 Welcome to Monet cafe. I'm artist Susan Jenkins and yes art is better with friends So come join the fun subscribe to this channel and enjoy this lesson today where I will be sharing a tutorial of this Painting of an adorable bear. Oh my goodness. I just loved this bear's face and I have to give credit to the photographer I found her beautiful photograph on PMP dash art comm Angeline, I'm not even gonna try to say your last name I love your photography and you must live in a place where there's bears. So be careful And you know PMP is great because you're able to go to the site and find reference images of Images landscapes and things that may not be in your own backyard. So thanks again, Angeline for this beautiful photograph Also currently this original painting is available on my Etsy shop And I have prints and other products with this image on fine art America comm I'll share those links in the about section of this video The main topic of this video is what surface is the best for painting animals? And by far my favorite surface for painting animal portraits and wildlife paintings is Sennelier La carte pastel card I'll be sure to stay tuned to the end of the video because not only will you see me create this bear painting But I'm going to show you some examples of a flamingo doing feathers and also doing dog fur So that's my tricky way of getting you to watch to the end of the video And now let me show you my color palette for this painting Surprisingly, it wasn't as many pastels as you might think Some of these here are duplicates, but these were the basic colors and values that I used I'm going to show them to you right here. And also I have a clickable link I took a photo of these colors and in the about section of this video You can click the link and see the photograph of all of these colors if you'd like to look at it more closely in this first column going from dark to light are my cooler colors and This column here are my warmer colors again going from dark down to light Now I knew even though some of these colors look a little bright They looked a little bright when I was putting them on I realized I wanted this to look more realistic So I kind of neutralized some of those colors that look so bright. Those are actually really more for the back lighting of the bear So I'll talk about that a little as I paint now These are some greens and believe it or not the greens weren't just in some of the grasses around the rocks They were in the bear himself. One of those greens I put down was like the exact value of the brown paper I'm using so you can't even really see the mark that I made I also used some cooler and a little bit more of a teal color there. That was my little punchy color I don't use it a lot in the painting, but just a little bit for fun and impact I can't stress enough how important it is to get in an accurate sketch if you're doing an animal portrait I prefer using charcoal for this versus pencil because charcoal is made more of the same material as soft pastel and The application goes on to the senile a paper quite well too now back to accuracy with animal portraits I say this because I have done this wrong in the past Often and it just is so frustrating when you feel like you've gotten everything right about the painting or you're feeling good about it but something is just off and so often it is the eyes and I Notice if you look at the bear photo here that I have superimposed Look how dark the the bears eye is I mean it really looks like just a black area Now I had it zoomed in on my iPad So I could see that there was a little bit of the whites of the eye showing But guess what? It's not white. It it's like a really dark color where the little white of the eye was so I have to remember I've got to keep this whole I even darken it more after this I have to keep this whole area quite dark and then just so subtly Give the indication again. You can't see it zoomed in but he had his his eyelid is what made him look sad It's kind of drooping down over his eyeball and so I had to make sure I got that that to me His expression was what made this painting so sweet So I've got to make sure I get that so do what you have to to get an accurate Sketch I usually just put down some guidelines and then work from there as long as I have the proportions right I feel confident that I can begin my painting so often I do like to begin with the eyes and the general features of the animal that I'm painting and Also, you may notice I also will talk about this more at the very end of the video Like I said, I'll be doing some feathers of a flamingo and a little dog's ear to show you kind of the general idea of how to paint on this paper the Sennelier LeCart paper and you'll see in that example and here I typically will work dark to light and You know usually that's kind of the way you work with pastels anyway, but I find specifically with animal fur We have a tendency to want to paint the exact color and value that we see and often I say for me always I need to create it in layers and that's what gives that believability So often I'll lay down a darker layer I'll look for the kind of the darkest value that I see in that area and I'll lay down that darker layer and Then I will gradually layer upon it getting finally to the Values that I see Think of it more as you're working the underneath coat and Building the layers up to the the part that the light shines on very similar to landscape painting when we put our darks down We have to get some ground down before we can put grasses on top of it So it's kind of the same thing with animal fur So I'm now that I got a little bit of those values in of where my darkest darks are you know always if you can squint your eyes and look for your darkest values and Again, I like to work all over the painting So it helps me to get those darks in everywhere I see them and basically just start blocking in things from there then I can gradually get to other areas to work more Specifically, but another thing about this paper is if you've never used it It's surprisingly coarse. I remember the first time I got it. I thought oh, no how am I gonna work on this and When you first lay down your strokes as I did when I first began I had this tendency to want to blend everything in you know early on and it was in time and gradually that I realized No, no, no don't blend with a blending