Excitement With Color

I am in Phoenix attending a business workshop and seeing this painting has me wishing I was painting in Denver Botanic Gardens where the beauty is breathtaking and the subject matter is endless. My first summer weekend watercolor workshop is coming up fast and the dates are May 3, 4, & 5 and we will be painting in Botanic Gardens. If you are interested or have any questions send me an email to pendletonstudio@gmail.com. I actually did this painting as a demonstration in an earlier class in the gardens and I still remember what a beautiful day it was. The yellow hollyhocks were right in front of where I set up to paint and I used them to create depth by positioning them to overlap the foreground, middle ground, and background as they extended off the page at the bottom and top of the composition. The hollyhocks were painted with lemon yellow and cadmium yellow with small amounts of cobalt violet and for there centers I added a lot more violet to the mixture. Yellow and violet are complementary colors so they work well together. Because I wanted the background to recede I used olive green and ultramarine blue and allowed the colors to mix on the paper. The flowers in the foreground and middle ground are mostly little brushstrokes of rich colors surrounded by deeper greens. When painting in the gardens I often cut back on the amount of green and add more flowers or suggestions of flowers because I love filling my paintings with the rich colors that the gardens present in such endless variety. The two figures were added to give scale and I placed them in the middle ground so they would be interesting without dominating the painting. Please consider joining me on May 3, 4, & 5 so that we can paint together in Denver Botanic Gardens. Happy Painting! Dennis Pendleton