Creative Spaces

Watercolor Painting by Dennis Pendleton. Starting March 7th, I am teaching an ONLINE ZOOM CLASS at the Art Students League of Denver titled "Painting The Artist's Studio In Watercolor" and I did this painting from looking at different artists studios. Remembering different artist's studio's that I have visited was fun such as Don Stone's studio on Monhegan Island off the coast of Maine, Lowell Ellsworth Smith's studio in Hudson Ohio and George Carlson's studio when he lived here in Colorado. It always fascinates me to see where other artists work and the different things they collect. When I visited Ned Jacobs studio, he had a wonderful collection of American Indian clothing and other memorabilia from when he lived on an Indian reservation in Montana. Each studio was different but there were some things in common such as paintings and drawings in different stages of development, art books, paintings by other artists, clutter, north light windows and color corrected lighting,

This painting shows some of the things I have collected and things I like to paint. I placed them in front of a big north light window. Some of the studio's I have had since I moved to Denver were in older buildings that were not in the best of condition and I represented that with the plaster pealing on the walls and the ramshackle framing of the window. The painting to the right of the window represents artwork that I have collected from other artists.

The wall is a mixture of yellow ochre, cobalt violet and cerulean blue where I let the colors mix right on the paper. The clutter under the table is different grays mixed with cerulean blue plus red and ultramarine blue plus burnt sienna. For the items on the table, it was important to have a combination of hard, soft and blurred edges so that no particular item commanded to much attention. It also added to the feeling of a dusty studio where things were constantly moved around. The daisies in the bouquet are unpainted white paper and the other flowers and leaves are cerulean blue and olive green. The pitcher holding the paint brushes is Indian red, ultramarine blue and rose dore. The bottle on the left is olive green and cerulean blue and the bottle on the right is manganese blue. Lemon yellow and olive green were used for the pear and the earth tones of burnt sienna, raw umber, and yellow ochre were used for the other objects.

The ONLINE ZOOM CLASS starting March 7th meets once a week for four weeks from 1:00 - 3:30 and there is still space available. You can join with the Art Students League of Denver website so sign up and join me to paint the special places where artist's work. Happy Painting! Dennis Pendleton