 Welcome to Monet Café Studio and this pastel painting lesson I'm calling Forever Zenias. This lesson will feature the gorgeous pastels made by the Jay Luda Pastel Company. Do you ever have moments in life where you feel like God is just shining down a sweet little blessing on you? Well that's how my husband and I felt. When we were driving to pick something up for the home we're building and we stumbled upon this adorable strawberry stand in Plant City, Florida near where we live. And all around the stand they had planted endless fields of zenias and sunflowers. What a great photo opportunity. Some of the shots and video I captured were well worth the bee sting that I got. Poor little bee. He was just protecting his sweet treat. And there's no doubt I'll be painting for many of these reference images in upcoming tutorials. Today's painting will be from a reference I took actually near the road and I just love the placement of the zenias and their gorgeous color. Now if you're a patron of mine you have access to this photo in my photo reference album. It's a Google album where I have hundreds of my own collection of photos and even though I'm not a world traveler I find some beautiful places in my own backyard and nearby where I live and my patrons have access to this album to use my images to paint from. If you're like, what is a patron? I have a Patreon page Patreon.com slash Susan Jenkins and for only $5 a month you can not only support this channel to keep the free videos coming but you become part of my Patreon family. You get extra content, extra goodies, extra commentary and I get to see your work. It's a wonderful place and you can cancel it anytime. Alright let's get started with this lesson. Oh my goodness I was so excited to be contacted by the Jay Luda Pastel company to review their soft pastels. These look a little dirty because I had already used them at this point. I went ahead and made a little color chart of the 24 colors that I selected. You can do the same thing with this company. They allow you to customize your color selection and I specifically chose some very bright colors and I thought they'd be perfect for these zenias. I personally like the fact that this is a father and son company and their pastels are handmade with love from Transylvania in Romania. My daughter-in-law happens to be from Romania as well. I'll have a link to their website in the description of this video and I like on their site that they actually have a little bit about their story. I really enjoyed reading that you might as well. I also really liked that they have their color system defined for you so you can understand how they number their colors. I really like it when companies do that. And as far as ordering goes, you can order single colors. They're about $7 apiece. I know that's another country's symbol there, but this is US prices. They might seem a bit pricey at first, but keep in mind these are quality pastels and you just are not going to get this type of application and color with some of the cheaper, you know, craft store bought pastels. But here's the good news. They actually compare to many other quality pastel sets because they ship for free worldwide. I thought I'd do a quick little cost comparison to another pastel that's similar to these. They're very similar to Terry Ludwig Pastels. And this basic landscape set of Terry Ludwig's, it's 30 pastels for $167. But by the time you add in shipping of $15, it's $182. You divide that out and it's about $6 per stick. However, with the Jay Luda Pastels, with their 24 landscape set, do the math on that, it comes out to be about $5.20 a stick. And keep in mind, these are the prices as of the making of this video. And here's some extra incentive. They just got back with me and said they would give a 10% off coupon. So let me show you how this coupon works. It does not work on the individual sticks. So you'll have to go to where they have their assortments or sets of pastels. And then if the set of pastel is already on sale, the coupon code won't work. But if not, I think I'm going to buy this green set. Then you just click view cart once you add it to cart, and then you click view cart and it's going to give you a little place where you can put the coupon code in. And the coupon code is SJ10, like Susan Jenkins 10, SJ10. That's all there is to it. Once again, the shipping is free. All right, are you guys ready to paint now? My surface I'll be using is a sheet of Sennelier La Carte pastel card. I love that it comes in different sizes and different colors. Keep in mind, this is not a water friendly surface, but I love it for its soft, impressionistic results. And these Jay Luda Pastels, wow, they just layered on like butter. But they were just so smooth in their application. All right, I'm going to use a few other pastels as well. I have a few darks here, some greens. Again, the Jay Luda Pastels were very bright, so I needed a few other colors. This is just a dark Prismacolor new pastel. And I'm just using it to get in a super basic sketch. And I sort of