The Dolores Andrew Award

Twilight Café explores a palette of evening colors, in this case a tertiary orange / violet / green hue combination.

This parkside scene shows folks sitting under an awning at an outdoor café as the sky reflects the deepening colors of the setting sun. The street lights reflected against the walls of the buildings turn their color from beige to orange. In a few minutes the scene will turn darker as the sun fully sets, but in this scene I wanted to use dark value but avoid black completely.

A particular challenge was integrating the glow of the street lamps into the color of the building walls. The pale blue of the Congress Cloth has a light coating of lavender to help darken the sky. A single strand of overdyed silk used for the sky exposes the canvas which allows it to play an active role in suggesting depth in the scene.