Looking in the Window

Watercolor Painting by Dennis Pendleton. My Taos, New Mexico Watercolor Workshop was so much fun that I decided to include another of my morning demo's. This was painted at a friend's house near the Mable Dodge Luhan House where we were headquartered for the workshop. It was a beautiful sunny morning and I wanted to keep the demo short so that everyone would have more time to paint. As usual, what seemed like a simple idea really wasn't and I found this out when I started. I concentrated on shapes to start and moved my vantage point to the right so that the cottonwood tree covered part of the window. I thought this would tie the elements together and make for a tighter composition.

After the preliminary pencil drawing, I started with the light adobe color. As I tell my students, all the adobes in Taos are slightly different and this one had a lighter finish. Mixing cobalt violet and yellow ocher worked after I added more water than usual to the mixture. Because I just pushed the two colors together rather than stirring them up, you can see where in some areas the violet is dominate and in other areas the yellow ocher is stronger. Next I added yellow ochre for the dripping color stains and more violet around the window so that it looks recessed into the wall.

The window had lots of little window panes and I didn't worry about getting the exact number, I was more concerned with leaving unpainted white paper for the curtain. For the vigas, I painted burnt sienna mixed with French ultramarine blue and added more of the dripping yellow ochre under them. The sky was painted with cerulean blue and I mde it slightly darker than it really was to set off the light adobe. The three green trees are olive and I painted them while the sky was still wet so that they would have blurred edges for atmospheric effect. The cottonwood tree was started with a light wash of cerulean blue and brilliant orange to make a light gray and then I added the darker bark texture with a mixture of burnt sienna and French ultramarine blue. My rigger brush was handy for the thin lines.

Finally, I added pure colors of red and blue for the flowers and two values of green for the leaves and stems. The flag stones which are barely visible at the bottom, were painted with a mixture of cerulean blue and brilliant orange. This turned out to be one of our best days of painting and the evening critique was informative and fun. Happy Painting! Dennis Pendleton