Sketchbook Experimentation

Watercolor Painting by Dennis Pendleton. Sketchbooks are a wonderful way to put down ideas without worrying about finished paintings. Some of those ideas turn into larger paintings in my studio which shows how plein air paintings and studio paintings collaborate. One of my ideas is to paint a landscape without filling the page and then add a closeup image of something from the same area. I found this adobe home with laundry on the clothesline just outside of Taos New Mexico and I added part of a Taos Mission in the upper right corner. In my studio I developed the landscape into a larger painting with more foreground.

Sketchbooks are also a great way to loosen up your paintings. Among my travel brushes I have a number 12 round, a larger brush, and I try to use it for most of my sketchbook work. You also have the opportunity to experiment with watercolor techniques like spattering, dry brush, and lifting out. This is also an opportunity to push colors beyond what you see and to try colors that you would not normally use. Notice the clothesline and the mint green mountains. All of this combines to give the artist an exhilarating feeling of freedom when painting in sketchbooks.

For the distant mountains I mixed cerulean blue and lemon yellow and the pink mountain behind the mission is cobalt violet and rose dore. The church is cobalt violet and yellow ochre with mineral violet added for the shadow side. The dark sky is indigo with white added for the stars. The trees around the adobe home are olive green and lemon yellow and the tree on the right border is olive green plus cerulean blue. The pink adobe is cobalt violet, and rose dore plus a little cerulean blue added in the shadows. Burnt Sienna and French Ultramarine blue were mixed for the darkest darks around the car and a lighter version of the same mixture was used for the wooden fence. Cerulean blue and orange were mixed for the gray car and the foreground is brush strokes of burnt sienna, yellow ochre, olive green and some unpainted white paper.

My 2026 Taos Watercolor Workshop is open for registration and the dates are May 17-22. You can find more information on my website dennispendletonstudio.com under workshops and if you would like to register or have any questions send me an email pendletonstudio@gmail.com. Happy Painting! Dennis Pendleton