consider this as a study. I could not wait to play with these pastels. And my husband was literally in the shower getting ready to go out to dinner with me. And I had just a few minutes to paint. So I am speeding this up. Again, it's really a lot about the Jay Luda Pastels, but I just wanted you to see how beautifully they apply. So let me give you a little commentary here. I'm just basically getting in some of the shapes of these trees. And trees in a landscape painting are typically one of the darkest elements. Things that are vertical in a landscape are darker. Also what's dark is typically the foreground grasses, especially if you're in one of those angles where you're down low and you're seeing the roots of the flowers. I did grab my darkest pastel, which I believe is a Terry Ludwig eggplant color. And I reinforced the darks down towards the bases of that middle grouping of trees, which is the closest trees. Keep in mind values get lighter as things go into the distance. So those background trees will be a little bit lighter and cooler. And now I'm getting some of the darkest grasses and areas in the reference photo where I can see it is a bit darker. Now the beauty of soft pastels is their layering ability. Notice I'm just layering in blocks of color and value. And when I first started painting with soft pastels, I tried to paint all of those individual flowers first. I did it like a paint by number. I would sketch everything in and then I'd paint every little detail. But I learned over time that the beauty of soft pastels and other mediums is its ability to layer, layer on top of other colors and values. And now I'm layering just a little bit of green, see on those trees and to some of the grasses. I know that there the sun is shining somewhere in here. And it's a great idea to early on identify your source of light. I could see the light seem to be hitting on the upper left side of the trees. So that's what I tried to keep consistent throughout the painting. Added a little bit of that cool blue and a little bit of this turquoise to give the idea of distant trees or mountains, you know, it's suggestive. And that's the beauty of being an artist. Once you know a few of the simple rules, you can suggest things and really interpret your reference photo. And that's when it starts really getting fun. Now I'm just carving in some of this pretty blue. This is the first J Luda pastel I've used and I'm telling you when I used it, I was like, oh my goodness, it is just layering. I mean, just so smoothly. Often if you're a pastel artist or you've a beginning pastel artist, you might notice some colors, even the Terry Ludwigs that I've just put down in the foreground. You see how they didn't cover completely. So I'm just really impressed with these J Luda pastels. I love them. And this purple I thought would make a pretty little hint of a cloud feeling in the sky. And these are those three so far have been J Luda pastels. Now I'm using this little creamy color to suggest some of the lighter values in the clouds. And I am a bit limited with the color choices that I selected. Oh, and here is a really pretty pale, almost like a turquoise bluish green color. It just was such a nice light color for a sky. But again, I had 24 pastels they allowed me to select. I think it's something everyone can do, like customize 24 colors. I'm not positive on that. But now watch you watch me layer this pastel. Do you see how the grit of the paper still shows through that I didn't quite get that smooth coverage that I did with the J Luda pastel? I mean, it's fine because I know after I layer a few layers, all of that will start to blend together and get covered up. Now, this is another J Luda pastel right here. Isn't that a gorgeous, like a grassy, pretty yellowy green? And I wanted to add this lighter green to the background grasses. In landscape paintings, in fields, things flatten out in the distance. You're not going to see tall flower stems or grass stems. You're going to see more flat, almost like a carpet in the distance. That was another J Luda, a really nice, light green. I actually chose more greens than I realized. And a few of them were similar. It's kind of hard sometimes online when you're looking at colors, making choices. They don't always appear like they do in person, but that's OK. I used a lot of these greens anyway. Now, this pretty purple. I like to get in a little purple in shadowy areas. And I thought there was some shadowy areas, kind of, that was a little light right there in some of the areas of these trees and in some of those deep grasses. I'm going to move this reference image so you guys can see better. I scumbled in a little bit of this purple down in the shadowy areas of some of the grasses. It's also echoing color, it's called. When you connect color in a painting, I had some purple in the tree, so I wanted some purple somewhere else in the painting. Now, this is a little bit of a lighter purple. It's almost a periwinkle. It's a bit of a blue with a hint of purple. And I just gave a suggestion of