Sunday Picnic

Watercolor Painting by Dennis Pendleton. This is a painting that I did on the last day of my weekend watercolor workshop. I found these people picnicking in the shade and liked the way they appeared as simple shapes. The trees in the foreground also interested me because they overlapped the foreground, middle ground, and background. It always saddens me when a tree is cut down but the stump did make an interesting subject.

Values are used to create structure and you can see a light value for the sunlit grass, middle value for the shade with dark and middle values for the green tree leaves. The tree trunks were also painted with three values and I used cerulean blue, brilliant orange, burnt sienna and French ultramarine blue to make the different grays. You can also see how I used warm and cool grays for the bark on the tree trunks.

For the figures, no matter how dark, they have subtle values and even bits of color. You can see the man on the right is wearing a blue shirt, the seated girl has some cobalt violet on her white shirt and the white blanket has a bit of cerulean blue. As you move toward the background, the two white pillars, because they are in direct sunlight, are unpainted white paper with a light gray on their shadows. The metal gate is burnt sienna which was also used for the distance fence. To the right, the fence is a cool gray mixed with French ultramarine blue and burnt sienna. The distant tree leaves were painted with olive green and perylene green.

Urban scenes with figures like this are of great interest to me and I will be returning to Washington Park this summer to find more subjects like this. There is still room in my three day sketchbook workshop on August 22, 23 24 and I have some interesting locations selected and you can find more information on my website dennispendletonstudio.com. under classes and workshops. If you are interested or have any questions send me an email. pendletonstudio@gmail.com. Happy Painting! Dennis Pendleton