A Star In Orange

Watercolor Painting by Dennis Pendleton. Every summer I paint in different gardens in Denver and then when the weather changes I return to my studio and work on larger paintings inspired by those plein air garden studies. These are much more than just larger versions because I take different flowers from different paintings and arrange them as I see fit. My memory and imagination contribute quite a bit to these finished large floral paintings and I decided to create my own borders and print my name along the border. All of this series are painted on full sheets of watercolor paper 22 x 30 inches.

I usually start by choosing one flower, in this case the large orange one, and place it on one of the points of the golden mean. Then every other flower or leaf is subordinate and painted to show off the major player. There are a lot of other orange flowers in the composition but they are smaller, overlapped by other flowers, and crowded into less important locations. Blue is the complement of orange so I used a lot of blue and blue violet for the other flowers.

I decided to further emphasize the largest flower by surrounding it with a jumble of yellow green leaves and the darkest leaves which are full of interesting textures. I wanted a big selection of shapes and sizes so I added the two large leaves in the lower left corner. These two leaves curve in a way to keep the viewers eye in the painting and their shapes add a design quality that I like. If you look carefully you can see how many of the smaller flowers are presented in a way that leads the eye back to the focal point.

The border was painted with a thin line of cerulean blue and a thicker line, two inches, of indigo. Having flowers coming in and out of the border was fun and I think it tied the whole composition together. I mixed the oranges with lemon yellow, cadmium yellow, cadmium red, Indian red, alizarin crimson, and cobalt violet. The leaves were mixed with lemon yellow, cerulean blue, French ultramarine blue, and olive green. The dark background color was painted with indigo, French ultramarine blue, and mineral violet. Working on larger sizes and using your imagination is a way to push you forward and make painting more challenging and fun. Happy Painting! Dennis Pendleton