a brief bit of nice mild weather before winter officially arrives.  Took advantage of mid 60's temps and dry weather yesterday to get in what is likely the last full lawn mowing of the year.  With that done yesterday, today's schedule was mostly traveling around by car doing various errands that didn't require optimal outdoor conditions.

The one most relevant to this blog was getting back into the Studio to continue work on the latest block.  One change not noted here yet happened last week- shading in the asphalt with a pencil prior to last week's crit, so people would feel the value balance better.  As I'm sure I've written here before, every time I'm in a supermarket, I'm working on this series.  Sometimes I'm just noting ideas, sometimes it's specific research.  I've known for a while that I wanted to add a figure or two walking through the parking lot.  A few days ago as I was leaving a supermarket I took note of shoppers in the parking lot, walking toward their cars with their purchases.  Didn't have any sketch paper with me, so I just took in as much as could mentally and put one of them down on some scrap paper when I got home.  In the above photo, that first sketch is the figure on the far left.  (the piece missing from the lower right corner is the address window in the old envelope I drew it on)  Sometimes when I'm looking to add something to an already existing sketch I'll sketch it onto paper, cut it out, and then place it in various parts of the composition to see how it's working.  The scale of the first sketch was too large to fit into the scene where I wanted it, so I redrew it a few more times, getting smaller each time.

In the end I chose to place it in the upper right corner of the scene, in front of the car I have there, the feet conveniently behind a shopping cart so I don't have to draw them.

A few people at the last crit also felt that the truck in the foreground should be bigger, to help with the relative scale of parts of the scene.  What I told them I would likely do is increase the size on paper, and  do another placed cut out test.  No point in erasing a perfectly good truck sketch until I know I want to replace it.  Besides, if I do redraw it, I want to have my model truck again to look at.  Meanwhile, I sketched this one on paper copying from my block sketch, and stuck it on top of the composition.  I will think about it in the coming days and make a decision soon.