 Welcome to Monet Cafe Studio and this soft pastel lesson catered for the beginner artist. In this month's tutorials I'll be sharing beginner-friendly products that are also budget-friendly. These art supplies can get expensive. This lesson will feature easy-to-follow step-by-step instructions and it promises to be lots of fun. So come on in the studio and let's get started. Oh yay! Here we go. I am a believer that soft pastels is such a great medium for beginner artists and it's great to know that you can actually get started on a budget. These are Kansan XL dry media pads that come in two colors and they have what's called a sand grain. Now this is just a texture to the paper. If you've been painting with pastels for a while, you know many artists prefer the sanded surfaces but they're more expensive and while you can get a lot of layering with those expensive products, I have found that these Kansan XL pads really do allow beginner artists to get started in an affordable way. This is the paper I'm going to be using for this painting tutorial. The set of pastels or two sets actually that I'll be working with primarily are the Paul Rubens sets. There's a 36 set and a 72 color set and these are quite affordable. You can get them on Amazon, pardon mine look very dirty. So that's the 72 set and they also have this 36 set. I'll have all the links to these products in the description of this video but I find these pastels are very affordable and they are of a medium consistency allowing you to work on these unsanded surfaces and still get some pretty good color. And here's a more in depth behind the scenes of my set up. I have my reference photo that I've printed out. It's from unsplash.com, isn't this gorgeous? I really want to do this as a more serious piece. I loved this reference image but I'm going to keep it really simple for this tutorial and I think even the most beginner artists can follow along. You probably notice I have my set up upright. I'm standing to paint and that is the preferred way to paint with soft pastels because they can get a little dusty. But I have a HEPA filter. It's a filter that I got on Amazon. They don't have this one available anymore but I'm going to share in the link or in the description of this video one very similar. Now let's look behind this set up. That's just a French easel sitting on my desk and I have folded the legs in, made it a tabletop easel, literally put a 20 pound weight on it so that it doesn't move. Now you guys don't have to film like I do so you don't have to worry about that. But my desk is an adjustable desk so if my poor old legs get tired I can lower it and sit down to paint. So there's my set up and here we go. And before we start painting I have a small favor. Would you go ahead and like this video, leave me a comment and by all means subscribe to my channel so you don't miss any of the lessons I upload here on Monet Cafe. Also if you'd like a little bit more, would you consider becoming a patron of mine? It's only $5 a month. You can cancel at any time and by becoming a patron you get all of the extra content I often talk about in my lessons. I also get to see your work, just lots of fun and you get to become part of the family. I love our family of beautiful artists from my Patreon page. Alright we're going to paint now. I have my Canson XL paper taped to my board and I'm using a Derwent charcoal pencil. This is a light pencil and you can use whatever you have to get in a basic sketch. I am speeding up the sketch portion a little bit so this video isn't so entirely long. But I just want to talk you through this. All I'm doing with the initial sketch is getting in my big shapes. Of course we have some of those big flower shapes and we have a little bit of a tree line in the background and a building. Now that's going to be the most difficult thing about this but it's really not that hard. It's just triangles and keeping it really simple because this building is in the background and it's going to be very subdued anyway. So keep it simple. It's amazing how often we over complicate things when we are starting as artists. We want to put in every detail but in time we learn that less is truly more especially if you love impressionistic painting like I do. And now it's time to add soft pastels. The remainder of this tutorial would be sped up only slightly. You should be able to follow along just fine. Now I did use a few pastels that are not in the two Paul Rubin set that I shared but I will share links to some darks. That's what I'm using now. It is very important to have some dark values in your painting for contrast. And this is just a dark green Terry Ludwig pastel. Again I'll have some links to some darker pastels you can buy as individual sticks. Really all you need is about you know two or three dark pastels. Even the Paul Rubin sets has a dark. It has some I think a black in one or both of the sets. But also you can control how light or dark something is with pastels by your pressure. And now on that note we are working on an unsanded surface. Because this is a beginner tutorial I want to have products that are affordable. Unsanded surfaces don't take a lot of layers. So keeping a light touch at the beginning is important. Now I got in some of my darks. If you have a problem seeing your darks just squint your eyes really hard. Now I'm getting in my lightest light and that would be the sky. That's pretty obvious in this reference image. The sky and