 Welcome artistic souls to Monet Café. I'm artist Susan Jenkins and if you want to know more about pastel painting You've come to the right place. This demonstration will be on the power of neutrals I would say this is part two if you'd like to see part one You have to be a patron of mine on my patreon page which you can check out later and in part one I go over some very interesting things about neutrals really the science of color behind neutrals How you can actually make neutrals yourself and loads of information about color and value that will improve your artwork Now here is an example and following you will see another painting that we're both done with the exact same neutral palette Isn't that amazing? We could get two different moods in these paintings now I always forget to share that my work is available Of course the originals are available, but prints and products are sometimes more affordable and they're available on my Pixels.com account you can see there, but enough of that now Let's get started with our lesson in this lesson and there will be a part three by the way in this first one I will be focusing on how to create a value study a little sketch from the reference image You are welcome to use this and follow along and then after this sketch I also will be doing a little mini painting with a neutral palette again You're welcome to follow along with this and here we go All right, so let's get started with the sketch it always helps to do a preliminary sketch and even sometimes a small preliminary painting and I'm just using a piece of gray drawing paper right here. It's actually I think it's the piece that I used for my last demo Yeah Why not recycle and reuse right and I also thought I'd go ahead and combine I got a lot of you guys who said you would love more drawing instruction and so I thought I'd combine two things together here and go ahead and Do a little preliminary sketch and give a few tips for drawing some things I've covered before but I'll try to go into more depth One I'm using right here now. Just a little Derwent charcoal pen. This is a pencil. This is the medium one I've actually got a dark medium and light pencil and That really kind of works great for a little value study You can also just use one pencil if you want and there's different little techniques of shading and everything to get a good value study So I'm just getting a general sketch in see if I like the composition and work out any issues and Also, it just always helps so I wanted to share with you too that I kind of use this one down all the way I had just bought these not long ago, but what I do is I use my exacto blade I've got one right here That I I basically just shade it over a trash can to get this long piece of lead showing and That really helps when you want to do any any shading can't get it as good here With the wider part the reason it's not as I haven't sharpened it yet So how we're going to sharpen it is I've just got a piece of regular a hard-wrestled sandpaper This is some that I actually used to experiment path with pastels on but this works great to be able to sharpen Your charcoal so all I do and it does make a little bit of a dusty mess Is I just continue to rub on the sides until I get more of a little sharp point and make those edges to where I can actually Shade better. Let's see if I've got it good enough now All right, so now I've got more see I've got more of a flat surface that I can shade a wider area with that All right, so I didn't sharpen these but I think that'll work fine. All right now Let's take a look at this composition. I'm just using the same little moody photo Sorry if you see my circle light in there The same little moody photo that I took the other morning and I was like wow I've just been focusing on neutrals and doing a lesson on neutrals And I thought this is a great photo to work from because look how muted it is with the not only the low light But the fog so that's what I'm using and I literally just took my iPad and put it up here and got a general Size for it. Now what I want to explain here about drawing is I've talked about this before But I think I'll try to be a little bit more specific with it. My iPad has Little marks on it already where and kind of see where the center is This is this little button here or this little camera or whatever it is this is the center and This is the center and I can kind of get an idea of where the centers are so you can really kind of judge things Just by those four quadrants. So what I'm going to do Pardon my old sweaty head from working out and getting in the way What I what I typically do is I just look for like the sinners Okay, and you're just kind of guesstimating especially with a landscape I'd be probably a little more specific if I was doing a Portrait or dog portrait or a people portrait, okay? So I've kind of got my centers now I can look at my iPad now and I can see this has got a some interesting shapes going on here Let me first just kind of get in this tree this tree actually some of the base of the stuff The darkness is actually a little below the center point. There's like a little dark area there now the tree Actually reaches out Almost to the center not quite. Okay, so we've got it and how high does it come? All right, so Here's here's the bottom of that dark value. Here's the edge I can see it's not quite all the