 Come on in the studio with me, friends, and join me in this lesson where I share three steps to an easy soft pastel painting. In this lesson, you'll see how I use watercolor pencils and soft pastels together with some very affordable products, creating a lovely and prompt to impressionistic painting. I thought some blues music would be fun, so let's get started. First, a quick shout out to the company Hippie Crafter. They were so generous to gift me with some of their supplies, and I really do like their art wipes. I get dusty all the time, so it's really helpful to clean my hands. Their artist tape you'll see me use in this video, it worked great, and as I said watercolor pencils for the underpainting. I use the art wipes to clean off my hands to get started, and also to clean off my board. Now this is a DIY board that I made, I also have a video on this, I'll try to remember to put the link to this board in the description. Also I'm using the artist tape, and this comes, it's a little over half an inch wide, and this comes with three rolls. It is repositionable and acid free. Now I will share that this is more like masking tape, rather than the white artist tape I often use for more long term purposes and shipping my artwork. But I love this type of tape, again that's similar to masking tape, because it's great for making a border when you're doing any kind of painting like watercolor painting. I also love, I talk about this limb tape dispenser a lot, because it just helps me to grab things or get the tape off of there quickly. Now this is artist tape, this is white artist tape that I have on there right now, I typically get mine from Dick Blick Art Supply, this one I believe is three quarter inch. But this tape I'm going to go ahead and put the hippie crafter artist tape, which is more like masking tape in my limb dispenser, and it just makes it so easy for me to pull a piece off and tape it down. The surface I'm using is watercolor paper. I'm using 300 pound watercolor paper that's on a block. The pages are glued together. You can use whatever you have though. Before I border off my painting area, let's talk about these watercolor pencils. I forgot how much I like using watercolor pencils to create an underpainting. And this set from hippie crafter inspired me again. I love the fact that they have so many colors. There's three, not two, but three levels of colors in this. And it's very affordable. Once again, a quality product. I really like the packaging too. Also I'll have all the links to these products in the description of this video. Now I'm using the artist slash masking tape to just tape off a little area. And I'm going to be using the watercolor pencils to just get in a basic sketch. Now my painting is from Imagination. I find that once you've been painting a while, sometimes you have a little motif that you're very familiar with and that you kind of lean towards. And this is one that I create often when I'm just playing. And it's basically just a simple little landscape. It's light right here, but you'll be able to see in just a minute when I give more of the color down. I'm just using one of the, I believe this is like a darker green. Getting in a kind of more of a foreground tree. One tree that's a little further away, a little road or trail leading the eye in. And now you should be able to see a little better as I start sketching. And I'm just sketching in little directional marks to fill in the shape of this tree and the background tree. I'd say I'm pressing with a medium pressure and keeping it very loose, gestural and free. Is going to be covered up. I get a question all the time is, why do you do an underpainting if you're going to cover it up? But I'll talk about that more too. I'm using a Chinese watercolor brush. I like larger brushes when I'm applying water, but you'll see me switch this brush in a little while. It was moving around too much. So I get a smaller brush later, but I'm basically just wetting the watercolor pencil that I've laid down. You can see it. It makes a nice green color here. Now I'm using one of the purples and I'm still getting in these sketchy lines to indicate the foreground grasses and like I said, a little trail. Now often when we're first starting as artists, we really want to get everything in like perfect. But trust me, having a really sketchy loose style at the beginning is going to allow your painting to feel more painterly and artistic. And it's just a neat way to have a loose beginning. Now I'm using some, you can see how this brush is all over the place. I'm using some of the purple that I already put down to grab it and add it in other places. All right, here we go. Now I'm just using a number 12 round brush, I believe, use whatever you have. And I'm maneuvering and moving the purple around a little bit. And this is really just establishing my big shapes and my concept for the painting. So watercolor pencils are great for that. Now I'm just getting in some blue for the sky. And this is what I call a roadmap and inspiration to get started. And I hope to do another tutorial where I use even more colors to create an underpainting and maybe not cover as much of it up. But I am now going in, now we know that anything that's vertical in a landscape is typically darker even though I got that green down just to kind of get my general shapes in. So I'm going to go ahead and darken them up. Now I had an area there that was still kind of wet. You can see where it's a little dark in that foreground tree. I've got another little bit of a cooler purple that I'm putting for like a bank of trees that's far away. And once again, this is a blocking in stage establishing my big shapes, the gesture, the feel, and just getting inspired before I get ready to put down pastel. So yes, I love watercolor pencils to get started with soft pastel paintings. I also love just playing with them. They're a lot of fun. So now I'm just laying in some green. And by the way, I did let these dry each time I wet it before I added another color. I used a blow dryer. I cut that footage out though. So I'm getting, you know, my general shape and form here. If you're watching this video now and you're like, oh my gosh, this looks crazy. Hang in there. Okay. I'm going to do these stages before it finally starts to come together. So don't doubt yourself. If you find that happening too, I used to do that