 Welcome to Monet Café. I'm artist Susan Jenkins. I think you're going to love today's lesson. I'm going to teach you how to simplify the landscape and your subject matter and if you haven't subscribed to this channel I hope you will and click that little bell icon to get notified of future videos. Now the reference images I'll be using to do some simplified studies before committing to a more serious painting are from our very own artist in the Monet Café art group on Facebook. If you haven't found that group on Facebook and you'd like to hang out with some cool artistic people and learn more then check it out and just ask to join. Hello artist and welcome to this lesson that I am calling Simplifying the Landscape. It actually doesn't even have to be landscape. Simplifying your subject matter. Often we are overwhelmed by TMI. Too much information in a reference photo. Also we're often, I'm pointing at myself, guilty of putting too much information in our paintings or our drawings. So we're going to do some exercises that will lead to future paintings and simplify the reference images that I will be providing. So let's get started. It should be fun and hopefully enlightening and helpful. All right here we go. Oh and just so you know I'm wearing another t-shirt from Love in Faith. It's love in faith dot life but I have a coupon code in the description of this video. If you click the link you can get a coupon for these lovely hopeful t-shirts. Now I'm still away from my home studio so my setup is a little different from many of my other videos. I basically just have a piece of foam core board. I usually prefer black but this is all I had here. A piece of watercolor paper. I didn't have my sketch paper. Some of you may know, if you've seen previous videos, my mother passed away and I'm here at her home with my dad helping to get life settled and helping us all to heal. So that's why things are not the way they always are but hey we persevere as artists right? So this is just a piece of watercolor paper. You can use sketch paper. I actually prefer a bigger piece of paper for something like this but use what you have and I have a selection of reference images that I'm gonna be using to get inspiration and find some images that I can simplify and I'm going to choose from the thumbnails. Thumbnails just means the little teeny image and the reason I like to choose them from the thumbnails is because I believe you can see the composition more clearly. Believe it or not you see things more clearly when they're small sometimes. It just breaks down the big shapes so that you can see even the negative spaces and everything. So I'm gonna choose a few of these probably about four so I recommend you do the same. You can use my reference images or some of your own. I wanted to pop in real quickly to give you some info on the supplies I'm using. I'm keeping it simple. I'm using just some watercolor paper. This one happened to be by Arteza because they gave me this product for free. So with these studies you don't need to use expensive papers or products. I'm also using in some of these studies some charcoal pencils by Derwent and by the way this is a great sharpener for pastel pencils or charcoal pencils just so you know it's one that I mentioned in the video. And while sometimes I like to do studies in just black and white I couldn't help but add some color so I'm brought with me to my parents house. My portable set of my studio pastels are in this drawer system so I'd like to show it to let you know that you can maybe find something like this. I think I found it at like a happy lobby type of a store. So I will be using some pastels yes right on the watercolor paper. I find every time I do one of these my painting is better and they're fun. They're a lot of fun. So I'm gonna be using just charcoal pencils. I really probably will end up using only one but I have a charcoal pencil selection that is a light a medium and a dark and I often like to just use the charcoal and then use my finger or another blending tool to blend in lighter values. I usually like to use some markers it's a grayscale markers they're called Tombow markers but again I'm away from my home studio. I don't have everything so that's a good way to prove that we can improvise right. I'm always having to do that with my crazy life. So that's really all you need. You might want a little eraser if you're using a charcoal pencil. I love these kneaded erasers because you can smush them and get a new area and they don't tear up your paper very much. Also too I've recently been using once again I didn't have all my things from my home studio. These little packing peanuts you know like you get in packages to protect the contents and these have worked great for blending so I may be using those. So I'm gonna get started picking out some of these thumbnails we're gonna simplify some landscapes or subject matter. Here we go. Alright and often people ask me how is your iPad sticking up there. It's really just my iPad holder and I just flop it over the back. I mean it looks like magic or I'm sticking it with something but that's all it is. Also too I typically work with the camera on the opposite side since I'm left-handed but with my electrical outlets and everything it's actually more practical for me to work this way. So I hope you can see everything okay. Now the one that I see right away that I really like just because it's got some nice energy to it is this one of these trees and it's like a couple of pine trees. I like their gesture. I've been talking a lot in my Patreon group about gesture and that is one thing that really makes your painting look alive and what that means is it's marks that have life and freedom to them. They're not these stiff static marks. So