the front of that building. Another thing to keep in mind is our light source. Where would you say the light is coming from? If you just use common sense well you see the front of that building it's got some golden colors on the top of the face of that building and some light areas. Looks like it's a greenhouse or something. The light is definitely coming from the left. Now I like to combine a few colors for the sky. I started out with the light kind of a pinkish color. These are all the Paul Rubin's pastels. I used a little bit of blue and a little bit of this lavender color. While you can't mix pastels like you can with wet mediums you really can when you just scumble colors and lay them down next to each other. Alright what am I doing here? I have a paper towel and I'm going to use it to blend in some of the pastels I've laid down already. The reason I'm doing this is it's important early on not just with pastels but with many mediums of painting is to do what is called a blocking in. You're getting in your main values really a high priority of getting your values in. That means your lightness to darkness in a painting and your colors of course but you want to get those in as a base early on. And so I'm using this paper towel to just blend areas in and like I said if you squint your eyes you can see there's a majority of green in the reference image or dark I should say darker values kind of around those main flowers that I've already kind of sketched in. And so I'm just kind of blending things in and also vertical elements are almost always darker in a landscape. And so I'm just kind of blending in I've got in my basic sketch I've got in general values right now. Now the blending is done and I'm taking the same pastel I've only used a few colors at this point but this is my same dark green pastel again I'll have a dark green link in the description of this video if you don't have any darks and I'm using it again squinting my eyes really hard looking at where my darkest darks are. I think you can see those now I have a little more blocking in to do and I'm going to start working on this building now our brain tells us that building is probably white you think that side of that building is white but it's in shadow the sun is not hitting that side of the building so I'm going to combine a few colors like I did with the sky I used a little bit of a turquoise color and under the little eve of the roof of course that's a little darker it's in shadow. So I'm not going with a super dark color yet and one of the reasons or I don't at all actually in this is because that is not a focal point it's far away I do darken it a little with this purple that I think this one is from the 36 set but I kind of subdue a little blended in and continue to add colors and values kind of like I did in the sky to let the pastels blend themselves now this is something that was so hard for me when I first started pastel painting I am using my finger to blend a little bit here I don't do that all the time but it took me so long to realize that colors are interacting with each other in in nature in life and if we think we have to find the exact color to put in an exact spot like a paint by number our paintings are going to be lifeless and lack that feeling of how things are in the real world so now I'm using that same purple that's in the Paul Rubens 36 set and I'm just blocking in the shape of this main flower now if you're a patron of mine on my patreon page my patrons are they probably laugh at me by now that I never know the names of flowers my mother was a flower expert she was so good and I miss her so much she passed away a couple of years ago and she would be mad at me for not knowing these flower colors but my patrons always say oh it's this type of flowers I don't know what this flower is I should know by now but I it doesn't matter because I just really have to look at the general shape of this flower and it almost has all these little individual flowers coming out in a cone shape like a bouquet so I'm just kind of scumbling in some of the shapes and I'm working on the darker purple flowers first somebody tell me in the comments what these flowers are I love these flowers I should know their name and I I'm just kind of getting in a general feeling of the flower I am not trying to get every single little part of this flower right I'm getting the the life of the flower and the essence of the flower in so to speak now there's one in the distance there it's very dark in the distance it's cooler because it's in shadow it doesn't have the sunlight hitting on it so I'll I'll work on those values as I continue to progress in this painting there's some more purple flowers back here so this is still part of what's called the blocking in stage I'm almost done with the blocking in stage as you can see I've got a few little blank spots left with some of the flowers and some of the building and I would say I'd like I said I've sped this up a little bit this took me oh maybe an hour and a half to finish it and I can actually work a little bit faster using the more expensive sanded surfaces because you have a little bit more leeway you know you can layer and cover things and that's one of the challenges with unsanded papers is you don't have that ability to put down a lot of layers so it is more affordable and that's why I wanted to use it for this beginner lesson but I know that I'm only going to get about I don't know four to six layers if