all the time. I'd be like, I can't paint. What's wrong with me? Why am I doing this? And then before you know it, it would start to come together. So I'm just wetting a little bit more of this down with the dark color. You can see how those trees now feel like the value, the darkness is a little bit better. And that's just about it. So I got me in a quick, oh no, I'm wetting this. Oh, wouldn't that, that's such a pretty teal color to get in for some of these shapes of these grasses. All right. So now it's dry. Now here's the magic trick. Watercolor paper doesn't normally take pastels very well. So I use clear liquid gesso and I just make a coating of it on my already dried surface and it, voila, makes your own homemade soft pastel surface. The reason is clear gesso has little bits of sand or grit in it, maybe pumice, I don't know. And it's clear. So when it dries, you can see through to what your underpainting was. So now I have my DIY soft pastel surface that's got texture. Now my pastels will layer nicely and I can get quite a few layers in. I'm using the set to the left of me that is the Unison 120 half stick set. I love this set. You're a very beginner pastel artist. It's a little pricey, but I'm using it because it's laying, it's laid out with such nice values. I put down my darkest kind of burgundy and then I just gradually as the distance increased, I lightened the value of that kind of burgundy color and you see how it creates a sense of depth. The reason is because value gets lighter in the distance. And this is just a paper towel that I'm using to blend. What it does is it softens things and it takes that textural look away. Now I've got, most of this is real time by the way, I just speed up little sections. So you see how fast you can do this. This video is only like 14 minutes long, even talking about the products. So this is like a pretty teal color and I'm using it to get in some of my darker values. And the reason I used that warm color for the underpainting is often the ground, if you're going to put some greens down, the ground is warmer. Think of it as the earth and we're going to layer our grasses on top of it. They need something to grow out of, like dirt or earth. So now I'm just blending in my darker values, again just speeding up sections. Now that distant band of trees, this is where you can get fun. Things cool off in the distance and they get lighter. So I thought I'd make those trees like this pretty teal color, turquoisey color and I even snuck in a little bit of it in the grasses. I'm adding a pretty bright green, the lightest value way back in the distant field and just lightly suggesting it on some of the tops of the grasses. Now as things move forward, they get a little bit darker in value. So I got a little bit more of a darker green. I wanted to give a little bit of this green to the trees, trees are green, but typically, but that gave them a little bit more of a feeling as trees. Things in the sky are usually values are usually darker up in the upper heavens. So I'm getting a little bit more of a darker turquoise, maybe a little more neutral too for the upper parts of the sky. And it's starting to come together already. I'm giving a little bit of a light above the distant trees. Often there's a little bit of light right at the tops of the trees in the distance. And now I'm just scumbling in some grasses. Notice how loose and soft my pressure is here. I haven't pressed hard on anything yet. Very soft. Now I put a little mossy green in the trees. That's really making them feel like trees. I'm kind of softening that area that got a little dark when I was doing the watercolor pencils. Now let's have some fun with some flowers. I'm going to add just some pink flowers. This is a super impressionistic loose painting. This I would call it a study just for having fun. So my flowers are really just little gestural shapes. Don't worry about what variety of flowers they are. And I'm trying to create flowers that some of them are reaching up high. Some of them are buried down deep in the grasses. And we don't want to create too much of a pattern. You want them to have this randomness and a spontaneity. Now I'm going in with one of the lighter values. Like I said, I love how this unison set is laid out. You can't see the whole set here. But they go by color families from darker to lighter values. Makes it really nice for painting a landscape painting. Added some purple. If you know me, gotta add a little bit of purple in there. Now I'm adding a little bit more green to some of those distant grasses. Carving in a little bit between some of the tree shapes. And I'm taking one of these pastels because unisons are round. Round pastels have the need ability to roll them to make grasses. I'm rolling and just making some random strokes and creating some life and energy here. And this painting is going to feel fresh and colorful because I haven't overworked it. I know that's something we do often as artists. Look at that purple. Sneaking that purple in there. Didn't that just bring it to life? Purple's great in the shadows, by the way. But I recommend do more studies. Do paintings like this. Have fun. I geared this lesson towards beginners. I know when I share beginner lessons, they usually get a lot of attention. And it really is something that you can do. It's not that hard. It just takes learning, practice. And if you love it, if you love watching these things and you have a desire, you can learn to paint. It's not rocket science. Now I'm pulling off the artist slash masking tape. Look at that nice, clean edge. So I do like the hippie crafter artist tape for these types of purposes. Now this is a pastel that's not in the unison set. This is, I have a video on these little pastels called the most expensive pastels in the world. They're made by Henri Rocher. And look at that pink. That's probably why they're the most expensive in the world. But this was fun. I hope you enjoyed it. I hope you'll try it. I thought it looked neat with the black mat. And if you create paintings in standard sizes, it's real easy to find mats and frames. So you can create a fast, impromptu, impressionistic painting really rather quickly. I hope you enjoyed this lesson and learned a lot. And if you're a patron of mine, I can't wait to see your recreations in our homework album. All right, everyone. God bless and happy painting.