tool And I you'll see me sometimes tap things off with my finger a little bit I never used a blending tool except for my fingers sometimes just to soften a couple of areas But what we need to do is Let the pastels blend it themselves that Lends to that painterly look that we so often admire and so Often want to emulate So so let the pastels do the layering now getting in these toenails somebody commented on When I posted this on I think it was a group. Maybe the Monet cafe art group on Facebook It was I think they said I like her toenails I think of this bear as a boy, but it could be a girl Also, too, I get the toenails in later. You'll see I add the highlights to the toenails But I'm saying this now because I am going to I'm not going to talk for this entire process, but I Tone them down a little bit there They're kind of the value that they need to be right here because you don't want them to be the focus Getting value right is so important and also too I Knew the focal point was this bears face So keep that in mind as you see me work I'm getting things I'll get things kind of generally blocked in I've got to get something in all over And then I keep in mind that I don't want too much contrast in Other areas other than the bears face. I have a focal point video It has five strategies for creating a focal point and one of them a biggie is Contrast and if you want an area to be a focal point You want your lightest lights and your darkest darks to be in that area and then the rest of the painting can be a little bit less contrasty and That will immediately our eyes just have we're just made that way our eyes go to high contrast So as I finish up the painting, I keep that in mind. That's why I didn't want those toenails to be too bright You'll probably see a point where I have them a little lighter and then I tone them down because otherwise they're going to just be Too noticeable and you may have noticed I've sped this up just ever so slightly just to keep the video file smaller But notice now where the bear has the darkest values I know those color temperatures are cooler So notice that I'm using more violets and cooler colors to give the impression that it's in shadow Now I'm speeding this little section up here a bit more to get to another point that I'd like to talk about Here I'm still just kind of working over all and I try very hard I've learned over the years not to get too tied up in one area too quickly. What happens when you do that is You overwork an area usually it doesn't have the same Consistency as the rest of the painting and often you can get your values off Overall if you just hone in on one area So that's why I always try to say keep it loose work the general painting get your values in Block in the big shapes, but once again with animal portraits, you've got to get the features correct Or it's it's just going to be off and nobody wants that I wanted to keep the sweet bear looking the way that what drew me to the photo to begin with now you probably can notice there is quite a bit of backlighting happening in this bear and I Know that that's going to be one of the lightest values in the painting actually it is look at the photograph You can easily see the lightest value is that light that's shining from behind the bear So I know that gradually my values are going to get lighter as I move up And this is a point where I was playing around with some of these different colors and some of them weren't quite right But as I often say if you get value right, that's the more important choice Okay, so if you're limited with your pastel palette make sure you get value right and you can Be a bit creative with the color, but you may remember at the beginning of this I talked about how I wanted this to be a little bit more realistic of course colorful, you know I love color But that's why I end up kind of neutralizing some of these colors by layering some other colors on top of them But at this point, I am just kind of I know I got to get this accurate. So that's why I try to reestablish some things At this point, I'm still just blocking in getting the values right in areas and making sure I have an Accuracy to this bear now, that's the lightest value that I use right there We might have a tendency to go. Oh white or even not white just even a really really light value and I Resist the urge to do that until the very end and you see how subtle that is right there with just that That's actually kind of a really neutral green that I had just added now that orangey color It like I said some of this is a little bright that it did have the bear did have some beautiful orange colors in it But it was just like that. That's just a little too orange right there So I use it for the sake of value and then I neutralize it at the end and some of my patrons know if you're a patron of mine We actually had some really neat lessons on how to make your own Neutral colors. So again, if you have a limited palette You actually can Increase your palette by learning how to yes blend pastels a bit We can't blend pastels quite like oil paint water color or acrylic But they do have some blending ability and the way they play upon each other when you layer them So so that's a way to give yourself some neutrals when you don't have them But once again, that's a patron video that I had I think it was one of the story time episodes that I had in in one of the books we read So if you haven't become a patron and you'd like to it's Only $5 a month most people I would say probably more probably about half just Give to help this channel. It helps me to keep these videos coming But some people want the camaraderie we have neat connections on discord And it's a lot of fun and they like the extra lessons. So I get to know you guys a little bit better that way And now things are taking shape Starting to see things kind of evolve into despair. I'm working a little on the values that are Underneath his paws on that rock now. I want you to notice As I work in just a minute how I utilize the greens once again, I showed the pastels at the beginning of this video and I mentioned that there were greens in the bear and You don't necessarily see them when you first look at the photo But they worked great for those lighter areas that are on the bear But they're kind of in shadow specifically on his nose and on his ears And if you look at the reference