After the Rain

Study by Dennis Pendleton. Several gentle rains have encouraged spring blossoms to appear all over Colorado and I did this study to celebrate their beauty. Starting with the sky I painted cerulean blue to outline the top of the clouds and the blossoms from the largest tree. At this point, unpainted white paper became an important part of the composition. The thick clouds moving behind the trees get smaller and smaller as they drop down to the horizon and they are shaped by light values of cerulean blue. You can see how the unpainted white paper represents the clouds as well as some of the blossoms.

For the distant hill I used cerulean blue again and added a tiny bit of orange to separate it every so slightly from the blue sky. The pink blossoms are a mixture of cobalt violet with rose dore and for the darkest ones I added a touch of mineral violet. This color was placed carefully with the tip of my brush on the blossoming trees while again carefully leaving bits of unpainted white paper. In the distance there is a deep green evergreen tree that outlines one of the blossoming trees and it was painted with olive and perylene green. Next I added a light wash of yellow ochre and burnt sienna over the ground and when it was dry I painted the strokes of olive green leading up to the trail. Burnt sienna mixed with French ultramarine blue was used for the tree branches as they weaved through the blossoms. The light struck side of the big tree trunk is a gray mixed with cerulean blue and brilliant orange. This left the cast shadows which I painted in two colors. Where they crossed the grass I used perylene green and where they crossed the trail I used a middle value of the same mixture used for the trees.

Now look at the entire painting and you will see that the leaning trees and cast shadows form a circle. This is a composition artists use based on the letter O and it is designed too move the viewers eye around and into the painting. You can see how it frames the trees in the middle ground. Soon the blossoms will be replaced with leaves, summer will be here with different things for artists to paint. Happy Painting! Dennis Pendleton