way over to the center and now Where is the top part of that tree? All right, if I've gotten my center point here and I look at the top of my iPad I see that the top of the tree is about Almost a quarter of the way. Okay, so now I start getting some ideas kind of for the shapes of the tree and Kind of where it is. All right, and this doesn't have to be real specific Nothing nothing too too crazy detailed at this point. So there's that tree Now let me take a look over here. I know I've got the the actual trees behind some very dark Shrubbery, there's some things here. That's like really dark. So we got that in here and Then another little darkness Dark area. I'm looking literally at shapes and dark values right now. It comes out like right about here Now, let me go over here. Now that I've got the tree I can go ahead and shade that into And on the value scale The tree is not as dark as this foreground. It's also not as dark as this area in here So I'm using the side of that charcoal These are my darks And this just kind of stops right here and it goes over and you don't have to do this exact But I kind of kind of like some things about this composition. All right, so we know that's very dark now We've got over here at the other side of the photo I noticed that that little rolling area where the the fence post are it's underneath the halfway point it would be kind of like right here where it starts and it kind of ends down here by This part of this tree right here, which is not quite halfway. I've got this a little further over so Anytime you want to you can erase or whatever, but this is not so specific that I need to do that Again, it's not like I'm doing a portrait. Okay, and we've got this little kind of a hump that happens here it kind of goes up and down and then it goes up again here and Then kind of down And so there's our little idea of that that fence that kind of goes towards the back there now right in front of that fence I see we've got Kind of like some grasses growing it doesn't make it like a straight line kind of comes down a little bit here kind of up has some little Rolly rambly things and then right Above it is that little area. That's a little bit lighter It's like some fog is cast across it this little area right in here, okay? And this does come up a little higher right here. Okay, so we've got that little area and the rest of this is all very dark So I'm just going to go ahead and shade all this in This remember this is just a value study. We're not supposed to be making anything That's a masterpiece, but this will help you with your final painting. Okay, so we've got all this dark area No, I do see that down in here. I do have like some of those grasses. I could go in here with darker darks And kind of get an idea of where some of these are going I do like the kind of the motion of them They're kind of turning and twisting There's a real dark one like right in there and This will all be done with pastels to get the that little real grassy Feeling and then up in here. There's some real dark on this edge It's like clumps of grass that are growing on the edges here And again, this is the area that's not quite as dark. Okay, so we've got our our darkest darks going here now a little more of this down in here a Lot of it seems to be flowing whispering like that way Which is kind of neat. Okay. Now right up here. We got some more of that dark it's kind of going from Thick to thin and making these little um, you know how grasses are nothing super consistent with that Okay, so now I can see this is where the fence part is This is where it gets kind of foggy in there Darkest dark here dark is dark definitely down here But of these two things this little clump of whatever this is growing in front of this tree It's like weeds and brush and bushes is darker than this. All right, so now let's focus on these things Well, actually, let me go to my my medium value Actually, I was using the medium value forgot I'm gonna go back to the dark now and make some of my darkest darks darker. You'll be able to see this, okay? All right, I don't want to make these too dark I probably don't want to mess with this too much because that's more medium. All right So now let's go in here and get some of these darker darks You can definitely see that's a darker charcoal pencil and once again, you don't have to have three three pencils I also do the technique with the three markers of three different values So that can work too. There's lots of options and pressure has a lot to do with it Obviously if I give hard pressure I Get more of that darkness and if I if I do lighter pressure It's not quite a start. All right, so enough fiddling around with that So now I'm gonna go back to the medium the one that I sharpened and I'm just gonna do some kind of some lines here and See my pressure is much lighter here This is that area that's the fence post Okay, and see how I don't want to make that value too dark because it is definitely lighter than the rest of it You can even with charcoal if you want to make something look even further away and subdue it and lighten it a little more I'm gonna just do that with this area down here because it's lighter. All right, you can just kind of Blend it out. I could do that with a tree too a little bit Make it look far away because you notice that tree it does this part of that moody look it does