 Welcome artistic subscribers and visitors to Monet Cafe. Today I'm continuing the beginner series and I'm going to talk a little bit about water and reflections but you know I usually go into a lot more instruction and you may know from some of my recent videos that I have started a Patreon page or account and I am so grateful to each and every one of you who has become one of my patrons. You're allowing me to continue these free videos that I offer on Monet Cafe YouTube channel and also I try to give you a little bit of something extra in the Patreon group. So if you would like to join that group as little as $5 a month you can become one of my patrons and join our special little family on Patreon. I'm using again the watercolor pencils but again I'll talk more about how you can use anything for this particular type of underpainting that I'm doing. Once again I'm using a piece of UART sanded pastel paper. I love this paper it's one of my favorite sanded papers. Notice up in the picture you can see there there's various grades or grits of sandedness kind of like sandpaper in the hardware store. My favorite is 400 grade and I just find it's very versatile. Now if you're just getting started in soft pastels I know some of these products can get expensive. So this is a little clip of one of my videos that I made pretty recently called Eight Ways to Make Your Own Pastel Surfaces. I go over eight different techniques that you can use to make your own surfaces and a couple of them are very affordable especially the one using watercolor paper and clear gesso. So just check that out if you'd like to find some money saving tips on creating your own paper. Once again I am using watercolor pencils and these are pencils that I got complimentary from Arteza and they work great but I have so many different underpainting techniques that you can use and actually wanted to show you on the Monet Cafe YouTube channel. If you click that little part there that I'm pointing at playlist I have them organized. My videos organized in categories and I have one called underpainting techniques. If you click it a video will pop up but to the right of the video like where I've zoomed in there you can see all of the different videos that I have categorized for different underpainting techniques. So you don't have to use the color watercolor pencils. There are many different options. Here's the reference photo I'm using and I actually took this photo from a friend's boat while I was in Crystal River Florida. Oh it's such a beautiful place and it's known for being able to see underwater creatures called manatees. They're mammals but they're also called sea cows. If you've ever seen a manatee they are just the most unique and beautiful and interesting creatures so I really really enjoy whenever I get the opportunity to see them. Alright let's get started. Now for this tutorial I did not include the sketching part or that little value study that you see down to the bottom right but you can go back to the very first in these beginner series and you can see where I create these value studies and it is of a great value to do these value studies so check that video out if you can. And some of you have asked which markers am I using when I create these value studies. Sometimes I use pencil or charcoal but I actually was using some markers I was not that happy with and I have just recently bought these markers on Amazon called Tombow dual brush pens. Now I haven't received them yet but from what I've heard they're really good for doing these little no tans or value studies. Okay so I have sped this underpainting part of the video up just a tad and because you know if you've looked at any of the ones previous to this you get the idea. What I in the sketch I sketched out those clouds and now I'm kind of working that medium value almost like a pink a purplish pink tone around the clouds and again you can go back to the other videos and watch these but I'm keeping a directional type of strokes and even though I'm going to be putting alcohol with a brush over this which will kind of blend all this out anyway this is just kind of my method of operation is kind of working with a sketch really quality when I work now I'm adding a little bit of a lighter pink there they're going to kind of blend together when I add the alcohol to this and again I get questions all the time well I just got a question actually in one of the videos what's the difference between a sanded paper that allows water a wet sanded paper or a dry sanded paper and if you like wet under paintings you need a sanded paper that will allow water and you are paper does there are some sanded pastel papers that don't allow water such as Sennelier Lecart I happen to love that paper but you have to you know do a different under painting technique with that rather than one with water now I'm going in with this a little bit of a darker value for those trees as we know things that are vertical perpendicular to the horizon are going to be a little darker in value so but the ones I did just before this one were the ones that are kind of behind those pine trees so our pine trees palm trees and now I'm doing the palm trees in front of it with a maybe a tad darker value and warmer because they're a little closer and so really with palm trees you when they're this far away you do not have to give all of the individual palm fronds if you look at the reference photo you can't see all those palm fronds that they're just kind of shapes but I've lived in Florida for so long I it's easy for me to identify palm trees and you just have to give you know a little bit of a a wispy shape at the top and long obviously trunks to make it appear to be a palm tree alright I'm gonna work a little bit more here