 Welcome to Monet Café. I'm artist Susan Jenkins. I think you're going to learn a lot in this lesson where I will talk about color and color temperature and also value and how it behaves in a landscape. And that's not all. You'll see me break out into a spontaneous puppy field painting. So come join the fun. If you would go ahead and like this video. Go ahead and subscribe if you haven't already. And if you hit the little bell next to the subscribe button you'll be notified of any future videos I post. I am so grateful to those of you who have decided to become patrons of mine on my Patreon page for only five dollars a month. You keep these free videos coming and you get extra content. So here we go. Learning about color temperature as it behaves in a landscape is so crucial to good painting. This is a graphic that I made and actually shared with my patrons on my Patreon page, an example of some of their extra goodies, and it shows how temperature behaves with respect to the horizon line. In general, color temperature in the foreground goes from warmer in the foreground to cooler as you approach the horizon line. Now, here's a bit of very basic color theory. Super easy. Basically, the color wheel can be divided into halves, six warm colors and six cool colors. So keep that in mind as I'm describing this example. I like to consider yellow as my starting point for warmth or the warmest tone. So when choosing colors for reds, red flowers, red poppies in this example, anything that is closer to yellow on the warm side will be warmer and anything that is closer to the violet is going to be cooler. So keep that in mind as I'm choosing and arranging some of these reds to create some red poppy flowers. Can you see here that this particular pink and this one too is a little more on the cooler side? I've also chosen some that are a little bit more neutral and a little lighter in value. I'll be talking about those principles as I paint as well. These are more neutral and I'd say they're they're kind of moving a little bit warmer in their color. So now let's take a look at this one. This one's definitely it's a darker value, but it's warmer. Can you see that? Now this one for sure, it's closer to some of the colors that are on the color wheel and I'm gradually getting a little bit warmer, perhaps a little lighter in value with some of these. This one's definitely warmer. And the goal with this is to keep in mind that as I showed you in the previous diagram that colors in the foreground, let's say red poppies, they're typically going to be a little warmer, the close poppies in the foreground and they'll gradually get a little cooler in the distance. And there are a few other things to keep in mind that I'll talk while we're painting such as light poppies in the distance that might have some bright sunlight on them might be a little warmer. And here's a little example of an exercise that I really recommend you give a try. I know some of you are beginners and you don't have a lot of colors to start with, but whatever reds you have, gather them together and then arrange them according to color and value. It'll be a lesson in itself. Now, I'm rearranging them on my palette here loosely. I do this a lot while I'm painting. I keep them in little groupings. And what I'm doing here is just going along with my graphic that I designed in making colors warmer, gradually going to cooler. Now, often I'll start with darker values too, because values are typically darker in the foreground and they gradually lighten up. They also gradually get more neutral, not as intense in color. Now, these are just generalities and often what I'll do too when creating flowers in the foreground, I'll lay a darker value down first and then I'll add my highlights or my lights. I gradually get a little lighter and the final strokes are kind of like that sunlight hitting on certain pedals. And then as you create more flowers as they recede into the distance, they're going to get a little bit cooler in color temperature and a little bit lighter in value, also a little more neutral like I said before. Now, don't worry if you don't have all of these colors to begin with. You can control some things with pressure as well. Just start making lighter strokes, really light as you get into the distance and it will create the pastel to appear a little bit lighter. And you can see here how I'm giving a little bit of this cooler reds as I'm gradually receding things into the distance. Obviously, flowers and elements are going to get smaller and eventually they will transform from vertical to horizontal bands. Have you ever noticed that fields of flowers, if you look in the distance, you don't see individual flowers. They gradually start to flatten out like the grasses in the distance. Now, this looks like a mess right now. And I actually just intended this to be a lesson in itself, but I couldn't help it. I had to end up creating a painting from this, believe it or not. Yes, I will create a painting from this mess, which actually shows you how versatile pastel papers are. Now, the same thing applies for my greens. I've got my greens going from warmer to cooler. And here I'm applying the same principle. Typically, values are darker in the foreground. This is just like creating a loose idea of grasses. So I'm going to get some darker values. And these are a little warmer. I'm starting warmer. And then I'll gradually let my strokes become cooler and shorter. Grasses don't look as tall. And then they'll gradually flatten out in the distance. And also just like with the flowers, values are going to continue to get lighter. So keep that in mind from the foreground to the horizon line, warmer to cooler, darker to lighter, also more brilliant to more neutral. And with respect to elements larger to smaller, I could try to make one graphic that had all of those on it. Now, I