Tapestry of Colors & Shapes

Watercolor Painting by Dennis Pendleton. This is another painting from my Denver Botanic Garden series. Once again I created my own border and then made that border part of the painting. I enjoy working with color schemes and a complimentary color scheme is where the two dominate colors are compliments of each other, in this case orange and blue. Actually a strict complimentary color scheme only uses the two complimentary colors so I call this a semi-complimentary color scheme because I included other colors. For me, adding other colors in supporting roles creates a more subtle and interesting composition. After all, it is my painting and I can do whatever I want.

In this part of the garden there were these wonderful big green leaves that flopped around among the flowers so that is where I started. Once again there is no real focal point in this painting but rather I created different "effects" to lead the viewers eye around and through the painting. An "effect" is where the artist places a light value next to a rich dark to command attention and there can be as many "effects" as the artist wants.

In a complicated painting like this, I complete different parts and keep moving around to different areas and the painting comes together like someone putting together a puzzle. Every artist is different and, in my case, this helps me relate one area to another as the painting comes together. Working with color families is also something I enjoy so the orange flowers are made up of yellow orange, orange, and red orange and the blue flowers are blue violet, blue, and blue green. I mixed the different oranges because I don't have orange on my palette. I do have three different blues, cerulean, cobalt, ultramarine, and I used all of them. The different greens are combinations of olive, lemon yellow, perylene green, cerulean blue, and ultramarine blue. The darkest darks in this painting are either perylene green or mineral violet.

My mind if full of ideas for more paintings in this series and I will start another one today and see where it leads me. Happy Painting! Dennis Pendleton