Private Lesson

Watercolor Painting by Dennis Pendleton. I was teaching a private lesson when my student showed up with a photo that she had taken in Maine. It was an interesting picture so we worked on it together and this is my painting. We were both delighted with her painting and it was a fun and informative lesson. Working one on one gave us the opportunity to talk about all the colors, values, edges, composition, etc.

We started with a very light cerulean blue for the sky and when that was dry, mixed cerulean blue and a little cadmium red for the gray chairs. Working side by side we were able to get the values the way we wanted as we moved down into the flower garden. One of the main concerns here was how the different groups of flowers related to each other. A combination of hard and soft edges really helped with this.

To create the lacy effect of the flowers against the sky we painted bits of cobalt violet and olive green with the sky color showing through then added some spattering. The round flowers on the upper left and right are lemon yellow with a tiny bit of violet and transparent yellow. The different greens are olive mixed with perylene green and olive mixed with ultramarine blue. The smallest yellow flowers are lemon yellow and cadmium yellow spattered onto the dark greens. Because these are both opaque yellow, the spattering shows up on the dark greens if you use pure color with very little water. We left unpainted white paper for the white flowers and used cerulean blue surrounded with dark greens for the little blue flowers. Cadmium red is also an opaque color and I was able to add the red flowers on top of the dark greens. Sometimes this actually works better than trying to paint around the red flowers with dark green. Not knowing which colors on your palette are transparent and which ones are opaque can result in muddy colors and overworked paintings. Knowing as much as you can about each color on your palette will allow you to paint with more confidence. Happy Painting! Dennis Pendleton