will be showing you a graphic in a minute that talks about value in the landscape. And again, if you're a patron of mine, you will have all of these in the post. I had it in another lesson, but I'll give it to you again in this post. So now I'm just loosely blending with my fingers to give the idea of grasses. Now, like I said, I couldn't help it. I'm like, I got to make something out of this. And as I stated before, this will really show you the versatility of pastel papers, these sanded papers. They really have a lot of forgiveness if you make mistakes. Now, you don't want to overlay or and keep correcting and keep correcting, but you do have the ability to layer and relay or over areas. That's why we can often bury flowers after you've created them. Created them, you can put some grasses on top of them to make them look buried. Now you can't really do this as much with unsanded papers. So keep that in mind. And I didn't forget about the sky on my graphic, the upper part above the horizon line. I'm going to be talking about that after I create more of these flowers and grasses. And this is all real time, by the way. And I would say this is an education for especially beginner artists to learn a little bit more. I don't like to use the word color theory. It sounds like school sounds scary. I like to use the term color illusions. That's what we're doing in art. We're taking color and we're creating an illusion of depth. We're taking a three dimensional world and putting it onto a two dimensional surface. So here you can see how I'm just making loose strokes suggesting that's a word I like to really emphasize because we are suggesting things often in paintings rather than spelling everything out. So the end result should be a few poppies that are the star of the show and others that are supporting characters. And if you're just starting with pastel painting or any painting in general, a lot of these principles apply across various mediums. Try not to get overwhelmed as I did when I first got started. I am the type of person where I want to learn it all and I want to learn it in a day. And it just doesn't happen that way with learning anything new really. I mean it's like when I was learning guitar. I tried and tried and tried on the first day so hard to hold certain chords and I literally played until my fingers got so sore and literally bled. So understand that you're not going to learn it all in a day and you're probably going to get frustrated if you try to. So try to just learn a little bit and practice what you learn instead of jumping on ahead to something else. And eventually it does all come together. And another thing I suggest for beginner artists is to do exercises. Think of painting as exercises and fun rather than thinking you have to have an end result of something that's going to compare to someone who's been painting for years. Again it doesn't happen that way either. So make small goals for yourselves. Have fun and just do a lot of small studies. You're learning with every single painting and I don't think there's ever a failed painting because even if you don't like what came out, you learn something. Here you can see I'm adding a few darks to the centers of the poppies. I believe that was an eggplant color. It's the Terry Ludwig eggplant. It's an awesome dark. It looks black but it's really dark, purple. Now I have these Prismacolor new pastels. Built in U, not N-E-W. New pastels. They're still in the soft pastel family but they're a little harder and they're in these long rectangular sticks. They're great for making stems and for making grasses. I wanted to keep these very gestural and loose. Now you can see I haven't even filled in some of the grasses on the left side here but as I continue you'll watch me do that once again demonstrating the beautiful layering ability of pastels and how often you don't have to be so afraid when working on these sanded surfaces because you have a lot of flexibility. Now you can see I've used primarily greens and reds. Nice complementary colors but if you want to give a little pop of color try grabbing a brilliant blue or purple. Often when there's highlights or elements of light and shadow with things that are dark or black, purples and blues can make a nice little punchy color to add. Now you can see I've just gradually blended into my example of all of that especially on the left side. I just had a gradation from darker to lighter and warmer to cooler and I can even layer over top of that and have them look like buried flowers. So it's a lot of fun once you learn your tools. That's another part of painting. You not only have to you know figure out some of these painting techniques and ways that things behave in physics of the world how things just physically behave, you also have to learn your tools whether you're painting with pastels or oil or acrylic or watercolor. They all have their different little abilities and downfalls so you've got to figure those things out and again don't get frustrated. It all comes in time and before you know it, it'll all start coming together and things won't feel so forced or that you had to try so hard. And like I said let's now talk about color temperature in the sky with respect to the horizon line. It's kind of the opposite. It goes cooler at the top to warmer towards the horizon line. Now I chose this is the Jack Richardson landscape set. I love this set. Now like I said on the cool side skies are usually cooler right? So purple is going to be your coolest color going up towards the yellow side which gets warmer with respect to blue colors. Now I'm going to pull out a few colors to show you here. That one's pretty close to what is on the actual graphic. Here's a combination of blues. Now when you're first starting you might not be able to see the subtle differences but some of these are cooler and some