Beautiful Day In The Gardens

Today was the third and final day of my May Botanic Gardens Workshop. I will have another workshop each month this summer and you can find out the details on my website dennispendleton.com under classes and workshops. This painting is a demonstration that I did in the afternoon. I was still working on the painting when this picture was taken and I did a little more work on it. However, I think this photo shows the essence of the finished painting. It was a glorious day and the artists in the workshop all impressed me with how hard they worked and how much progress they made. The most fun was seeing all the paintings at the end of the day. It is true that you can setup 10 different artists in front of the same subject and you will get 10 totally different paintings. Gorgeous flowers were everywhere and I decided on these tulips because they were in different stages of life and the shapes and colors were to good to pass up. I decided on three because odd numbers work well in paintings and I was able to arrange a composition that I found interesting. Pink is a color that is difficult to mix in watercolor but I was able to get what I wanted with cobalt violet and rose dore. With different shades of perylene green, a color that I love, I was able to create the dark background that showed off the tulips. In a painting like this it is important to work on the background and the subject at the same time so they develop together. This will result in a painting that holds together rather than one where the subject and the background have little or nothing in common. The weather was perfect, the flowers were intoxicating and my fellow painters made this a day to remember.

Happy Painting! Dennis Pendleton