photo and kind of squint You can see the areas that are around his face that are lighter in value, but they're not in the sunshine So I thought this mossy kind of green worked and even a little bit on his nails so again I stress it all the time get value right and you can explore with color a little bit more and Have more interesting results. I think because our brains sometimes just say oh brown and red and tan and That's not always We'll make the best painting now I did I thought that kind of cooler green that I just used right there And there's a little bit more of that tealish kind of color. That's actually kind of a teal blue gray color And I added a little bit of that in the bear for just some interest in places where I thought there was some A little bit of darker values and again I'm gonna layer on top of this and it'll create some interesting Effects, it's so neat with pastels how we layer and I recommend to just have some fun first Don't dive into a serious painting. You don't figure all this stuff out until you do a lot of painting and don't get frustrated I was having a conversation with an artist the other day That I shared how frustrated I was at my beginning journey as a pastel artist and Oh gosh, this was years and years ago and I searched It's one of the reasons I create it is the reason I created this channel I searched I there weren't all the resources that we have now online and There weren't I don't remember any YouTube videos of pastel artists and I found one art for him And I almost gave up pastel painting because I I got some cheap pastels I didn't know what were the better pastels to use and by the way if you're gonna Scrimp on anything Don't scrimp on the pastels scrimp on the paper before you scrimp on the pastels because it really does make that much of a difference and But anyway, so I I almost gave up because I just had terrible results I was using just I don't know maybe even drawing paper I didn't know anything about anything with pastels I felt I felt like I always loved art and I had majored in graphic design I did have some some art classes not a lot But I really loved it and I always loved drawing when I was a kid So that's one of the reasons I started this channel is because I realized man There's a lot of information that people don't know as pastel artist and so I just started I always say I started bringing people along on my journey I still don't consider myself one of the best pastel artist, but I love teaching and I love sharing and so You know me I always go on these tangents when I get to talk into you guys but anyway, notice how I'm adding those interesting greens and See how much more lively the bears looking with some of the purpley magenta colors that I have in the shadow and the greens in the rock and the greens in his fur and You may be a bit puzzled at the beginning. That's one of the most common questions I get is how do you know to use that color? Well, I would say I break that down to two things first like I've mentioned before Value if I don't have the right color. I just go with what is the right value? Next I go with color temperature. So if you keep those two things in mind Oh and real quick. Let me mention. I actually did use a little blending tool there Just a little bit just to kind of it's a piece of pipe foam insulation And I'm just sort of blending in some of the areas that Still had the paper showing through so basically I was just using it to soften things and to kind of complete Things just kind of getting an overall coverage and because I was blessed to have kind of a quiet house Which is a little rare for me sometimes. I am able to keep the little scratchy sounds of the paper I didn't have a whole lot of background noise other than cars riding by on the road outside of my studio But that's why when I speed this up, you'll hear those scratchy sounds go really really fast now You can probably see how by blending a little bit It did soften things and it kind of got me more coverage of the complete bear And now you can probably see a little more clearly how that green on the nose and in the ears really does work Okay, it your brain doesn't read it as green. It just reads it as a value That I think works quite well much better than if I'd have used just a tan color So I am still just getting Trying to be very accurate with things such as the nose and I do apologize that this is I don't always work this way But sometimes it's nice where you can see my pastels laid out beside me a lot of you guys say you like this But sometimes it is a bit harder to see my strokes with my left hand and the way here I try to set up my camera when I'm working at the easel to where it's over to my right side a little bit You can kind of see my strokes better that way But there's advantages and disadvantages to both ways now you can see I'm going in you see I'm going over those dark values and just adding Little indications of some of that fur and how it grows just that little Chunkiness and things that are in the fur just ever so slightly for this little portion I'm gonna speed it up again. You the painting probably took about two hours So I didn't want to make this a two-hour video, but I'm highlighting points that I think will be good for teaching So I'm gonna add just a little bit of music here But stay tuned because I'm gonna come back when I get to some of the brighter highlights around the bear and the rock and the Background things coming together. Here's where I mentioned that I had put some highlights on the claws Nails I was calling them before claws. I guess is the better word And they were getting too much attention. So later you'll see how I tone those down add some shadows around them I thought I'd also share here how if you've watched my videos much You probably don't see me use pastel pencils very often But occasionally when I need a little sharper point or edge to something I will grab one This is just a darker pastel pencil and like I'd mentioned before that eye is mostly dark But I knew it had a little bit of a lid there and I just kind of wanted to accentuate that a little more now To the rock and the background Backgrounds can be tricky, especially when you've kind of worked on things you're feeling happy about it You're like, oh my gosh I really hope I get this background good because I don't want to mess up the whole painting with a bad