Posing In The Window

Watercolor Painting by Dennis Pendleton. Starting February 4th I will be teaching an online class titled "Painting Window Treasures In Watercolor" at the Art Students League Of Denver. I have had this Japanese Figurine for a while and decided to pose her in my studio window. The class will be about sunlight coming through a window and the effects it has on objects and the interior. We will be painting subjects like and apple on the window sill of an old farmhouse, and a beautiful vase of flowers basking in the sunlight from the window.

This setup interested me because of all the details in the figure surrounded by the shapes and angles from the window and the wall to my patio that you see through the window. My biggest concern was how the sunlight affected all these things. Starting with the figure, I left unpainted white paper for her face and hands then painted the subtle shadows on her face with a mixture of cobalt violet and rose dore. Her eyes and eyebrows are a mixture of burnt sienna and French ultramarine blue and her lips are cadmium red. For the black of her hair I again used burnt sienna and French ultramarine blue with an emphasis on the blue. The details in her headdress are lemon yellow and cobalt violet. For her outfit I used different shades of black to capture the folds and then used yellow and cobalt violet for the gold parts. Her umbrella is cadmiun red and yellow ochre.

The window sill is unpainted white paper with different grays mixed with cerulean blue, brilliant orange, cobalt violet, yellow ochre and rose dore. The wall is in shadow and I painted it with a grayed red because I planned on painting my patio wall a grayed green. This is a more subtle way of using complimentary colors. The railing at the top of the patio wall is a very light shade of gray green because I wanted the colors outside to be cool and the colors inside to be mostly warm. If I got the values right I knew this would work. My house is surrounded by trees and you can see them through the openings in the patio wall. They were mixed with perylene green and cerulean blue. My studio has several windows facing different directions and I look forward to painting more still life's in different lighting with objects that I have collected. Happy Painting! Dennis Pendleton