I usually have this little form that I use to block things off. I don't have that with me either so I'm just gonna kind of mark off a little area for this. I'm speeding this up just slightly and I'm marking off my area. I knew I wanted kind of a tall format. So I like that gesture of the hill kind of sweeping down so I got that and now I did like the way the trees were leaning and there's actually kind of like a little curve to one of them but first I'm not even worrying about that. I'm just getting in the general shapes because this after all is just to see if we like the composition and if there's anything we might want to change before we commit to a final painting. I mean too many lines for my tree trunks. It looks really thick right now but it takes shape in a minute and with pine trees too I noticed they have some neat spaces between the branches. It's almost like the branches grow out in individual masses out from the tree. I also loved the sweeping curve. I think that's one thing that drew me to this not just the tall trees but the way there was some elements that almost created an idea almost of a road or path that was kind of coming in from the foreground sweeping around. So once I get a few things in then I start using my charcoal to kind of just on the side to just shade things in and get the general value in. I know if you look at that landscape picture or the photograph you can see the trees are the darkest thing in the image and there's a few other elements that are darker. Some of those trees are a tree over to the left side in the back and so basically what this stage does for me anyway is it allows me to analyze the reference image, get some things in and focus on the elements that I think are the most important versus the things that I can do away with. Remember at the beginning when I talked about too much information? Well those bushes that I'm working on right now they look like they're kind of dry brush type of bushes and I can tell if I gave them too much detail too much information or when I commit to a painting too much color or attention they're going to take away from some of the other elements that I feel are important. So that's what the simplification process does. Now you're actually going to see me adding some water. I was like you know this is watercolor paper and charcoal. Let me see if I can move the value around a little bit and it did work. Again I don't have everything I normally have in my regular studio so I'm sort of improvising myself. But here I'm able like I said to identify the elements that I think will make for a nice composition. Once again that is a benefit of these small studies and simplifying things and I really do feel that it helps me to identify the things that I want to focus on in the painting and the things that should either get less attention or maybe just left out altogether. So I've got my my general entry into the painting with that sweeping area where I would definitely have a little bit more detail and color in that little entry almost like a road sweeping around that brings your eye up to the trees and then have some interest in some of those background trees. Now the sky does have some value to it. Typically skies are a little bit darker in the heavens up high than they are down at the horizon line so I'm just kind of getting in. I grabbed a little bit of the charcoal on my brush and then just kind of suggested some clouds. So this will give you an idea of the general composition before you commit to a painting. And here I'm starting another one and I was actually kind of getting warmed up myself. I hadn't painted in a couple of days and my first one wasn't even my favorite. So it's good to get warmed up the more of these you do the looser you get and it's a very good preliminary method to beginning a painting. So I would say that's another benefit of doing a simplified study. It is definitely great for warming up. With this one I'm also just identifying some of the main shapes. This one also had like those wispy trees. I just tried to get the shape of it not focusing on any individual branches or anything. And now I'm kind of marking out the general location of the road. And while I am now just kind of working out where the elements are after I finish I realize I didn't quite have enough gesture. It was all a little bit too mechanical looking. And I would say that is another benefit of doing a simplified study prior to committing to a larger painting is we can identify where we want our motion, our energy, our gesture. And for me it was definitely that road. So after I finished this little value study I actually will go back in and make some gesture remarks which will give a sense of motion and excitement, more excitement to the painting. Often if we don't have those gesture remarks we end up with a painting that just feels very flat like a photograph. And you know we're artists so we can jazz it up and add some spice to it. So once again that's another benefit of doing these studies. I'm sorry if my hand gets in the way. I'm apologizing for apologizing so much because it really has been a little bit difficult trying to make things work to keep creating videos. I think I'm going to try to find an extension cord so I can get my camera and all my lighting plugged up in a way so I can go back to having my camera on the opposite side which is how I usually like to work. But hey I guess you can, I hope you can see enough of this. And I saw that there was kind of a two rows of grasses in this. One was a little flatter and then we had some tall grasses growing. So I'm just getting in the shapes, the general idea. Also I drew the format of my drawing image taller than the original reference image. That's why some of the elements are not, they're