Joyful Afternoon

Watercolor Painting by Dennis Pendleton. This is another painting from my June Weekend Gardens Workshop. We had painted in the morning and then stopped for lunch at the cafe. Our paintings were discussed then we looked for a place to paint in the afternoon. With only a little over an hour left we settled next to a garden with these little flowers. They were poking up out of dark planting soil and I knew that later in the summer they would be covering all the dirt. I wasn't interested in painting the soil so I zoomed in on the flowers and did a quick pencil study. If my drawing is to complete then my painting gets overworked so so I put down only a few lines to indicate size and shape.

For the pink flowers I started with cobalt violet mixed with a tiny bit of red and covered the whole flower. While this was still damp I dropped in cadmium red and watched it spread to create the soft and blurred edges. Timing is critical at this stage and I keep a tissue handy in case the red starts spreading to far. When this was dry I added a few dots of mineral violet for the dark center. Next I added the green leaves with the idea that they were there to show off the flowers. You can see as the leaves come up against the flowers their value gets darker. When you put a dark value next to a lighter value it creates an "effect" which makes that spot more important. For the leaves I used olive green, lemon yellow mixed with cerulean blue, and French ultramarine blue added for the darker values.

For the violet flower coming up on the left i used cobalt violet and mineral violet and added some spattering. I always try to use the bigger brushes because the little ones cause the painting to look overworked. Most of this painting was done with #8 and #10 round natural hair watercolor brushes. The great pleasure of painting in a garden with other artists reminds me how much I love my life as an artist. Happy Painting! Dennis

I have two more Garden Workshops scheduled for this summer and the dates are July 17, 18, and 19 and August 14, 15, and 16. You can sign up for 1, 2, or all 3 days and the prices are $95 for 1 day, $170 for 2 days, and $225 for all 3 days. If you are interested send me an email to pendletonstudio@gmail.com.