 Welcome to Monet Café. I'm artist Susan Jenkins and this is the third in a series of dramatic sky paintings. I love dramatic skies. And if you haven't subscribed to this channel I hope you will. We have a lot of free learning and a lot of fun. Here's the reference image that's from a site called unsplash.com. You can find me at Susan Jenkins Artists. They have great copyright free reference images. The photographer is Zakaria Zayane and he is from Morocco. I will provide a link to this photo in the description of this video. Alright now what am I working on today? The pastel surface is pastel matte. I love this paper and I like to get it in the white. It comes in other colors but with white I can tone it whatever color I want. Now what on earth am I doing with a painting of roses? This painting is part of proof that you can repurpose pastel paper. This is the third not only in the dramatic sky series but in the repurposed recycled pastel papers. And this pastel matte is so water friendly you can run it under the sink and wash off any pastel. Now the reason the roses are still showing is because I did a watercolor under painting. And watercolor basically stains the surface so you can't remove it. But all is not lost. I can still paint on this even with the image that is showing. I decided I was going to try acrylic ink. I thought it might be a little too light. I decided to use this golden fluid acrylics. The color is quinacridone nickel azo gold. I will have a link to this in the description of this video. Now I chose this color because of this beautiful orangey gold. But it's very translucent so you can still see the image through it. I wasn't even sure if the pastels would apply with a thick application like this. I didn't even add water. Now I'm using my basic little pastel set. I call it my in-between set. It's where I put pastels in between paintings rather than going ahead and putting them back in my studio set. I'm still out of town since my mother's passing away. I'm still staying with my dad. So I'm working with my studio on the go. Now this is just a little harder pastel. They're called Prismacolor new pastels. And I'm using it to sketch in the large shapes. I'm not getting too detailed at this point. But because of the ghost image that's there I needed some sort of roadmap because it can be a little confusing. But you just learn to tune out the image that's there. And before you know it when you block in the big shapes you're just ready to go. It's you're not even paying attention to the image that's underneath. And by the way like I always say use whatever you have. Artists learn to be very resourceful so you don't have to go by all these products. You can probably make something else work with what's already in your studio. And here I'm using a darker pastel to block in some of the darker shapes. You're going to see me blending in a minute. I use a blending tool that I'll describe that I had to find once again because I'm away from my studio and I forgot some of my supplies. But basically I'm just getting in a little value study and getting my darkest darks. Now look at the reference image. Obviously that rock is the darkest dark. But the foreground is also pretty dark. We've got a little thin almost like a little thin sheet of a wave coming up on the surface so I didn't want to cover all of that. Now I'm blocking in the clouds that are darker and I almost always say in my videos with pastels it's best to work dark to light or put your darker layers down first because I can always lighten them up. I typically will put in like I'm doing now. I know these clouds are not going to be this dark. They're not going to be as dark as the rock as you can see in the reference image. But I'm blocking them in knowing that other pastels I layer on top are going to give them not only the colors that I want but it's going to knock that value down a bit lighter to make them appear more cloud like. Now here's my little blending tool. I found in one of my dad's boxes of something he had delivered some little packing peanuts. I typically like to use. Sometimes I'll use a chamois cloth. It works great on this pastel matte paper. I didn't have any of that. Sometimes I'll use a piece of pipe foam insulation that you can buy at a hardware store. It's just a nice little blending tool. But these little packing peanuts worked great and I loved the size. They're the perfect little size almost the size of pastels often I break my pastels in half to be about this size and they kind of get into all the little spaces. Now see how I'm I'm actually grabbing some of the pastel and using it it'll still be on the packing peanut to make lighter values other places in the painting. Now I'm back to a dark I think this is a dark dark but then I gradually am going to get lighter values at that bank of whether it's rocks in the distance but it actually looked like it was kind of like a city like there's a coastline wrapping around the water and you'll see at the end where I decided to add some little lights like there might be little people camping or little houses back there and I thought that added a nice touch and I always love a reference image that has a sense of depth to me it was much more interesting to have those far distant rocks or cityscape whatever than it would have benefit was just a flat line so I think it added depth and interest to the image overall. Now I think I actually am yeah I'm actually using that darkest dark and I'm not doing a very heavy touch to this a light touch but I'm going to lighten it up with another pastel just like I'm going to do the clouds you see once I've blended the clouds they actually already look more cloud like and now I'm using kind of a magenta tone I'm getting in like I like to say first you get in your big shapes then you get in your big colors and block it off and in areas then you can go in and work on the details so right now I'm kind of zoning out and I'm just seeing value and color and sometimes I'll do something I call it color notes and it's just a little reminder to myself and that's a reminder that the sun where the sun is shining it is going to be lighter on the water down there that's why I put that little orange down there now remember when I said I like to put the darker values down first and then get to the lighter values I noticed that the sun I could have just grabbed a really light yellowy super light yellow but I thought it would be a lot more interesting the sun actually did have if I looked closely subtleties of other colors in it so that's why I'm getting down kind of some oranges and pinks in there and then I'll add me a little mark of bright yellow later to indicate the lightest part of the sun and I also like I said before I wasn't totally sure of how the pastel mat was going to layer would it receive a lot of layers first of all I repurposed it I washed the original pastel off then