Watercolor Painting by Dennis Pendleton. Ever since I moved to Colorado in 1970, aspen trees have been a favorite subject of mine. I love going into the mountains in all four seasons to paint them and I am always amazed at how beautiful and interesting they are in their different surroundings. In this case, wild flowers were in bloom and the afternoon lighting was filtering through the trees in the most delightful way. At first glance aspen trees appear white and the more I

Watercolor Painting by Dennis Pendleton. This is a small painting I did on a friends ranch in Steamboat Springs, Colorado and it gives me the opportunity to talk about lighting and directing the viewers eye. The reason an artist tries to direct the viewers eye is so the he or she sees the entire painting while slowing down and appreciating different areas. For example, the furrows in the wheat field could go straight back to the trees but in this painting they curve and mean

Watercolor Painting by Dennis Pendleton. This was one of those special days in Denver Botanic Gardens when the weather was perfect, flowers were in full bloom, and there were plenty of places to setup in the shade. I was attracted to these delphiniums growing among the white and yellow flowers. The composition was right there and I was excited to get started. I began with a simple pencil drawing then painted the delphiniums with cobalt violet and mineral violet. It was impor

Watercolor Painting by Dennis Pendleton. Last Sunday I explained how I started this painting and how I painted the pear and the dresser paying particular attention to how I applied the paint. Now I will explain the rest of the process. Let's look at the violin. Because I wanted to capture the gentle bulge on the surface I applied yellow ochre and burnt sienna to create texture and subtle value changes and the light edge is pure yellow ochre. I moved the paintbrush carefully,

Watercolor Painting by Dennis Pendleton. I love doing small paintings like this, 7x10 inches, where I can take my time and work on specific things like color application. Every color in this painting was applied with specific intent. To explain what I mean I will start with the pear. I mixed lemon yellow with just a tiny bit of cerulean blue without stirring it up so you could see bits of both colors. How you use the brush to apply paint is important and here I dabbed the pa