Halcyon Days

Watercolor Painting by Dennis Pendleton. A couple weeks ago I used a painting of aspen trees in the fall for my Sunday email and it was painted in my Luchetti sketchbook which features 300 lb. watercolor paper. I had so much fun painting it that I decided to attempt the subject again. This time I used a favorite watercolor paper that I order from a small paper mill in Italy. It is also 100 % cotton rag and slightly thinner at 220 lbs. It is also a little smother and softer than the paper in the Luchetti sketchbook. Understanding how different watercolor papers work with your style of paiinting is important and it allows you to choose different papers for different subjects. Also, falling in love with one watercolor paper is dangerous because the company can change their formula and the paper will be different.

In this painting the composition is quite different from the one in my Luchetti sketchbook and I also decided to experiment with different colors and different color temperatures. If you look at the dark background area you can see some of it was painted with indigo and some with perylene green mixed with olive green. Indigo is a deep cool blue and the green mixture is warmer. This causes a subtle vibration in that area and gives it more depth. Another color that I introduced is burnt orange mixed with brillant orange and burnt sienna. I was able to create different variations of this color depending on how much burnt sienna I added to the orange.

For the aspen leaves I used lemon yellow, transparent yellow, and cadmium yellow with a little olive green here and there. Both cadmium and lemon yellow are opaque and I was able to drop a few leaves into the dark background. The three aspen trees in the front were painted with yellow ochre, cerulean blue and cobalt violet which were allowed to mix on the paper. The left side of those trees is unpainted white paper to represent sunlight and I added a burnt orange bush behind to of them for a nice contrast. Another important element is how the aspen trees get cooler as they move back in the composition. This was done with a mixture of ceruan blue, cobalt violet and brilliant orange. The further back the tree the more cerulean blue was used. This painting was done from memory of those halcyon days when I lived in the mountain town of Steamboat Springs Colorado. Happy Painting! Dennis Pendleton