Sunday In The Park

Watercolor Painting by Dennis Pendleton. Every Summer I have plein air watercolor classes in gardens here in the Denver area. Flowers, trees, ponds, people enjoying the parks, pets, and artists capturing everything in paint. Plein air painting, out doors on location is it's own reward and one of the fastest way to learn. Fresh air, excellent subject matter and the fellowship of other artists is a sublime combination.

This little painting was done in my sketchbook in Washington Park. I have painted there many times over the years and never had any trouble finding inspiring subjects. I studied this spot when I was setting up and deceided to leave out anything that didn't add to the feeling of a sunny day in the park. I reduced the background to a light wash of cool green and a few brush strokes of a slightly darker value. Next I put in the trees with olive and perylene green and painted the trunks with gray mixed with cerulean blue and brilliant orange. Using a combination of hard and soft edges, I allowed the colors to mix right on the paper.

I wanted to show the figures in dappled sunlight and shade from the trees so I painted them mostly as silhouettes. The bicycle with the banana seat was easy because I painted it with only a few necessary lines. There was a flower garden between me and the figures and it made a colorful foreground. Without getting caught up in individual flowers, I painted rich colors while leaving bits of white paper to represent sunlight. The fence, simplified into a few lines seperated the middle ground from the background and tied the composition together. For the flowers I used cadmium and lemon yellow, cerulean blue, cobalt violet, cadmium red, olive, perylene green and mineral violet. The figures are burnt sienna mixed with ultramarine blue plus cerulean blue, mineral violet, and Indian red.

After next Sundays email I will be leaving to teach a workshop in France so I will not send out a Sunday email for a few weeks. When I return from France I will resume the Sunday emails and I am sure I will have new paintings and lots to write about. Happy Painting! Dennis Pendleton