A Sense of Light and Shadow

Watercolor Painting by Dennis Pendleton. One of the places we go to paint in my Taos Watercolor Workshop is a handsome adobe home that was originally owned by one of the early Taos artists. It has beautiful gardens, rambling adobe walls, coyote fences, and all the charm of an older adobe home. I was attracted to the light and shadow on the cottonwood trees and the coyote fence and I was also curious how I would ever paint the bushes with the blooming white flowers.

Starting with the sky, I immediately broke one of the "rules." Supposedly, you paint the sky first then paint the tree and leaves on top. However, this would not have given me the effect I was looking for so I painted back and forth between the sky and the leaves. This is especially obvious on the left side of the painting. For the leaves, I mixed different greens with lemon yellow, cerulean blue, olive, and French ultramarine blue. I wanted this to appear in layers with warmer leaves in front and bunches of cooler leaves in the distance. Next, I painted the two cottonwood trees. I detailed the one in front and cast shadows across the trunk then painted the one behind the fence as a single dark shape.

The coyote fence was next and I used different shades of gray mixed with cerulean blue and brilliant orange plus burnt sienna and French ultramarine blue. Without the cast shadows on the fence it would have looked like it didn't belong in the painting. Finally, it was time to paint the the bushes with the white blossoms. The first thing I decided was all the blossoms can't be pure white so I added strokes of cerulean blue and cobalt violet while also leaving white paper for the blossoms. The green in the bushes is olive and perylene green and under the bushes is perylene green mixed with burnt sienna.

As I look at the painting now I am pleased with my original idea which was capturing the famous Taos light and shadow and that is one of the charming things about painting in the high desert. Happy Painting! Dennis Pendleton