and just keep in mind that when I get to the pastel part of that's just the darker the darkest that I'm using there when I get to the pastel part it's going to be real time and you will be able to see all of the pastel application in regular time here is where I am going to start applying the alcohol to the colored pencil and I'm using the 70 isopropyl alcohol it's not quite as strong smelling as the 90 or 91 percent whatever it is now this is going to be interesting I was actually trying to do a little iPhone video of myself doing this while doing the alcohol application to the underpainting that is actually really hard to do so if you can do that Bravo I was finding it you know a little bit challenging but anyway so all I'm doing as you can see it's my normal strategy of kind of working top to bottom even though I'm kind of getting rid of the stroke work I'm still moving in the same direction as those strokes when I apply the alcohol with the brush so I'm still keeping that directional quality of the sky and again let the drips happen it's fine I try not to let mine get so drippy that it's just all over the paper but you know it's okay if it drips around a little bit it just really helps to make give that soft and prescientistic painterly feel to your work alright let me continue with this again if you've watched these beginner videos you've seen me do this like four times now five times now and just so you know I did about six paintings in one day that's why all of these have the watercolor pencils that I'm using because it was just fast but again if you go back and watch the other underpainting technique videos that I have you can do this with pastel instead of the watercolor pencil if you have some harder pastels that be the best ones to use you can do the same thing all you need really is a dark medium and lighter value color or value pastel to use and you can create an underpainting then you can apply over the pastel the alcohol or water just like I'm doing here it really kind of works the same again if you're using watercolor paper to do one of the homemade surfaces that I have you can do a watercolor underpainting all you're really trying to do with an underpainting is cover your entire surface keeping it loose keeping it keeping it moody and you have some choices you can do a color underpainting that is the colors are complementary to your painting you can just kind of have fun and get creative kind of like I did here I decided a lot of times I'll do a warm underpainting where I use mostly reds oranges and yellows this one was leaning a little bit more towards the cooler side but it's still the the warmer purples as you can see pinks and purples and so that's kind of what I was focusing on with this I really wanted to in spite of the reference photo being more of a daytime scene I kind of wanted to get that that typical or typical to me because I see it all the time Florida you know sunsetting scene where the skies are just pink and beautiful and so that was my goal and my reasoning for picking this particular color for underpainting alright so now I'm keeping it loose still I'm just kind of dabbing the alcohol on these palm frond and you know impressions of the palm trees and just keeping it real loose and you see by the time this is done it just has a really nice painterly look before you actually start applying the pastel all right let me finish this up here are the pastels I'm using and I apologize that I am doing this footage after I created the painting but I'm I'm just organizing them here so you can kind of see them better and all those little round ones that I'm sorting right now those are all of the Giro pastels I recently did a video like reviewing that product Giro pastels are made in France and they this particular set is the Elizabeth Maori poetic landscape set I love it it's really great those square ones there the biggest square when those are going to be your Terry Ludwigs I've got a combination some of those are unison some may be Sinelli a and I am going to try to start sharing more in my videos the variety of pastels that I'm using all right time to paint now that the water alcohol actually is dry and I have my nice warm pinkish purpley under painting I'm going to start applying the pastels I wanted to go ahead and establish the lightest light which is in those clouds and I'm going to keep the clouds more impressionistic and not make them the star or so dramatic that it steals away from the palms and the reflection in the water so this is where I'm just kind of laying down color and you know I had a great question by someone in our patreon group who wanted to know more about keeping a loose and painterly impression in your painting or effect in your artwork and that's another neat thing about the patreon group is I'm going to be able to answer more of your questions more specifically and it's a little more intimate anyway because there's right now currently there's less than a hundred patrons in the group so and we have a corresponding Facebook group it's a private group that only my patrons are part of so we have more communication there but anyway so this particular person was wanting some advice on a painterly look and not getting too detailed too quickly and I sent back a list of some of those things and I realized that'd be a good video to do but one of the recommendations was to work all over your painting before you get too bogged down in one area I've seen people who can actually create a painting and they start in one corner or one part of the painting and they make it finished before they move to the next little section and they create a detailed painting in little sections at a time and if you want a more and I'm fascinated by how people can do that but it