Sketchbook Workshop

Watercolor Painting by Dennis Pendleton. Yesterday, my Sketchbook Workshop went to Denver Historic Park which is a beautiful green belt with gorgeous restored Victorian houses and big trees lined on each side. Because it is a green belt, instead of a street, there was no traffic so it was very quiet and peaceful. I talked about not painting entire houses but rather choosing an interesting part of one of the Victorians and creating a vignette to capture the personality of the house without painting the whole thing. Sketchbooks, because of their smaller size, are perfect for vignettes. The house I chose to paint was full of angles with lots of "gingerbread" decoration and the drawing took some real concentration. After getting the little window at the top in the location I wanted and the right size, I used it to "sight measure" the rest of the drawing.

As I began painting, I put in the blue sky and some of the leaves and branches. Next the shingled roof was painted around the green leaves and a cooler green mixed with olive green and perylene green was used for the tree behind the house. The roof was a combination of burnt sienna and French ultramarine blue. The rest of the house was painted with different shades of gray mixed with cerulean blue and brilliant orange. I found this to be boring so I glazed rose dore over the gray to warm it up. Rose dore is a delicate, transparent red that is perfect for glazing. The window panes on the front of the house are a combination of cerulean blue and mineral violet and the trim around the windows is unpainted white paper.

The last thing I did, after looking at my painting from a distance, was to check the values. I could see it needed some richer darks to complete the value range so I darkened some of the roof, and the areas in shadow. That was one of the things I talked about all day, painting rich darks because watercolor often dries lighter when painting outside in the natural sunlight. It was exciting for me to see how much everyone improved each day as they learned the joy of putting down ideas and memories in their sketchbooks. Happy Painting! Dennis Pendleton