Watercolor Secrets

Watercolor Painting by Dennis Pendleton. When painting in watercolor we don't use white paint but rather we save the unpainted white paper. This takes planning ahead and it is worth it because the white paper looks very natural. For that very reason I love painting white flowers and there is no better place than Botanic Gardens in Denver.

I started by drawing the two white daisies in the upper right and then added drawings of the smaller daisies. Only a few pencil marks indicated the yellow flowers then I started painting. First I surrounded the two bigger daisies with dark greens and blues and then painted their centers with transparent yellow and burnt sienna. While studying the flowers and leaves in the garden I added bits of color to represent them. Making sure that the yellow flowers were smaller than the daisies, I painted them with lemon yellow, cadmium yellow and transparent yellow. Each of these yellows is a different temperature and it is fun to use color temperature at random when painting something as colorful as this. You can also see this in the leaves where I used warm and cool greens.

With the obvious daisies and yellow flowers it was easy to represent other flowers with bits of color like blue and blue violet. This gives the viewer something to do as they discover flowers that are not clearly defined. As much as possible I tried to paint the leaves with single strokes while using dry brush and scratching out for a few stems. Returning to the daisies, I added cerulean blue and cobalt violet to a few of the petals to keep them from looking flat. The blues are cerulean and French ultramarine and the greens were mixed with olive, perylene, and mineral violet. Every medium has its own special characteristics and you can see how well the unpainted white paper works for the daisies, much better than opaque white paint ever could.. Transparency is one of the beautiful characteristics of watercolor and when you use opaque paint that beauty is lost. Happy Painting! Dennis Pendleton