typically does result in a more tight or detailed painting final painting and if you want a more impressionistic painterly feel it is best to work all over the whole painting one of the things that does help that is an under painting that's something I could add to the list of what helps create an impressionistic look or feel and doing an under painting definitely helps that but again working all over the entire painting getting the basics down first before getting so detailed in any one area I find it also helps me to establish my values more accurately when I get in my lightest lights and my darkest darks before just getting too tedious about any one area of the painting okay so you can see now I've added in some of the warmer tones even warmer than that pink I had had more of the the pinker tones in the sky and now I've added a little warmer tones in between those clouds and gradually I've shared this in multiple videos gradually in a sky typically in most skies you go from darker values up top in the horizon upper horizon down to lighter values as it approaches the horizon and also typically it goes from cooler temperatures in the upper horizon down to warmer temperatures that's a general rule of thumb I know sometimes skies can be different so you know but that's that's something to keep in mind I apologize if you're hearing a loud humming while I'm making this video guess what we're doing we're preparing for another hurricane I know my longtime subscribers on here I felt like I have worn y'all out with talking about how we got flooded during Hurricane Irma and we had to move into living a travel trailer we had to try to renovate that home and sell it because we didn't want to be in this position again having to worry about our home flooding it's a lot if you've I had never been through a flood before you think it's just water coming in your house you forget that it's nasty water coming in your house and in Florida there can be gators and snakes and all kinds of debris that's disgusting so I really was just amazed at the how bad it smelled and all the cleanup so anyway not to get into that but we didn't want to do that again so we renovated and sold that home and now I find myself praying for the owners who bought the home that we sold because right now if we get another large dumping of rain it's not the winds we're worried about right now it's the rain it could it could be another flooding situation and with the river breaching that's that's the issue with the house that we sold so we're on high ground now I'm not worried about that but I am concerned about our community and we do have some other things we need to prep for so welcome to Florida right it's wonderful but we do have to deal with hurricanes once in a while alright so now you can see I'm just kind of working on the sky and in looking at this after the fact that I painted it I probably should have gone ahead and moved on and I probably will right now move on to start working the whole painting like I was talking about oh and that's exactly what I'm doing right now what I'm doing now is is just getting in some of the basic general tone or value and color of the water I'm probably pausing right there to kind of make my pastel a little more smooth oh I I lighten the value see the two different pastels in my hand I decided I wanted the value a little lighter in that water and notice I'm making I'm keeping a very light touch especially when I got to that background water it's more of a glazing instead of a pressing really hard so it's just a light touch just to get a general value of that water in and it's okay if that underpainting is peeking through right there all right now I got a little bit of a darker value and what I'm doing now is I'm getting some of the shadowy areas from the reflections of the bank that those trees are resting on and then the next thing about water and reflections is we want to fairly quickly before we move on to anything else kind of what I'm doing here I'm getting a little bit more of the the bank the darker areas by the shore but fairly quickly you want to get in the shadows from shadow what they are kind of like shadows in the water the reflection of those palm trees now in my reference photo I didn't really see the reflections all that much because I was kind of far away and the water was a little choppy but I wanted that effect so I am actually going to add the reflections but now I'm getting in just some of the darker tones of the water letting some of that lighter periwinkle blue kind of peek through that and because we know values are typically darker in the foreground and lighter in the background that's why those the river or that's not a river it's more of a well it is kind of a river that's going way back in the distance to the right those are going to be lighter values not only have they further away they're closer to the source of light the Sun now I'm just adding some of the cooler purpley shadowy areas in those trees again I'm creating I don't know more of a sunset feel to this and cooler colors and purples and blues always recede or they they push back in the painting so I wanted them to be kind of whatever background foliage is behind those palm trees and then I'll add the darks of the palm trees will be the darkest dark so that's kind of why I haven't really put down my reflections yet because they're going to be when I finally put in the the darkest dark which is those palm trees I got a little bit of that that blue that I said is the background foliage some of that's already reflected in the water that I've laid down all right now I'm getting my darkest dark for the palms that will they dark values come forward so they will be the closer elements in the the landscape there so I'm just going