Taos Memory

Watercolor Painting by Dennis Pendleton. I am sending this out late because I have been working on the painting all day. It is on the grounds of the Mabel Dodge Luhan house where I headquarter my Taos in Watercolor Workshop. Because it is a studio painting I was able to work in a larger size, this is a half sheet of watercolor paper 15 x 22 inches.

I confess that the drawing took longer than I thought it would and I am sure there are a few things that don't fit exactly with perspective. I have found that if I spend to much time on the rules of perspective with the proper vanishing points it ends up looking like a mechanical drawing. I finally got one part of the drawing the way I wanted then used that for sight measuring to complete the rest, making adjustments as I went along.

Finally I was able to start painting and I began with the pigeon houses. Using burnt sienna, burnt umber, raw umber, and French ultramarine blue, I was careful to leave bits of unpainted white paper. Two roofs were painted with a mixture of cadmium red and yellow ochre and the third one is cerulean blue. Then I used the same blue for the sky. The two trees on the right are simple shapes, one with olive green and the other with a mixture of cerulean blue and lemon yellow. The cottonwood tree in the center is more detailed with mixtures of the same three colors and the gray trunk was mixed with cerulean blue and brilliant orange.

There are five different tones in the adobe structure and I used cobalt violet, yellow ochre, and mineral violet. The subtle diifferences in value keep it from looking flat. The rocks were interesting with different grays mixed with cerulean blue, brilliant orange, yellow ochre, burnt sienna, and French ultramarine blue. The cast shadows on the rocks are darker versions of the same mixtures. Different values of olive green and lemon yellow were used for the grass.

Working from photo's can be tricky because the shadows and cast shadows are to dark with an absence of color. The entire adobe wall on the left, along with the wooden gate, were totally black so I painted them from memory. This painting will always remind me of the good times in the workshop and the fellowship of other artists. Happy Painting! Dennis Pendleton