Excitement With Flowers

I am in Steamboat Springs Colorado teaching a watercolor workshop on painting flowers. I used to live in Steamboat and it has been like old home week. The students are fabulous and we are having a ball. This painting was actually done in Botanic Gardens in Denver but it is very much like what we are working on and the workshop continues through today. We have been studying how all the parts of the painting relate to each other and how flowers are a good excuse to use lots of rich colors. Watercolor is the perfect medium for flower painting because you can let the water, paint, and paper do some of the work as the colors mix on the paper. In this painting I created my own borders with a pencil to illustrate that you are not confined by the borders of the paper and you can paint in and out of the pencil line as you see fit. The effective use of white paper is another thing I am stressing in this workshop. As you look over this painting you can see how the bits of unpainted paper actually make the painting sparkle. I decided to have warm colors dominate the composition with yellow, yellow greens, gold, red orange, etc. and I used the cool colors blue, blue violet, and blue green as accents. Another reason why I like painting flowers is the opportunity to use expressive brushwork. Visible brushstrokes abound in this painting and they add vitality and excitement to this colorful subject. The workshop ends this afternoon and I am already missing the students. I can hardly wait for late August when I return to Steamboat Springs to teach a plein air watercolor workshop. Happy Painting! Dennis Pendleton