that when creating a painting on an unsanded surface now I do love unsanded surfaces let me let me talk about what I'm doing first for a minute I've gotten in my purples I use that purple to make my darks a little bit darker notice down deep in the beside the flowers there's some dark areas and also notice I'm well you'll notice by the end of the painting I'm not trying to paint everything in this I'm not trying to paint there's like a fence there there's another building kind of to the right beside the one flower I'm just focusing on simple elements for one it's a beginner tutorial and also because I want this just to be very loose without a lot of fussiness to get busy in this painting is a dark blue pastel another one that is not in the set of the paul rubens the main ones that I've used that are not in the set so far as a dark green um actually the dark purple was one of the paul rubens and this dark blue again I'll have some links for some darks in the description of this video and I also encourage doing something called color echoing meaning that you kind of incorporate the same colors throughout the painting um that's again what happens in life and I'm just getting some of that darker blue it's a little darker than the purple in some of the center areas of the flower I know that this is just the base layer again my blocking in so to speak and I'll start developing the details on these flowers later and on my final layers right now I'm just focusing on those values and as you can see I've got my general flower shapes in I've got my darks in down by the roots of those flowers I have my basic shapes in blocked in the big areas of grasses in the distance and now is when I'm going to start getting more of those greens in the grasses these are going to be very suggestive I've lightened up my green um even though what's down there is light because I blended it with the paper towel but it's lighter the one I'm using now is lighter and warmer um these are grasses where the sun is hitting um again the sun is kind of to the upper left area and it's going to cast down on some of those grasses but I'm still just getting in like I said I know I've got a little bit of layering capability so I'm using this green I believe this is it might be a senelier pastel the greens in the paul rubens sets that I shared don't have a lot of middle value greens I noticed so that's why I used another middle value green and now this is a paul rubens pastel it's a little bit of a rusty color now that um side of the building I'm working on is a little bit darker you notice in the reference image and I'm going to address that with the ability to layer but I'm just blocking in the rest of this building now what I'm going to do is get in any area that I see there's a little bit of warmth using this kind of um I don't know rusty color a little bit almost like a brick color and you can tell I'm layering very lightly I'm not pressing hard and now I'm adding a little bit of this turquoise blue if you look at that side of the roof there it's darker and it's cooler the reason for that is it's in shadow I'm using a paper towel right now to blend a little more things that are in shadow are going to be cooler I always say you cool off in the shade so do colors so that really does help as a little general rule to realize you can just use a cooler color in the shadows now I went a little bit lighter in value and a little warmer for the front of this building here's a little bit of that layering principle and we often in pastel painting work dark to light opposite of watercolor if you're a watercolor artist and so I know I've got a few layers I can get down even though it's an unsanded surface so I get in layers that are the deeper orange if you look at the front of that building where it looks really golden there's a little bit of a hint of a darker orange so that's why I put that on the front you'll see me lighten it up with the yellow in a minute now I'm getting this roof roof even darker and um notice how this is very gradual again that was one of my big mistakes when I started soft pastel painting is I was painting like a paint by number and I didn't realize the beauty of how colors can interact and work together so now I'm getting a I used a little bit of a pinkish color and now this is not in the Paul Rubin set it's a darker burgundy there's a little bit of a a shadow under that eve on the front part of the building and a little bit of dark around some of those windows or whatever they are I love how we don't even have to know what things are when we're artists we can just we're looking at shapes and even though when we're first painting we feel like we have to get everything so detailed guess what your viewer doesn't need to see all that detail the biggest detail will be where your focal points are the rest is just subdued a suggestion all right I use some of these colors from the Paul Rubin set to get some of that pretty sunlight hitting the front of that building and now it's coming together look we're getting really close to having everything blocked in we've got our flowers our grasses and our building is close to being blocked in a little bit more dark here but I'm actually going going to tone this down a bit too it's getting a little bit too much attention I don't often use my fingers to blend but with these unsanded surfaces it's really kind of easy and now I realize my top of my roof line wasn't dark enough so I added a little of that