Yellow Muse

Watercolor Painting by Dennis Pendleton. I just finished the first of my Summer Weekend Garden Workshops and this was one of my demo's. It was a beautiful sunny morning with no wind and we set up our painting gear in the rose garden where I was attracted to the gorgeous yellow roses in all different stages of development. After a preliminary pencil drawing I started painting the yellow bud in the center of the three buds. Transparent yellow and yellow ochre were used and for the shadow areas I added cobalt violet to the mixture. Violet is the compliment of yellow and when mixed together they make a rich warm color of a slightly darker value. For the green leaves I mixed cerulean blue with lemon yellow. They are both cool colors and mix well together. As the leaves got darker I added olive green and French ultramarine blue.

Next I moved to the big yellow rose on the right and covered it completely with a light wash of transparent yellow which has a slight gold tint. When that was dry I showed the circular pattern with a mixture of transparent yellow and c0balt violet then added mineral violet to the mixture for the dark center. The leaves were painted with the same colors used for leaves earlier. As I painted the other three buds I was intent on showing them in different stages of development. To show that they were opening I used a combination of hard and soft edges along with some spattering.

As the morning sun moved across the sky there were cast shadows on my painting and I actually liked the effect so I painted a similar idea with a wash of cerulean blue, cobalt violet and yellow ochre. One never knows where inspiration will come from. The cafe was near by so we treated ourselves to delicious smoothies before painting again in the afternoon.

I have two more 2026 Weekend Garden Workshops scheduled for this summer, July 17, 18, 19 and August 14, 15, 16. You can sign up for 1, 2, or all 3 days and the prices are $95 for 1 day, $170 for 2 days and $225 for all 3 days. If you are interested send me an email to pendletonstudio@gmail.com. Happy Painting! Dennis