Husband/wife composition

[Will Enns]

I have applied what I recently read in M. Baumgartner's discourse on 3 value massing. I am hoping the experts will tell me if I'm close.

The following sketches are of Dennis and Carol, the clients I mentioned above. Reference was taken on a mountain near here. The setting is yellowed winter grass, still standing. The mountain is spotted with areas of ponderosa pines (the kind of trees that have 6" needles and cones the size of my brain.) It is a virtually di-chromatic setting. (Is di-chromatic a word? I mean there are two colors - the yellow grass and the dark green trees, both muted.

In both sketches, the lightest mass is represented by the upper clothing and faces, the darkest mass is the hair and jeans. The rest I will endeavor to paint as middle value.

It is the first time I have tried composition based on value-massing, but already I like it!

So I have 2 questions:

1) If you could, for a moment, visualize these sketches as finished paintings, which of the following sketches would be more appealing?

• a) The first sketch has them sitting on a rock under the open sky with yellow grassy hills disappearing out of the top of the frame. The grass and rock would fall into the middle value.
  
  b) The second sketch has them in the same setting, but with a nearby ponderosa pine's branches forming a frame around them in the darker end of the middle values. In this sketch, there would be more trees reaching up to the top of the frame, making for a fairly even value. The forground grasses would fall in the lighter end of the middle value.

2) Can you offer other suggestions with regard to the composition?

Another: (You're right, I said 2 questions. But I'm learning to count on a different forum, and hadn't got high enough yet. That is why this question is numbered "another.")

Dennis likes his black leather vest; Carol likes her deerskin jacket. I'm not thrilled with those colors, but they do provide high contrast in the center of interest. Is this combination desirable, or is there a better way to handle the clothing?