Learning Something New

Watercolor Painting by Dennis Pendleton. John Yardley is one of my favorite artists and in his book "John Yardley a personal view" he talks about how he mixes opaque white with other colors to get certain effects with lighter values. He says he never likes using masking fluid because of the hard edges that it leaves and that has been my experience as well. I was curious to learn more about this technique so I copied this still life from his book. I have used opaque white before but never liked the results because I was taught to leave unpainted white paper. I hadn't thought of mixing opaque white with other colors.

The first thing I learned is how fast opaque white can mess up your palette. I learned the hard way that it is better to have a separate palette for when you are mixing colors with opaque white so I used a butchers tray. Starting at the top I painted the violet flower with cobalt violet and mineral violet then surrounded it with a deep value of perylene green. Next I mixed opaque white with cobalt violet and added a few more details and this enabled me to paint right over the perylene green. Moving to the right I painted the curtains with a very light wash of cerulean blue then painted the second violet flower.

The darkest dark that continues to run through the painting is perylean green and mineral violet. I managed to save white paper for the daisies and painted their shadow shapes with cerulean blue. When I was finished with the painting I went back and added a petal to one of the daisies with cerulean blue and opaque white just to see how it would work. For the green flower I mixed cerulean blue and lemon yellow then moved to olive green and olive mixed with French ultramarine blue for the darker values. Next I mixed olive green with opaque white and added a few more details. The vase is a light and dark mixture of burnt sienna and French ultramarine blue and the tray is the same mixture in three values. The small vase n the window sill is mostly unpainted white paper with with a very light wash of cerulean blue and the plant is two values of olove green.

So what did I learn: 1. If you are going to mix opaque white with different colors use a separate palette. 2. If you are going to mix opaque white with other colors you should practice on a separate piece of watercolor paper to decide how much white you want to use. 3. Being able to use light colors over dark colors gives you a since of freedom that is not usually associated with watercolor. 4. Use this technique sparingly because to much will be obvious and wreck your painting. Another thing I admire about John Yardley's paintings is his fearless use of rich dark darks but that is a lesson for another day. Happy Painting! Dennis Pendleton