Painting In Paradise

Watercolor Painting by Dennis Pendleton. Today was the last day of my Steamboat Springs Watercolor Workshop and I would like to thank everyone who attended. It was a very rewarding experience for me as I watched each artist improve from day to day. This is a painting from a previous Steamboat Springs Workshop because I have not had time to photograph my paintings, transfer them to my computer and then get them ready for my Sunday email. We painted on two different ranches as well as in an aspen forest and this is very reminiscent of the subjects we worked on. Steamboat Springs is not only a world class ski area, the valley is also full of working ranches which add to the charm of this diverse community. I painted this old shed with the red wagon on a historic ranch along the beautiful Elk River. What attracted me was the way this shed and wagon settled into the environment as if they had always been there. Starting with the sky I quickly moved onto the distant hills where I used visible brushstrokes of olive green and cerulean blue to move the viewers eye down to the ranch. The distant barn and wood fence were painted quickly with very little detail so that I could move onto the shed before the light changed. Burnt sienna, raw umber and ultramarine blue were used for the old weathered wood and yellow ochre and raw sienna were used for the door. I created the effect I wanted with the light colors on the door against the opening which is the darkest value in the painting. Putting a light value next to a rich dark always attracts attention. I wanted the wagon to look old and weathered so I used venetian red mixed with a tiny bit of blue. Grays are used to show off other colors in a painting and all the grays in this painting resulted from combinations of cerulean blue and bits of different reds. The dry brush technique was used to drag burnt sienna across the roof to give the look of rusty metal. The grass is olive green with spattering and scratching out and the dirt is a light value of yellow ochre mixed with cobalt blue. The Yampa Valley where Steamboat Springs is located is a paradise for artists and I never get tired of painting there in all the different seasons. Happy Painting! Dennis Pendleton