look Really covered by fog. Okay, so now we've got Kind of an idea of what's going on here. Now. I'm gonna take my lightest charcoal pencil here Okay, and I'm going to just represent some of this other stuff that's going on I see right here if you go back to the middle mark and I come straight down it's where a little Something a group of trees or something is kind of behind here kind of goes up and down here and Then behind that is where the other group of trees are I think I will make this tree go a little higher here, you know In the in the final that I do And that's another thing too. It's no problem to correct with stuff Okay, so you can definitely do that as you go along Right so my tree will be a little bit taller now. I'm going to bring this down here And then there's that other grouping of trees. It's so distant and so far away. It's incredibly light Okay, and it's just a little Idea of some trees going along here and then right about at Not quite a quarter of the way. Okay, so there would be a quarter I see about right here is where this other Distant tree and it's taller than this. Okay, this other distant tree. What I'm doing is I'm I'm comparing shapes all I mean proportions of things and shapes and Where they are in respect to everything else. I guess proportions. I'm always drawing Based on where something else is I'm not just looking at that one thing Maybe that makes sense. I'm looking at where it is in relation to other things and I'm also looking at negative spaces So maybe I can break this down. I didn't mean for this to be just like a drawing Lesson here, but I thought I'd add a little bit in on it and I think later. Is this the light one? Yeah, I think later I'll do a drawing video where I focus more just on this kind of stuff and also talk more about negative shapes and and how to compare objects and You're basically just training yourself none of this is going to happen unless you practice But you're training yourself to develop these skills and then low and behold when you Practice and you do it over and over and over again It just happens, you know before you know it You're not having to try so hard at this now You notice these are way back like that. It's almost like I see something else back there If we lived in the mountains, I'd say there was a mountain back there But I think it's just a cloud or something. Okay, and now down below this we've got at about Right in here. There is another sort of another little tree back here in the field and Yeah, maybe I will leave that in there Wasn't sure if I was gonna leave that tree in there or not, but perhaps I will all right So it's gonna be a little darker Then this that's back there. All right and now this right here I drew it in but I didn't give it a value yet and it's actually about the same value as this one It's lighter than this and it's darker than this, but it's about the same as this one So let me see if I can with this And I do notice that Stop right about there. I do notice that This area with the the fence post Also, too, here's a quick little tip with it should be darker. I should complete my sentence Also with little fence post it never looks right to draw Let's say that some fence going back around over a field or something. It never looks right to draw a fence post Just perfectly equidistant Okay, that looks very amateurish fence posts. They have personality especially when you've got cows next door like mine that um knock them over and they're not that dark which Some of our cows have actually gotten out, but what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna give them a little difference in width and Difference in how they're leaning and also difference in how close or far they are together This one's actually a little closer and it's leaning kind of that way and then there's one that's a little further apart And there's one like right in here All right, so they're gonna have more character and personality if they're Not so consistent And then again, this is a little bit darker some of this in here There's a little bit of growth growing around that fence post. I don't want to get it too dark. I'm using the light one Yeah, okay All right, so this is just to give us an idea. You know, do I like this composition? Is there anything I want to change? Should I Should I take anything out? What what is what do I like about this and what don't I like? Well right now I can see for me now. I'll work on the sky with pastels I'm just you know, basically giving this some value I feel like I don't have much rhyme or reason to these grasses and I will Work on that when I do the pastel painting, but I do like the composition I like that we've got something larger over here, but that it kind of balances out It's not so heavily weighted over here because of these two distant trees over here And it's just got some interesting things going on So anyway, that's just a a little basic Example of getting in a little value sketch and now I think I'll go ahead and do a a small mini pastel painting to Work out any other issues and my composition will I'll hopefully get it where I like it even more the more that I work on it There we go. We've got a little bit of a value study there This would be a little bit darker in here. Let me grab that's the cool thing about charcoal You can grab some on your finger It's a little darker, but this is still