Lanterns and Reflected Light

Watercolor Painting by Dennis Pendleton. One of the most exciting things I have ever done as an artist is when I was in Venice for Winter Carnival. The costumes were spectacular, many of which had been handed down from generation to generation. They were everywhere, on the bridges, in Saint Marks Square, at the opera, in gondolas, and restaurants and I was overwhelmed with the feeling of walking around in a dream.

Many of the costumes were of players from different operas and that was the case with these Chinese characters. There costumes were stunning with rich gold, black, orange, and blue. My main concern was capturing the feeling of night time and how the light from the lanterns lit up the costumes and faces of the players. Even more interesting lighting effects resulted from the restaurant behind the figures which caused rim lighting on the costumes. If you look carefully you can see how I created a trail of light that starts in the lantern on the left, moves along the blue and gold shaft to the collar, onto his hat and face, down his shoulder and arm to the other lantern and finally up the other characters shoulder to his face and hat. This is a subtle way of leading the viewers eye through the painting while stopping at the most interesting parts.

This is predominately a warm color scheme with orange, red, and yellow and I added the cool green pillar on the left and the small bits of green at the top of the restaurant for contrast and places to rest the eye. The other three figures were added to show how crowded it was in Saint Marks Square at night. If you look at the two faces ,the one on the left, which is the focal point, is more detailed and the one on the right is barely suggested with softer edges and closer values. I did this because I didn't want the two faces competing for attention.

Starting with the faces, I created the skin tones with cadmium red and yellow ochre then added lemon yellow for the highlights. For the costumes, the rich black is a mixture of French ultramarine blue and burnt sienna and the different oranges are mixtures of lemon yellow, cadmium yellow, cadmium red, venetian red and alizarin crimson. Lemon yellow and cadmium yellow are very opaque colors and I was able to add bits of yellow on top of the other colors to complete the costumes. Seeing this painting again brings back glorious memories of the days and nights I spent at Winter Carnival in Venice. Happy Painting! Dennis Pendleton