Mediterranean Memory

Watercolor Painting by Dennis Pendleton. After my watercolor workshop in the French castle, I spent four days in Nice with a friend. We spent a lot of time exploring and I found this house nestled in a cliff garden located in a little town further up the coast. It was like nothing I had ever seen before with plants as big as trees, unexpected colors, trees that looked like giant birds nests and quintessential French architecture. Whoever lives there obviously took a lot of pride in their garden and seeing it nearly took my breath away. It was like finding a pot of gold at the end of a rainbow. We were on the move so I took pictures and painted this in my Denver studio after I returned home.

I decided to use a triad color scheme with red orange, yellow green, and blue violet. Any three colors that make an equal sided triangle on a color wheel create a triad color scheme. I decided to use all tertiary colors because of their subtlety and you can see those three colors in different places throughout this composition. For the facade of the house, I scumbled red orange on the watercolor paper and added spattering with the same color. For the cast shadow, I used blue violet, made with cerulean blue and cobalt violet, then used the side of my brush to press in some of the red orange. You can also see the roof was painted with different values of red orange. Several of the plants are different values of yellow green and the red orange is repeated on the walkway. Blue violet shows up again in the flowers along with red orange in the urns.

All three colors from the triad were mixed together to make the gray for the tall rock formation along the right border.

With a triad color scheme you can also add other colors and I used perylene green and olive green for the giant plants along the left border. I liked the way these two large border shapes enclosed the house and created a certain intimacy. The lacy branches spilling down from the top border are from another tree not in the painting and they were painted with perylene green and burnt sienna. The sky is pure cerulean blue and the door is a combination of Van Dyke brown and raw sienna. The plants in the lower left corner are peryleen green with cerulean blue and the stonework along the path was mixed with cerulean blue, cobalt violet and brilliant orange. I don't have black on my palette and the dark color that shows off the flowers was mixed with perylene green and Van Dyke brown. I am so glad I did lots of plein air painting and took lots of pictures that will lead to more studio paintings and remind me of all the fun I had in Southern France along the Mediterranean. Happy Painting! Dennis Pendleton