to work on these and then I will be right back to talk to you about the reflections okay so now it is time to get to these reflections I've got my darkest dark in the trees I've already got some of those background colors kind of in the water and all I'm doing now is emulating the shadows or the reflections from the trees into the water and it's basically a mirror image if I was to turn this painting or my easel board up on its side in other words turn it clockwise to 90 degrees left or right it would have the same mirror image on one side and the other so sometimes artists have actually done that you know to get it right the more you do it the more you kind of just do it by habit but that's a neat little trick to kind of turn it on its side and look to make sure you have a mirror image so that's all I'm doing and I'm doing a little bit of it to those trees but I realized those reflections don't need to be as dark as these foreground reflections because they are further away so now I'm just adding some of the other I think that's a a duller gray color in there and this is all going to get kind of covered up and blended by glazing over it you'll see later but for the first initial part of the reflection well let me go over these again first you get your base watercolor down you keep it very gentle you flow not a heart don't press hard you do it in horizontal bands just like the water would be flowing then you add your reflections from the trees and in this case that I'm doing here I'm making the reflections lighter in value a little cooler back there because they're far away and I don't use my fingers a lot but sometimes I will like I just kind of soften to that up a little bit and then oh I actually have already added a little bit of a dull green in those trees the foreground palm trees that you can't see it real good in the video but that's the other color that I added there now I want to go ahead I am going to get some of the blue in the sky here so I want to go ahead again trying to work on the whole painting I want to not get too stuck on any one area so I'm adding in some of the cooler blues and then we'll get back to the water again in a minute so I'll be back when I get some more water and reflections now that I've added a little bit of the warmer colors to the trees I need to remember to emulate that or carry it through into the water and the reflection so again I've already laid down the darkest dark in the reflections and whatever I add to the trees I want to just pull it down into or onto what I've already added so you see how that if you squint your eyes you see how that's already giving that indication of of trees reflected in the water now I'll continue this and then I will come back in when I start to glaze over this so enjoy and I'll be back in a minute now at this point I have pretty much things established and it's time to do that glazing or sheen kind of that's over the water and again my water is going to be calm whereas the water in the reference photo is a little bit more choppy but as you can see I'm not covering up everything that I've put down I'm just lightly glazing over another background color I used was a lighter value because the Sun is reflecting in that and also it's further back so I'm gradually getting my values darker as I move forward into this just because this of this particular reference photo and how the light is there's going to be less of that light color on top of those palm tree reflections because the Sun is behind it instead of shining down on top of it now another good thing to do with water is whatever's in the sky does get reflected into the water and I've got some of those pinks in the sky and it's going to just pull the painting all together better if I let the water reflect what's in the sky because that's what it does in nature so again I've given some slight glazing of lighter values in the back real lightly letting the colors show through that were underneath gradually moving forward getting them a little darker and now I'm going even darker over there on that side because it actually in the reference photo and I apologize you can't see the reference photo very good in this one because of how I had the the camera set up but it was darker on that lower left side I apologize I lost a little clip of footage there but now I'm going in and adding some of those lines that you get like where the water breaks a little bit and often in water you can see those little light colored bands and I also like to get it where the water might be breaking a little bit on the shore so I just add a little highlight and you never want these to be a straight line across you want to break it up vary the pressure a little bit and and and just keep giving those directional lines kind of just exactly how the water would lay on a flat surface like that and so this is pretty much it I I hope I gave you guys a good idea as to how to do reflections they they're pretty standard in how they work that's the good thing as long as you reflect what above put it down below make it more of a mirror image and then just lightly glaze over it following the general rules of value and color all right so I'm gonna finish this one up and then I'm just gonna go ahead and show you guys the final and I hope you learned a lot about doing reflections and I'll try to do more and don't forget I'm gonna keep these free videos coming on YouTube even though I have a patreon account now you guys just get excited knowing that I will never stop bringing these as long as I am physically able to do so all right guys so thanks so much for joining me today and blessings and I'll probably be with you for another video after this hurricane passes all right so prayers appreciated thanks guys and happy painting