I washed it in the sink then I added the golden fluid acrylic on it would it receive a lot of layers and so I was kind of testing my son here to see how it was going to work and it did work I I actually even at the end of the painting I I got another little bit of really bright even brighter than this like a whitish yellow down and it worked quite well so another experiment gone right thank goodness right and by the way I've only sped this up slightly so you can still follow me but you won't have to watch every little stroke and the video would result in being you know a couple of hours long so that's why sometimes I'll just speed it up a bit and I feel like you can with these YouTube videos you can pause it actually I think you might be able to do some kind of a slow-mo feature on on YouTube I'm not sure I'll have to check that out but now as you can see like I said before I'm using other pastels to layer on top of my my dark cloud shapes that I had made another thing that I like to do that I've mentioned in the previous two dramatic sky paintings like I said this is the third not only on repurposed pastel paper the other papers were the first one was on Sennelier La Carte pastel card it's not water-friendly but I brushed off the previous painting and created this painting the second surface was you art 400 brushed off a previous sunflower painting and painted this dramatic skies so this was proof that you can take a painting you're not happy with and scrub it off in some cases even wash it and reuse the paper so back to my point in all three of these lessons I'd like to share how my strategy is to give some harmony to the sky and the land and to do that I incorporate some of the same colors the color palette feels harmonious so I will take colors from the sky and add it to the foreground or to the water and vice versa so when you're using a reference image that has a sky it doesn't just have to be water it could be a field it's usually more painterly and beautiful to me if you pull those colors from the sky a bit down into the land and like I said vice versa it creates congruency and harmony in the painting you can probably also see that now that I've added a few things we are almost totally zoning out on the former image that was there and it actually kind of worked in my favor how I turned my paper that some of the lighter areas of the original image were in the areas of the sun and the water in this image so that worked quite well even though I do layer over those now I'm just kind of getting me some little kind of almost sketchy marks to remember where this little thin sheet of water is coming up onto the land and hopefully you can see in the reference image that there's like two levels of that there's the one that's further up on the land closer to the rock and it's kind of like one of the waves that has receded and it's it's a little bit lighter than the the ground the sand that's in the foreground the second one is like a second wave that's receding and it's the one that the sun is really reflecting on it's not quite as dry as the one that's on the land so it's really got a lot of light and pinks and you actually see the sun's reflection in that second one that you'll see me develop soon I noticed that there was like a haze in the sky right above the horizon line where that either the rocks or the city or whatever you imagine that to be so I wanted it's a little bit darker in value than what's so bright around the sun and I'm using a neutral pastel here and this is again just kind of blocking in but I will eventually make that area brighter underneath the sun just keep in mind that the elements around the sun are naturally and logically going to be lighter in value and brighter and lighter in color so you know and then eventually things that go away from the sun from the horizon line perspective are going to get a little bit more neutral and not quite as bright all right now I'm using my little handy-dandy blending tool to kind of blend in that one thin sheet of a wave that has lapped up onto the shore and this blending tool really kind of flattens it out and makes it more realistic and believable as a thin wave now this is still the blocking in phase notice I still have areas that aren't covered so I'm still thinking of value and color and getting it down to where I cover the majority of the surface before I get to any specific detail and again I noticed that the water that's a little further away from the sun in this area I'm working on is a little darker and cooler that's another thing I didn't mention before things away from the sun are going to be cooler typically in color temperature and the reason is they're not near the sun the sun warms things up so it's so great that a lot of these things with painting are just logical you know if you just turn your brain on and paint you're like oh that makes sense so I really liked this blue here's another little sort of an illusion that happens often when you're painting often we look at a color that we pick up in our hand and it may seem to be the exact color that you need you go and even just put it up to your painting and you can instantly see it may either look darker or lighter or brighter in color or duller in color and that's because color and value is relative it's relative to what surface it's on and in this case of course I already have the beautiful glowing warm underpainting that's going to influence what the color looks like when I put it down and I also have a lot of dark things in the image like the rocks in the foreground so that influences how these colors and values look when you put them down so always kind of hold it up test it sometimes you can even make a little mark to test it and it may be totally different than what you thought when you walked over to your pastel palette and picked it up and so a lot of this is just kind of trial and error and playing with color and it's a lot of fun really it's like I said there's so many neat illusions that happen with color and value as you're painting a good analogy of this has have you ever tried to repaint a room yourself or house yourself and you go into the store Lowe's or Home Depot or wherever your store is and whatever country we have people all over the world and Monique have a watching and I don't like to be so egocentric that it's all America so whatever hardware store you have you go you pick out some paint looks like the perfect color for your wall you bring it home all my goodness all of a sudden this color you thought was a nice neutral gray has a green tint or it may have a pink tint and you're like it didn't look that way at all in the store well it all has to do with lighting and surrounding colors and values so that's exactly what's happening when we're painting and we have these little color value challenges that you know it's not that hard to do just bring it up to your painting and make a