purple to get the value a little darker now I'm going to use something I I just came up with for this painting I got some q tips and I thought you know my elements in this need a little more blending notice there's like spaces between some of these flowers and I'm just using it to blend in to get a general dark value and fill in some of those blank spaces that are kind of between the flower shapes now I am using the original darker green that I started with and I am getting the trees behind the building a little bit darker remember I mentioned earlier that vertical elements are typically darker in a landscape however they get lighter as they progress in the distance it's a concept in the laws of physics called aerial perspective things get lighter in the distance think about mountains in the distance they're not nearly as dark and they're cooler now add a little bit more of that warm color to the front of the building now let's get in a little bit of these windows they kind of have a little arches to them the bottom was a little darker and part of that's because there's a lot of grasses growing up around them and the tops of those arches are a little bit lighter so I first just block in this main color that is kind of a pinkish lavender the values pretty close and later you'll see me come back in and add a lighter highlight to the the lightest part of that front of the building now I know there's a element of some kind of leaves a tall stem of something that has all these leaves so I'm using a darker green just to get in some of these shapes of the leaves again I don't have to be too precise it's just you know getting the concept or the idea of where some of these darker elements are and you know really I always say this painting is not hard once you know the rules and when you know a few rules you realize a lot of this is easier than you think we make it harder on ourselves when we're first beginning but there are some rules and I know that sometimes it can seem overwhelming when you're first getting started that's why I started this channel Monet Cafe because I was overwhelmed I didn't have any lessons YouTube wasn't even much of a thing back then so I had I almost quit I almost quit painting with pastels but while I'm scumbling in some of this pretty warm green in the distance let me tell you that I love soft pastels because they're very user friendly you don't have to worry about mixing colors I still had kids at home they were getting bigger but I could leave my pastels out and go make dinner and come back and they they didn't dry up so it's a really great medium um if you're new to painting um or if you've been painting with other mediums oh I gotta tell you so many people have fallen in love with soft pastels for the same reasons I have I love getting your comments um from my videos so feel free to comment on this one too all right I'm adding a little bit more of these light greens this is one of the paul rubens pastels a really pretty light almost grassy green and I do know that I'm going to be soon getting close to my final layers like I said you get about four what did I say five to seven sometimes it's four to six layers so I'm being careful not pressing too hard and generally even when you work on sanded surfaces you keep a light touch early on and you preserve those final uh marks that have more pressure and more strength to the very end they're going to be like your icing on the cake where you want a lot of color punch and drama so I'm just getting in you can see in some of the grasses or whatever they are bushes in the distance um they're a little bit lighter on the tops where the sun is peeking around and catching them now I've got an even lighter pastel that is one of the paul rubens I'm um using my artistic license to even lighten uh up even more some of the grasses even more than what I see in the photo because I know from the front of that building there's some serious sunshine hitting it I kind of liked that little play of warm versus cool in this painting um with the sunshine uh hitting that building and creating that beautiful warmth a little more dark and you can see I was equate painting to like a dance you can see it's like a little dance um just working here and there and everywhere like in this little harmony now I've got this dark blue again that I'm adding to some of the um the purple flowers that I want a little more depth these are my flowers that are more of the focal point and if you were to guess even if you're a beginner artist if you were to guess what the focal point is of this flower I just blew it didn't I of this painting what would you say it is it's that largest flower focal point often is something that's large something that has high contrast something that has more color and more detail so this flower the the size of it and just you know you can't help it when you look at this photo that's what you see so I'm giving it a little more blue now you might be thinking well that flower looks purple why are you putting blue in there believe it or not when you have purple often there's a combination of purple and blue so you'll see me come in after and add more of the purple but I realized I needed a little more of this um pretty blue this is not one of the paul rubens I apologize I didn't use every single pastel that was one of the paul rubens but um sometimes you just don't have all the colors you need and that's why it is a good idea to buy a few sets and give you a little