Lilacs and Adobe

Watercolor Painting by Dennis Pendleton. I am writing this in the lobby of the Mable Dodge Luhan House in Taos, New Mexico which is the headquarters of my Taos In Watercolor Workshop. This painting is of the Couse House on Kit Carson Street and Edgar Couse was one of the early Taos artists and a proud member of the Taos Society of Artists. His house and studio, which is now a museum, represents so much of what I love about Taos with the adobe architecture, wooden door opening into a garden, iconic bell above the door, lilacs, flowers and plants, and flagstone steps with mountains in the background.

There are so many different colors in the high desert adobe and for this one I mixed cobalt violet and yellow ochre with mineral violet added for the darker parts. The lilacs were in bloom and they made the perfect shot of rich color that balanced the blue mountains and settled down the composition. Also, the tree branches in the upper left corner drop you into the painting, the old fence posts and plants lean and twist creating rhythm and the flagstone steps invite you up to the entrance. Finally, the blue iris in the foreground keep you from moving to quickly up to the flagstone steps.

Time moves slowly in Taos and I wanted to capture the feeling of a warm spring day engulfed in the famous Taos sunlight. The lilacs were painted with cobalt violet, green mixed with olive and cerulean blue, unpainted white paper, spattering with opaque white, and perylene green at the base. I wanted the flagstone steps to have warm shadows so I painted them with burnt sienna and French ultramarine blue. The sky is a light wash of cerulean blue and the mountains are darker values of the same. Olive green, lemon yellow, cerulean blue, and perylene green were used for the plants and bushes and the old fence posts are a dark mixture of burnt sienna and French ultramarine blue. As far as color temperature goes, this is predominately a warm painting with cool accents. The evening sunlight is changing and I want to go outside to look for more painting sights so goodbye for now. Happy Painting! Dennis Pendleton