little mark or hold it up and test it and you'll be able to pick the right color and value as you pay attention to that now I'm just using you can see my little new pastel now I am before I block in some of these areas I wanted to get a little bit better roadmap as to where some of these waves are notice in the reference image underneath the wave we've got the sun in the back right so as the wave is crashing the side that's closer to the viewer that part that's kind of underneath the crashing wave is going to be a little bit darker in value so once again I'm establishing that and just like the clouds they won't end up as dark as I put them down but I will layer on them to get them the right color and value on top of this little bit of a darker base and by the way as you can see here some of this footage is real time but in sections I do speed it up once again to help the video not to be so incredibly long this is the end of the commentary portion of this video but keep watching because you're going to see me create the entire painting here to some lovely music here on Monet Cafe but this is also the portion where my patrons from my patreon page I'll explain what that is in a minute we'll get the real-time footage from here out all of the remaining footage will be real time for my patrons and a patron basically is someone who supports this channel Monet Cafe it really helps me to keep producing these free videos also get better equipment and it's also a way that a patron can get some extra content and often I like to do that I give them not only extra content from some of the videos some extra real time sometimes extra commentary they also get to share their images with me their finished paintings we have a homework album I have a lot of other fun things that we do I have a page exclusively an Instagram page exclusive to my patrons I have a Facebook group exclusive to my patrons I have a discord group a discord server that that's where my patrons really just enjoy each other and learn from each other it's really really just such a great place for people to congregate and just talk about art like the concept of Monet has always been get yourself a cup of coffee and hang out with some other artistically-minded people and have some fun so to become a patron it's $5 a month once again it does support this channel for a price of a cup of coffee basically isn't that sad that sometimes a cup of coffee is like $5 and I want to send a special shout out to my patrons and thank you so much for my existing patrons your support has meant so much to me during this time of my mother's passing like I said before it was pretty unexpected she's had some health challenges over the past couple of years but it was a stroke and it was definitely not something we saw coming and if you're a patron of mine you know that at the same time simultaneously to this happen my husband and I have been caring for my mother-in-law my his mom in our home who has terminal cancer we have a hospice care and she's come to live with us in our home so while we were doing that my own mother passed away they live three hours away so I'm here at my father's home my mother and father's home just helping him to get established in living life on his own here and fortunately my sister and brother-in-law live across the street so they work during the day but that will be you know nice so anyway not to get on a tangent but my point is that during this time being away from my home studio I've actually had to close or it's called putting your Etsy shop in vacation mode where I sell my original paintings so my Etsy shop is in vacation mode if you click on it whenever you see the link at the end of this video or wherever I will reopen my Etsy shop when I return home but all of these paintings will be available in my Etsy shop so my patrons and their support has really helped me as I've had to close down or not be able to have some of the other income sources I had so God bless you patrons thank you so much and it has been a true blessing in many more ways than financial because you guys are so encouraging and such a beautiful part of my life and I just want to thank you all personally God bless you patrons so that's the perfect segue into this portion which will be real-time patreon-only content and once again Monet cafe I will always be bringing these free videos for you enjoy this music while I paint keep in mind some of the things I've already mentioned as to my strategies also don't go anywhere I will be back at the end of the video now here's that music I promised a couple of minutes ago I can't quit talking to you guys this is where I'm adding the final sprinkles on the cake if you want to call it and it's that reflection from the Sun and how beautifully the light and color from the sky around the Sun is reflecting down into that little pool of wave that's receding back into the ocean and you can see with my color palette I gave it a bit more of an orangey magenta color palette rather than all pink and blue that's more pink and blue in the sky I feel like pink and blue is a little cliche it reminds me of like baby gifts so I wanted to make it a bit more dramatic with some of those orangey reds as well and here is where I'm adding that little stroke like a little gestural stroke that suggests the reflection of the Sun into the water it doesn't have to be really solid it it's better if it's just suggestive I wanted to zoom in here so you can see me adding the little lights on the shoreline I believe in the reference image if you looked really closely it looked like there might be some little lights it was hard to tell because it was really far away but I thought it would add interest to the painting up back here I'm adding a few it's best if they're random and they have they should be smaller obviously in the distance and I'm not pressing very hard at all if I did it would look unrealistic because you're not going to see the lights back that far very much at all and especially where the Sun's shining down so don't you think I think that added some interest it also balanced out the composition I think because we've got the Sun kind of weighted and the reflection of the Sun on the right and then the lights on the left so I felt it make made for a very interesting composition so I really enjoyed creating this painting I liked the dark mood all of the three paintings I've done in the dramatic sky series have been a bit dark and moody perhaps it's where I'm at in life and just you know losing my mama and she loved beautiful skies took photographs of them all the time but I liked the blue color I gave the waves because it was getting more towards a night scene and getting darker so I hope you enjoyed this I hope you'll subscribe to this channel if you haven't already if you're not a patron of mine consider becoming a patron we have a lot of fun and as always blessed and happy painting