bit more color variety these are I believe some of these are senelier pastels and I often share that once you think you're getting serious about soft pastels if there's a set that you can get of quality pastels that would be awesome for your pastel palette it would be and affordable the senelier 120 half sticks that I'm going to write that right down right now to add to the description of this video 120 it's called the paris collection and it is 120 half sticks I love half sticks because they're kind of short they're perfect for painting with and these pastels senelier pastels are just so vibrant with color so I'm pretty sure that's what these are and having 120 colors is just awesome they're on amazon the cheapest I've ever seen them was 113 dollars for the 120 half sticks that's less than a dollar a half stick so really good set if you're getting started once you know you're serious you know so now I just added in some more of these pretty blues now here comes the purple you'll start to see how this blue and purple are working together if I just used all purples for these flowers it wouldn't have had that color vibration and color excitement it's as I've been saying often in this tutorial alone that part of the beauty of painting and color is how they interplay with each other it is totally what happens in nature everything is bouncing all off of each other with light and color so the more that we can understand that law of physics and recreate it in our art the better and that's just one of the great things about soft pastels too is that beautiful ability to layer and mix colors together on the surface I love that and now I'm finally going to add some of that warmth notice in that main focal point purple flower it's a bit magenta while I'm still painting some of these blue flowers now I'm just adding little flowers in the distance um even if I don't see them just to make them meander in the distance all right here comes the magenta now why would you think that that main focal point flower has more warm magenta colors on the left side instead of the right side well that's because the sun is on the left side you can tell again from the front of the building so that's why I am getting some of this warmer a magenta is kind of like a a warmer purple it's kind of a pinkish purple and that is why I'm adding that warmth to the left side follow the rule of the sun things in the side of the sun where the sun is hitting are going to be warmer now I got a little bit too light with my magenta so I kind of changed it up I am getting a bit to my maximum layering ability here and I'm starting to press a little harder this is my focal point flower so I'm getting a little bit more of that color drama going on and a little more detail in my focal point areas and now it's getting time to turn the lights on remember how I said with soft pastels we work dark to light and one of the reasons is here's the way I like to think of it we work from the inside out the darkest parts of the flower are those inner parts so when we lay down the darks first we gradually can build the flower from the inside out you can see me doing it with some of the blues I worked in a middle blue now I have my lightest blue and I'm just using this light blue to get the tips of these flowers where the light is hitting and you can see again from the left side the sun is hitting that's why the majority of the light areas are on the left side of these flowers some of it filters around to the kind of the back around to the to the right and so we're getting in the final stretch here we just got a few minutes to go and now I'm taking some of this pink I wanted to incorporate some of these warmer colors so I'm just scumbling it in on some of the this is a little light for where I added it here but in some of the distant flowers I just want to suggest that there might be more of these flowers of course they're gonna get smaller and just very subdued in the distance I needed to give these flowers some stems so I'm using a prismacolor new pastel notice how they look long and rectangular these are also very affordable pastels for the beginner artists great for making stems and grasses and notice how I use a press and release type of stroke we want to keep our stems and grasses kind of like a broken line now here's where I'm going back in and getting that lightest part of the building like the sun is just hitting on um like I said it looks almost like a greenhouse and it just gives a little interest to the painting a little bit of a final golden to the building and also some of my lightest lights on the just the little highlight areas on the left sides of these flowers it really brightened it up made some of these more of a focal point also some of the focal point flowers had little bits of dark in the center so I came back with one of my darker pastels and just for a few of them you don't want it everywhere just gave a little bit of that contrast with some of the darkest darks and I hope if you're a beginner that you learned something I hope you'll give pastel painting a try here was the final once again inexpensive products and a sweet little impressionistic painting I hope you've enjoyed this no matter what level you are as an artist I hope you'll subscribe to this youtube channel and enjoy this pastel painting journey and become a patron if you'd like to support this channel and become part of my beautiful family of patrons as always god bless and happy painting