are warmer. Once again using yellow as my side that or my point that's warmer closer to green and down towards the purple gets cooler. These are definitely cooler blues and now there's a few in my hand here that are a little bit warmer getting a little closer to yellow. That one is still pretty cool and it's also lighter in value and this one's getting a little warmer and this one too a lighter value. Now a warmer blue, think of it like a teal or a turquoise. It's definitely got a little bit more yellow in it and this is the graphic I mentioned earlier that talks about values in a landscape. In the foreground things go darker to lighter towards the horizon line and in the sky they go darker to lighter. These are kind of the same darker to lighter as everything meets the horizon line it gets lighter. As an example I've taken some blues that are of a similar color but are gradually getting a little lighter in value and now let me talk about this a little more as I paint and add some color to the sky. I'm grabbing a blue that is a pretty light value already. Now I want to stress this when I say the sky goes darker in the heavens up high to lighter I don't mean super dark. Okay it kind of depends on your sky also. So this as you can see I want the sky to be light and bright and pretty on a sunny day so I wouldn't have grabbed one of those darker blues but this blue is I'd say definitely cooler than this blue which is really more of a teal or a turquoise that's what I mean by a warmer blue and so I am just kind of gradually melding these together. Notice how I took the first blue down even to the horizon line and then I just layered a little bit of the teal on top of it. So that gives you if you squint your eyes a little bit of an idea of the warmth that can happen at the horizon line with a sky like a daylight sky and I liked the poppy field with just the sky but I just thought I got to add some trees some other compositional elements. So I decided to grab a dark green now with respect to value things that are perpendicular to the horizon or I could say just vertical vertical elements are typically darker in value than horizontal elements you know a field of grass in the distance especially is horizontal it's going to be lighter in value trees are almost always a little darker in the composition and they gradually get lighter as they go into the distance like anything else just like I said with values things get lighter as they go into into the distance here you can see I'm accentuating a little bit more of a lighter turquoisey teal color in the sky now I'm adding a little bit of lighter green I like working dark to light I'll put my dark base down first and then I'll gradually lighten the layers now let me show you here what I mean about color temperature cooling off in the distance okay now those trees are going to get a little cooler in the distance notice the foreground trees the big ones I added a little warmer green as highlights for the leaves this this is definitely a cooler more neutral teal and do you see how that immediately made those trees feel further away now I'm using a cooler green here once again pushing a little bit more towards blue and this is a nice kind of middle green it's not too warm and it's not too cool so it's good for the middle ground some of you may have heard in my lessons an expression that it's just become kind of my thing to say that painting isn't really hard once you know the rules there's just really a few rules of illusion and when you figure it out you can paint now here's like I was saying I gradually lighten things up in my final layers that sunlight is hitting some of these poppy petals and so what did I do I got a little lighter now these poppies even though the top ones the large top ones they look like they're in the middle ground they're really still kind of in the foreground because they're just tall okay so keep that in mind too they're still going to have warmth to them because they're they're tall flowers that are still kind of in the foreground and now I'm just adding a little bit of a depth to some of the roots of those trees in the distance now here is a really good example of how things cool off in the distance I want to suggest some trees that are way far away look how cool I got so often a really neat blue teal can be nice for a pop of color and some nice distant trees I'm really hoping this has been helpful especially to some beginner artist I love reading your comments and some of you are so hungry to learn and I love teaching so we make a good pair so if any of you guys had a little aha moment or you really were like wow I learned so much please share that with me in the comments it not only inspires me it encourages me to keep these videos coming I love to help you guys out and it really blesses me when I read what you have to say now I'm making some large strokes here like I said you can with the layering ability of some of these surfaces you can bury some of the flowers that's what happens in nature they're not all sticking on top many flowers are buried and that gives a nice feeling of depth now I'm just using a paper towel here to kind of soften some of the edges and there you go you can even take something that begin as an exercise and turn it into a painting and if you're a patron of mine you will get all of the graphics that I talked about in this lesson if you'd like to become a patron it's only five dollars a month I have a link at the end of this video and in the description of this video so I hope you enjoyed this if you learned something and you'd like to just give a tip for this video there is an ability now underneath the videos there's a little thing that says thanks and you can give a little tip and you also get recognized in the comment section it'll say your name and your tip so thanks guys be blessed and as always happy painting