that road. I wasn't sure if I was going to put the road in or not, but I thought it added a neat little horizontal element with all of the vertical flowers. So that little periwinkle blue was perfect for that. Again, I'm just glazing some of these greens. This is an even lighter green here. And like I said, I was playing at this point. I just grabbed this scrap piece of Sennelier paper that I had and started painting while my husband was taking a shower. I remember he got out and he was like, whoa, did you just paint that while I was taking a shower? I said, yeah, I know how fast he takes a shower, so I didn't have long. Now I'm adding some pretty blue, some of these are not the J. Luda pastels, but I knew I needed a bit more dark. I'm putting in some greens and I need some greens in these grasses. So all I'm doing is looking at the reference image and generalizing at this point. I'm blocking in the large shapes and values and some colors that I think will be a nice foundation for these flowers. This is, I believe this is a Terry Ludwig pastel and it's kind of like a cool green. I wanted some coolness to some of the middle ground of this painting. And now you can see what I mentioned before. Gradually as you add enough layers, they do start to cover some of those spaces that are showing through between the paper. But again, notice the J. Luda pastels in the sky. Man, they just really had some great coverage going, giving a little bit more green to some of these trees. And now can you kind of see that layering effect and specifically in the trees, how we often layer our darker values first and then gradually layer on top. Now we're not layering with pressure and strokes that are so hard that it covers up all of what we've laid down. The beauty is that these colors and values are reacting to each other and a little bit of them is peeking through. And it does eventually start to give that three dimensional effect of trees or flowers or grasses. Now I'm just using this kind of magenta color. This is a dark, well, it's more of a reddish brick, red kind of darker pastel. And this is a Terry Ludwig as well. I think it's from the Terry Ludwig, one of the dark sets. It's really good to have some dark pastels in your pastel palette. And now I have a bit of a middle value pink, adding a little bit of a dark to that one in the foreground. I know it's more in shadow because it's buried a bit into the grasses. So now I'm adding a little bit of that pink on top of the dark. And the flowers that are closer to me are gonna have more of the petals distinguished rather than when they recede into the distance, they really just become little horizontal shapes. So don't think you have to give a lot of detail as your painting or as your flowers get closer to the middle and specifically in the distance. When you have large groupings of flowers and they're very far away in the distance, they literally just become a blanket of color in little specific areas. And you don't have to have any detail at all. And I liked that some of the reds in the Jay Lutas set looked perfect for some of these zinnias. This one's a very cool red. It leans a little more towards pink. It's kind of hard to tell in a video, but it made great little petals on the tops of some of that darker reddish pink I had put down. And now those other blobs of dark flowers, they're not gonna stay that dark. That was just a good base for some of them. And here you can see how my flowers are getting closer together. And now like I said, like a blanket in the distance might have overdone it there a little bit, but I can add some more green later. So they just sort of meld into one another as they progress into the distance. This is a gorgeous pink color. So I thought I'd add a little bit of it to some of the tops of these zinnias. And once again, I am playing with color here, playing with these pastels I had never used and really just having a good old time. If you've painted much and you do like I do and you just put on some music, you kind of get lost in the moment. And I say this so often in my videos. I really cherish the creation process even more so than the final painting. You know, this life is fleeting. And if we hang on too tightly to the things of this world, we can become materialistic. And I just find that the moments of joy and happiness come more in experiences and things that are not tangible, a moment, a memory and painting the process of creating is one of those moments for me. So I'm playing with more of these J. Luda colors. I loved this orange. It was a really nice, easy orange. And this yellow was just gorgeous. By the way, I haven't mentioned yet that the J. Luda pastels have their color numbers embossed right on the side of the pastel. That's kind of convenient. You can't see it here, but I held it up. But they do, it wears off as you use them. Now, this was neat. The zinnias field actually met up or was adjacent to the sunflower field. So the yellow flowers over to the upper right are some of the sunflowers that we're picking up. But it's all