A Delightful Day

Watercolor Painting by Dennis Pendleton. It was another hot day in Denver so we stayed in the shade at Hudson Gardens and painted in their rose garden. I enjoy demonstrating for the other artists and explaining my painting as it develops. My favorite part is when they ask questions because I often learn as much as they do. I started by explaining that this time I chose one flower and placed it in the upper right corner of my watercolor paper. This focused my attention as I looked at an overwhelming display of beautiful roses. My pencil drawing consisted of the two roses and just a few leaves. For me, if my drawing is to "complete" I get wrapped up in details so I try to keep it simple.

The flower on the lower left had white on some of its petals so I was careful to leave unpainted white paper as I added cobalt violet mixed with a little cadmium red and also transparent yellow. The original flower was painted with the same colors plus mineral violet for the darker values. When I am painting in a garden I am always looking for ways to make all the green more interesting. Color temperature plays an important part in this and you can see some leaves are heavy on the blue side while others are warm with an emphasis on yellow.

At this point, I used a technique where I painted areas with light green and as that was drying I shaped leaves by adding different darker greens. For this to work you must trust your intuition and allow the water and paint to do some of the work without your interference. Different shapes emerge and with a little careful work they appear as a jumble of leaves. I enjoy this technique very much because it always comes out different in its own unique way.

I added a third smaller flower on the left so that there would be an odd number and then scratched my fingernail through the damp paint near where I signed the painting. The stems were painted with yellow ochre and burnt sienna and finally I added a few touches of perylene green for the darkest values. We spent some time in the outdoor cafe discussing our finished paintings and then it started raining so we raced for out cars. All and all, a fun and productive day of plein air painting. Happy Painting! Dennis Pendleton