The Elegant Houseplant

Watercolor Painting by Dennis Pendleton. There is something about orchids that is so very elegant. Maybe it is because they require so much attention or maybe it is because of their unique beauty. What ever it is I knew I wanted to paint them to see if I could capture that elegance. For my composition, I decided to have the stems and leaves touch all four borders to create interesting negative shapes that would be painted with deep indigo. I knew that color would create high drama against the white flowers.

For the stems and leaves, I made sure that each one was a different size, shape, and color. Their sole purpose was to lead into the orchids without competing with them. It was important that they twist and turn to repeat the organic structure of the orchids. The softness of the flower petals is a combination of unpainted white paper and pastel colors with hard and soft edges. I used cobalt violet, cerulean blue, lemon yellow and yellow ochre. The single petal that comes in from the left border is covered with a light wash of cobalt violet and cerulean blue to set it apart from the the petals of the two orchids. The dark openings of the orchids was painted with alizarin crimson, mineral violet, cobalt violet, and lemon yellow. Yellow is opaque and I was able to paint thin lines and speckles right over the darker colors. The leaves and stems were painted with olive green, lemon yellow, cerulean blue and French ultramarine blue.

When I thought I was finished, I placed the painting on an easel and stepped back ten feet to see how it looked. From that distance I could see that the deep indigo created to big a value jump against the white orchids. I wanted a softer color to create a bridge between the background and the flowers but I knew I could not remove the indigo without making a mess so I decided to paint cerulean blue on top. This created a problem because the cerulean blue is not opaque and will not cover the darker blue. I painted layer after layer after layer of cerulean until it covered just enough to let some of the indigo show through while creating hard and soft edges. This created the bridge I wanted and finished the painting. Happy Painting! Dennis Pendleton