The Whispering Grove

Watercolor Painting by Dennis Pendleton. I spent a week in Steamboat Springs, Colorado teaching a watercolor workshop and this painting was my demonstration on the first day. It was wonderful being out of the city and in the mountains for a few days. Painting with friends was the best part! I try to set a time limit with my demo's so that I don't take up too much painting time. Consequently, I move quickly with a number 12 round travel brush. I talk about the advantages of using a bigger brush i.e. creating shapes like leaves with a single stroke because small brushes result in tighter paintings. With a bigger brush loaded with paint and water, you get more happy accidents and the paint and water will do some of the work for you.

These aspen trees were in front of pine trees which made a nice dark backdrop and I was able to paint them with different values of perylene green. The visible brushstrokes in that area are a result of maneuvering the larger brush full of water and paint. The aspen trees were painted with yellow ochre, cobalt violet and gray mixed with brilliant orange and cerulean blue. If you keep the values light, you can use more color in the light trees. Surrounding the base of the aspens were wild flowers of different colors so I used cerulean blue, French ultramarine blue, cobalt violet, lemon yellow, transparent yellow, and rose dore. I wanted to use splashes of color to liven up the painting without taking to much attention away from the trees.

Trying to make all the parts of a painting work together is always a consideration. A beautifully detailed flower wouldn't fit with the looser painting of trees and leaves. I usually don't know the proper names of the different floweers because I see them as bits of color that must be made to fit into the composition. I always allow myself to leave things out or move things in to make a better composition. In this case, the flowers were in the right place so I did very little editing. Please consider joining my workshop at Denver Botanic Gardens on August 16, 17, 18, 2024. Click Here for more information. Happy Painting! Dennis Pendleton