a little more squished than they are in the photograph because it was a wider image than I had drawn. And now in just a bit I'm going to use my finger just to blend some of the charcoal. That's one of the benefits of charcoal is you can actually do a little blending and create some middle values. Prior to me using my finger we just had the dark of the charcoal and the white of the paper. So now I can grab some of the charcoal from the darker areas and kind of blend them in. So what happens when you do these is you are able to step back, take a look at it and go hmm I think that road doesn't have enough sweeping energy to it. Or I think I want the tree on the right to be a little smaller, a little further away. And we don't have to copy our reference images. We are artists, we are able to make changes. I knew I wanted some of the focal energy to be where the point of that road is. That's where the darkest area is. And so I wanted to make sure I kept that. Now I'm just giving a little general idea. I'm taking some lines. It didn't blend very well. A little further apart to indicate a little bit of value up in the upper heavens of the sky. Also you don't have to stick to just black and white value studies prior to a painting. Often you can either add color to your value study you've already done or recreate a new little study using color. And I'm speeding this one up. But the next one with the pine trees I'm going to slow down and kind of talk through that one. Now keep in mind this is just watercolor paper. I haven't added any clear gesso like I often do to add pastels. This is just pastel on watercolor paper. So it's a pretty inexpensive way for you to do a little preliminary study so that you can have a better idea of a good composition and a general idea of the color palette that you would like to use in your painting. Trying to keep our final paintings fresh with color and have efficiency of stroke is a goal of mine. I'm going to work on this one now with color but I can already see in looking at the one on the right that I had some things that I definitely need to improve and I actually do go back and make some final little adjustments and I would do it even more so if I decided to commit this one to a final painting. And by the way you're not limited to doing just one of the same subject matter. You're always going to create a better painting if you create a few little value studies, create a few little color concepts. You might even want to change the color palette from the original image. So I often hear a lot of artists talk about how they feel a little stagnant or we can get an artist block sometimes. And I think that studies like this is a great way to get out of an artist block. For one you don't take them quite so serious. You have a little more fun and you're not committing to an expensive piece of pastel paper. I was quite surprised that I was able to get the pastel applied like I did on watercolor paper. I can't remember the last time I tried using pastel just on plain watercolor paper. So hey there was a great new thing learned from just an experiment or not having all the supplies I need. I did stick pretty much to what's called local color with these studies which means the color that's in the photograph or in the reference that you're looking at. You're not creating some other color palette. And I liked the colors that were there but especially in the one with the road I might would try that one. That's such a kind of a simple composition. It would be great to take a composition that is pretty simple and do a lot of them. I know artists have committed to do a hundred small studies of the same image and I have yet to do this. I've done multiples but I've never quite done a hundred. I know artists was years ago I remember when artists Karen Margulis committed to it and all of her little studies they just kept getting better and better and more beautiful and more creative with color and we really need to do that. That would be a great thing to do in my Patreon group. But a trick to that is commit to them being small. I mean maybe just something like a four by four or you know probably no bigger than a five by seven. And the times that I've done this in the past now like I said I've never done a hundred but I've pre-cut up my little papers or whatever you're using so that when you're ready to paint say you do one each day or a few each day you're ready to go. You don't have to stop and cut your paper because that steals your creative energy. So I think that would be really a great way to learn not only to get better as an artist but also to get more creative with being more brave with color or more creative with color or having more confidence with color and also different techniques. So the more you do the more you learn and I'm very thankful that Monet Café YouTube channel and the art group on Facebook and my patrons were all very friendly to the beginner artist. We're not a group of elite pastel artists or artists in general. We have other art on there but we are very very understanding and helpful to beginner artists because I think most of the artists in our group even though we have some very advanced wonderful artists they are so kind and so helpful so beginners are definitely welcome and you know my my crazy life has been so nuts and I think a lot of times my lessons are more just something coming from the heart than me being a master artist or anything. I think I do have a lot of good advice for you guys so but you can definitely learn a lot from other artists that are better than I am and it's neat that we have an environment and a place where we have artists of all levels. Another thing that's a benefit to doing these small studies is say that I continue to work on this one and