The Missing Element

Watercolor Painting by Dennis Pendleton. This is the Edgar Couse House in Taos New Mexico and it is one of our favorite places to paint in my Spring Watercolor Workshop. I have painted this view several times over the years but have never been completely satisfied with my results. When we were there last May people from the house were sitting on the porch and I realized that is what was missing in my earlier efforts. There is a very active staff and seeing them sitting on the porch gave life to the subject. I liked the fact that they were in the shade because they appeared as simple silhouettes while the rest of the scene was bathed in the famous Taos sunlight.

I have seen pictures of the early Taos Society of Artists sitting on this porch and over a hundred years later the same blue chairs are still there. A lot of the grounds are covered with flowers and fortunately the red poppies were in full bloom. I like to think about how many artists and patrons of the arts have walked up those old stone steps.

I started with cerulean blue for the sky then painted the distant tree with olive green and perylene. The adobe wall in front of the tree is a mixture of cobalt violet and yellow ochre while the sagging roof is gray from a mixture of cerulean blue and brilliant orange. The wall under the sagging roof is cerulean blue with a tiny bit of olive green. The figures, which were the missing element in my earlier paintings, are a dark mixture of French ultramarine blue and burnt sienna. The chairs are cerulean blue and the dark part of the wall is a mixture of Indian red and mineral violet. The white section of the wall and the white pillars are mostly unpainted white paper with a light shade of gray and the stone steps are a combination of warm and cool grays. I used olive, lemon yellow, perylene and French ultramarine blue for the different greens and the poppies are cadmium red with mineral violet centers. I have been studying the paintings of John Yardley and how he fearlessly used rich darks and I can see his influence in this painting. Happy Painting! Dennis Pendleton