a lighter area than either of these all right, and so um, you know now now we can kind of Get an idea and Start working on a little mini painting Now I've zoomed in here to show you the color choices These are the actual ones that I used for the mini demo I may have grabbed one or two other neutrals My neutral palette is literally right next to me and put them back in their spot, but not many so And surprisingly not many pastels were needed for this particular painting These again are the Underpainting selections to give it that nice warm. These are going to be our bowls underneath the neutral palette and sorry if this keeps focusing on my hand and So those obviously I have in varying degrees of value darkest next to darkest medium medium to light and light So if you have anything that's these Five values that is in the magenta. I mean you could even do this with reds and oranges and yellows but just some warmer tones and That's really all you need for the underpainting selection now notice other than that All of these are really more neutral colors. You don't see any really bold colors jumping out at you These are my green choices. They all look kind of like dead greens Nothing is really like that bright vibrant green and again darkest value down to lightest value Some of these are a little cooler like maybe that one And actually this one over here is a lighter value This one's actually got some green in it. It would it could actually go down here and then I've got some cooler blues some have a little more green in it than others, but Again according to value and then I've got a purple that I use sparingly and then I've just got kind of a this is more of a doled out brown kind of a taupe color and Then some lighter versions of that. So that's our neutral palette with our bold Underpainting which really has a neat effect. All right time to paint Right now. I have a little piece of Cinelli a la carte pastel card It's like a nice little beigey color and this is a I just love the surface It's really great, but what I'm going to do is just get a little preliminary painting done This is what's called the a CEO size It stands for art cards editions and originals and it's I call them artist trading cards But I like to cut a whole bunch of them up because they're fun But there was a neat way for artists to actually trade their art with other artists We should do that in our Monaco a group. Oh and in our patreon group as well, man, that would be fun Okay, I just had an idea though. That'll be a neat thing that I can think about and hopefully do all right, so Basically, I don't even think I'm gonna sketch anything in with this. I've gotten one two three four five different values of this pink Coral magenta color here a little bit of a more of a purple in this one, but they're really just different values Let's put them in the order that they go. I'm trying to do this without dropping them. Hopefully this is showing up Okay, so darkest Next next next and lightest. Okay, so we're gonna use this to create now Why would I choose these colors to create like a little underpainting? I'm choosing them because when I did my last little neutral painting I put down More of the the bolder colors as an underpainting actually did it with oil paint and I've since figured out a way I've got to change it but but I loved putting the neutrals on top of a more vibrant color and It just it made the neutrals kind of pop and they just work together really well, so that's what I'm doing here All right, so now I'm just gonna get in. I think I'm just gonna go ahead and tone the whole thing I know the sky is pink or not pink, but this is the lightest value the sky is the lightest value in This mini painting portion. I'm speeding it up a bit because it's a little bit redundant it's basically following the exact same principles that I discussed in the value sketch and Just take notice of where I'm using. I basically just applied the lightest value and the darkest value there I got my two end degrees of my values and Kind of work from there and then I basically just go in with all of the other values and again This is really teeny so it's a little hard to do but just do a value study with the five Magenta pink tones that I chose and again you can use whatever warm colors you have and You know, it will have a similar effect. All right, enjoy this. I'll add some music and I hope you will learn from this lesson and learn that by using neutral colors You're in no way decreasing the Brilliance of your art because they have a life all their own when used correctly. All right, thanks guys, and here we go As I'm wrapping this up here. I thought I'd share that I actually really liked the final result of this mini painting I I think I actually liked it more than the large one. I did there's something sometimes about doing something a little bit more spontaneous and not overworking it that gives a life to your art work and So I learned something from this too and stay tuned because part three of The power of a neutral palette will be coming soon and also if you would like to see part one It is exclusively for my patrons on my patreon account www.patreon.com Susan Jenkins where for five dollars a month you can not only get a little extra content But you can also help keep these free videos coming to Monet cafe for hungry artistic soul Thanks guys and happy painting