suggestive, you know? And I like the more that you just suggest stuff and let the viewer just meander and explore, the more free your painting is going to feel. I felt like I had some of my flowers a little bit too equally spaced here. Flowers grow more in little clusters or little groupings. So I try to rectify that a little bit as I work. And I'm still using my principle of dark to light. You see how I'm getting lighter as I'm adding color. And I'm trying to just have some little mark making on foreground flowers to give that suggestion of zinnias petals. They have all these little spiky petals that kind of grow out of them. And now I'm going to turn on the light, so to speak, adding some of my brightest colors and values and let some flowers shine in the spotlight more than others. And if you're still watching at this point, it's a good time for me to ask you to subscribe to this channel if you haven't already. I have a goal or I've had this goal for a while. I'm getting so close to 100,000 subscribers on my YouTube channel here, Monet Cafe. And I had a goal at the beginning of 2023 to reach 100,000 subscribers by the end of the year. And oh my goodness, I'm so close. I think I'm around at 92,000 at this point. And I'm on track to make it if my subscriber rate stays close to what it is now. But barely, I will just barely make it. And I'm just a competitive person with myself, not with anybody else, anybody else that way. And so I had this goal and YouTube actually gives the channel owner a plaque when you make it to 100,000 subscribers. So I don't know, it's silly. I'm just excited about getting that plaque one day. So on that note, if you haven't subscribed, I'd really appreciate it if you would. Now I'm using this beautiful purple again. I'm giving a little bit of a shadow side to the road with that purple, adding a little bit to some trees further away. But I kind of changed my mind, decided it would look better if I had some of that blue to suggest those distant trees or mountains again, like I said. So this is called color echoing. I'm using some of the same blue into the grasses. It creates harmony in your painting. And now I'm just gonna give a little like center to this Xenia and I'm getting close to being done. But can you see, is there something missing? Something's kind of missing with these flowers, right? It's the stems and leaves, any kind of little leaves or grasses. Isn't this a pretty blue? I put a little bit more in those background trees and just suggested some of it down in the grasses as well. Now, the J. Luda pastel works great because it has an edge to it unlike a round pastel where you can just turn it on its edge and get some nice little stems for flowers. And I found it still layered very nicely. Sometimes I'll turn it if you kind of wear one of the edges out. I'm just beating this part up a little bit. I added a little bit more darks to the grasses to make them feel like there was just deeper areas to the foreground grasses. And now I'm gonna add in the little shapes. And these are just suggestive. I often just try to look at a general idea of some of the leaf shapes and just incorporate them in with a varying pattern. You don't want things to be so exactly the same or to have equal spacing of things. Have them different sizes as well, turning different directions. So that just gives a little bit of variety and spice to the painting. And now I'm almost done and this was really a fun painting for me but part of the fun was playing with these new J. Luda pastels. I was really a fan. I am a fan. I wanna get some more and I wanna thank the J. Luda company. I really like them. They communicate with me on Instagram and they just seem to be genuine. I'm not sure which one I'm talking to, the dad or the son, but just sweet people. Again, my daughter-in-law is from Romania and her family, oh my goodness, absolutely lovely people. So maybe it's a Romanian thing. I can't wait to go there one day. Their country is beautiful. I'm playing a little bit more with some of this yellow and just adding some little jewels of color in specific places. I really wanted to add a B but like I said, I had limited time to create this and I'm definitely going to be painting more, not only with these J. Luda pastels but more of the reference images from this beautiful experience that I had. My husband and I were actually going to find something for our house we're trying to build. It's a slow process because we're doing it ourselves and but what a treat to just have that beautiful opportunity to see these fields of flowers and capture this moment in a painting. Here is the final and I hope you learned a lot. You learned about J. Luda pastels and if you've never painted with soft pastels before, beware they're addicting totally my favorite medium. You can find hundreds of free tutorials here on the Monet Cafe channel and also if you'd like a little more again consider becoming a patron on my Patreon page. I would love to have you as part of the family and as always, God bless and happy painting. Thank you.