Beautiful Blooms

Watercolor Painting by Dennis Pendleton. This is the demo from the first day of my weekend workshop at Denver Botanic Gardens. Unfortunately one of the mixing trays from my palette is covering part of the lower area but nothing in life is perfect. It was such a fun weekend with talented students who worked hard and did some beautiful paintings. It is always fun to see how they improve from day to day.

With this demo, I talked about direct painting where I try to get the color, value, shape, and edges I want with each brush stroke rather than going back and "correcting" with more paint. This is a complicated technique but definitely worth the effort. As you get better at doing this, your paintings become richer and you can develop a looser style if that is your desire. Starting with the yellow gold flowers, I tried to paint each petal with a single brush stroke while using a number 12 round brush. With transparent yellow, lemon yellow, and cadmium yellow I allowed the colors to run together on the paper as the flowers developed. Burnt sienna and mineral violet were used for the centers and, because my paper was tipped at a 50 degree angle, gravity did some of the work for me. It is essential to get the right combination of water and paint because to much water will result in a mess and not enough will create to many hard edges.

Odd numbers are more pleasing to the eye so three yellow flowers made sense. I also explained that I saw the three flowers as one shape as they overlapped and melted into each other. Learning to see different parts as single shapes will help you to move forward and simplify your paintings. I enjoy leaving unpainted white paper as part of the composition because it forces me to consider the negative shapes and try to make them interesting. When used correctly, unpainted white paper will related the colors to the negative shapes and also add a sense of sunlight.

The Botanic Gardens are splendid right now and they will only get better for my last weekend workshop in August. You can find more information by Clicking Here. Happy Painting! Dennis Pendleton