Lily Pad Reflections

Watercolor Painting by Dennis Pendleton. I have mentioned before that the Denver Botanic Gardens is one of my favorite places to paint. I hold workshops there not only because of the endless supply of gorgeous flowers but it also has several lily pad ponds which are excellent subjects. As this worker moved around pulling up different plants, the light and shadow along with his reflection was fascinating. We were there for the whole day and I watched him for a long time before deciding on this pose. I wanted his face in shadow so that I could paint it as a simple shape that flowed down into the shadows on his shirt, arms, pants and hip boots. Also, he was stirring up the water just enough to cause ripples and break up the reflections. This created the movement that I wanted surrounding the figure. I thought of the man, his reflection and the floating crate as one shape connected by the sunlight and I used the movement in the water to guide your eye into and around the composition.

Starting with the hat, yellow ochre was mixed with a tiny bit of burnt sienna. Moving along, his face was painted with a combination of burnt sienna and French ultramarine blue. I then advanced to his shirt which is two different values of cerulean blue with his arms being cadmium red and yellow ochre. If you have a good understanding of mixing colors and creating values, you don't need a lot of colors on your palette. His pants, belt, hip boots and floating container were all mixed with the same two colors, burnt sienna and French ultramarine blue.

I decided to take some liberties with the colors in the water and used more olive green than I actually saw as it transitioned into cerulean blue. This allowed his sunlit shirt to stand out against the water. For the darker ripples, I added perylene green to the cerulean. This little painting has inspired me to do a bigger painting this summer with more water, some ducks swimming by and flowers blooming on the lily pads.

My weekend watercolor workshops at Denver Botanic Gardens are filling up and you can find more information by Clicking Here. If you would like to sign up for any of the days, send an email to me at pendletonstudio@gmail.com. Happy Painting! Dennis Pendleton