Appreciating a New Brush

Watercolor Painting by Dennis Pendleton. Each day in my Botanic Gardens Workshops I try to do something a little different. This day we all painted at a big wooden table with a large umbrella that created plenty of shade. The garden right in front of us was spectacular with a burst of colors and I decided to paint it with a couple of figures in the background. I wanted the two figures to be visible while blending in with the flowers and trees. We studied figures moving around in the garden to get an idea of the proper size in relation to the flowers.

I had just purchased a set of three travel brushes which I laid out on the table. The smallest brush was a number 4 which I thought I would not use because I am always telling my students to use bigger brushes. I deliberately used it for a few marks of color and found myself using it more and more. Realizing I could take more time with the demo because we were all sitting at the table, I worked slower than usual while using all three brushes. The other artists were painting along with the same view or something close and I was able to explain what I was doing as I painted. I found it relaxing to paint slowly without worrying about the time. We talked and painted for a couple hours as time slipped away and, when I was finished, I had a new appreciation for the small brush.

Honoring my mood, in this case feeling more relaxed with less pressure to finish in a shorter time frame, resulted in a painting quite different from the one I did the day before. The upper third of the composition with the dark trees is the background and a tiny sliver of an area with the figures is the middle ground. This left the bottom two thirds of the painting for the foreground so that I could show off the flowers. This arrangement allowed the figures to settle into the garden without being to important. I wanted the viewer to move around in the garden before discovering the two people and I made sure the pathway did not lead back to them. I have always loved painting this area where the different big trees present a backdrop for the flowers and I made sure that each tree trunk was a little different with some coming forward with others fading into the background. Finally, I used the little touch of blue sky in the upper left corner to give a sense of air and atmosphere.

Olive green and perylene green were used for the dark trees and their trunks are grays mixed with cerulean blue and brilliant orange. For the distant yellow flowers, I used lemon and, for the yellow flowers in the foreground, I used cadmium and transparent yellows. The two biggest flowers are a mixture of cobalt violet and rose dore with cadmium red and yellow ochre for other flowers. The green leaves were painted with olive green, cerulean blue, and French ultramarine blue. It was fun allowing my mood to dictate my style of painting and I plan on doing more of that in the future. Happy Painting! Dennis Pendleton