I finally get it to where I'm like oh I'm feeling it I like it I like these colors I think I want to commit to a bigger painting. Well the great thing is you've already got your colors ready you've already pulled them out they're ready to go and the second painting whether it's larger or not will always go faster. See I decided here I thought it'd be neat to add a little warmth. I was almost seeing in the reference image a little magenta. I talked about that in one of my past videos when people ask how did you know to add that color there. Often it's a color I just see an ever so slight hint of and then I just go for it. I punch it up a little bit I give it a little bit more intensity and now I decided here's taking a little artistic license. I thought I might add some little flowers you know just like a few little this is kind of like a very light turquoise super light almost a white and just add some colors along the little pathway or whatever it is at the entrance to lead the eye in and maybe a little blanket of them across the field in the back. Now I'm just using some of the blues to do some sky holes in those little spaces in between the branches of the pine tree and I mentioned this often but just so you know when you do sky holes always go with the value that's a little bit darker. If I used a really light value in those middle sections of the tree they would be way too light and it would look very unnatural. And now let me go back and analyze both of these and perhaps give some final little touches or marks to make them more appealing or more artistic. And remember back at the beginning of this I talked about gesture. I felt both of these needed a little bit more gestural energy so I'm kind of looking I had already identified earlier that I already knew my road was not sweeping like what originally drew me to the reference image. Once again it was kind of mechanical it didn't have that energy and gestural marks usually are marks that are they're free and they're they're fluid and they usually it's amazing to me how just a little mark can create some energy to the painting. I also noticed that that tree I had made it like an autumn color which it was but I made it too light. Those trees if you squint your eyes at that reference image in the back they were darker than what I had them. I had too much lighter value yellow in them. So these are just little things that you can do once again to kind of fine tune things before you commit to a final painting. And I did want some of those trees a little taller and when you do a study you sort of have the license to play. You're not so oh my goodness I can't make this mark I've already committed to a final painting and so it's it's a license to play and a license to experiment and explore. So I was remembering here some of the things I liked about this too. Also some gestural sweeping marks to keep the painting alive and exciting. I also realized my trees look like they were in the ground and they were really kind of behind a hill and I wanted to just glaze over that. And once again I played around a little more with adding a few darks for contrast in some little foreground flowers. Here were the finished little studies. I did add more energy to the sky in the one on the right so that was a lot of fun. Now I'm going to do some more. I'm speeding this one up a lot because my shoulder got in the way a lot on this one but this is an example of how it doesn't have to be a landscape. I really liked these little geraniums that were growing by a window and once again I'm just working on watercolor paper alone with pastels and so I played around I loved the light coming through that window. I think I would commit to doing a larger painting of this one but one thing I noticed is I kind of liked it cropped like this. I think I would lose the table legs maybe. So anyway I learned from doing these studies for sure. And here's another one that is sort of a teaser. Again this is one that I will provide in full for my patrons on my Patreon page. If you've watched my videos you know I talk about my patrons all the time. I'm so grateful for their support. It's only $5 a month. It does support this channel so that I can keep free videos coming here but my patrons also get a little something extra and this tutorial will be that something extra for them. But I wanted to make a few points about this one and the previous geranium painting is that notice I didn't do as much of a value study or really at all. I used the charcoal to get in a general sketch with these last two but I'm using pastels actually to kind of block in my big values. So you don't always have to do a black and white value study. When you're doing one of these studies you can kind of commit to color early like I do sometimes but it is a good idea still. You're really still getting a general value study maybe by using color as well. And another benefit of doing multiple small studies is that you perhaps will identify an image that just felt right. It's the one. You're like okay this is the one that I really would like to do for final painting. And so for me out of the four it was this one. I guess I'm just drawn to these beautiful fields of flowers. But I also loved the pine tree one and the geranium one probably more than the second one that I did. So it helps you to kind of pick one that's going to feel right and it always is a more enjoyable painting experience when you find something that just resonates with you as an artist. Here was the final for the last study and I'm definitely going to be doing this as a larger painting. I really liked this image. So thank you to the Monet Café Art Group photographers who share such lovely reference images. And I hope you learned something and as always happy painting.