background I knew one thing that I definitely wanted to do with this background is not give it too much detail once again What's one of the strategies of focal point? Well, one is contrast like I talked about and another is detail And your eyes going to go to where there's more detail So I'm keeping this really loose and using my pastels more in a directional stroke just focusing on value and Color temperature and once again the direction of how things are going and I know that front side of that rock was In shadow it the rocks kind of red But I didn't want to make it quite as red as the bear once again another focal point strategy I hope that bear I wanted to keep keep him as the warmest thing So all these little things may sound like a lot, but they're they really Get easier the more you do them and then before you know it you're sort of naturally doing it But I do recommend watch the focal point video That's something that I think has helped me more as an artist in my latter years as an artist is learning these strategies And here's where I'm toning down those nails a little bit more I know that there is a shadow underneath the the claws I should say and Also kind of there's some division between there with some darker values So I'm just kind of working on that and I think you'll notice that it definitely does Detract from the attention that they were getting before You can see how I focused on those highlights that was the back lighting and now I wanted to let you guys see where I'm using this Kind of a teal blue color. It's almost a it's got color, but it's not super bright And so I'm just strategically working this throughout the bear where I see there might be kind of like some Cooler shadowy areas that aren't too dark in value Even in the rock and that's another thing. It's good if you've got a color that can be incorporated throughout the painting It's going to give some consistency to your piece as a whole notice some in the nose of the bear I had also added some of that same color with that Really mossy green that I had and now I'm working on the rock area. That's behind the bear once again My strategy is to keep it very subtle not too much detail. This is a Harder One of the more gray or color is kind of like a blue gray or violet gray kind of and I'm just moving it and turning the pastel now. This one is a darker pastel. I know it's not going to stay that dark I'm a layer over a little bit, but I'm getting the Just a suggestion of where some of those Lines are in the rock some of those divots that were in the rock and again just gestural and subtle and keeping a painterly style notice the bear the The outline of the bear where I'm working now notice how I'm keeping it very painterly with a lost edge and That just means you don't need any hard edges, especially with his soft fur It's not going to be a hard edge and you want to just work in and around things and not create a line so to speak and Now I'll speed this up a bit more to finish out this painting and get to the other little lessons I want to share on painting animals on senile a la carte pastel card But also to apologize. I had to take the bear reference image away. I was so zoomed in before but now you can see how I'm just gradually working shapes and Values and I'm trying to keep the colors in the rock in the background not competing with the bear and It's amazing how much illusion you can create with just directional strokes and value and it really does give that impression of A rock in the background and here's the final like you saw at the beginning and as I shared I'm going to show you a couple more examples here. I thought let's do something besides fur on this senile a la carte pastel card Let's do some feathers. So here are my Selections of some of the colors actually in this flamingo. They were more purples and darker values than you might think So I'm using a little I think this was a sample piece of senile a card. I got with something And I've had it around forever. So Normally I buy it in the pads in two different sizes So I'm going to just do a little portion of this flamingo and this is just barely sped up a little bit here So what I'm doing first is kind of like with the bear, but I'm not working from a sketch here I'm just getting in the generalities shapes and forms and I'm using a little bit of a Middle value there to kind of start and I know if you look at the flamingo even though I'm cropping it I'm just doing a portion to kind of show you the feathers I see down at the bottom of his neck there see how dark that is we might have a tendency to just go Oh flamingo pink, but he's actually got a lot of orange and red in in there and some deep deep colors So again notice how grainy this looks as I'm applying it And if you're novice to this paper, you might be like, oh, I don't like this paper Look at all the space and look how textural but give it some time and remember that it is so Great for layering and you can really get a lot of layers even if you're using some soft pastels I zoomed in a bit here. Now this color was it. It's bright really that border between the shadow going towards his body It wasn't quite this bright, but I know that I can tone these things down So I'm just kind of working things up knowing that's what happens the more you use it You start to develop the confidence of knowing, okay I'm building upon things and I can gradually change and Work things as I go. So I'm now just getting the general gesture of some of those feathers and the direction that they're going in and Lightly, that's another thing you learn to control is your pressure It's one thing I guess I felt like I needed to do a video just on pressure often and how to hold the pastel We just had that in one of the patreon storytime lessons as well But how hard you press and how you hold it and how you turn it I liked how Richard McKinley said that he uses his pastel He came from an oil painting background and he uses it like he uses his brush And if you can think of these little pastels as like your little brushes turning them and changing the pressure and changing the direction you can really really accomplish a lot and Maybe have an aha moment. So you see how I've just done some layers I mean this whole thing didn't take that long to do But now I'm just giving he has a little brighter side to the front of his neck there And I also knew there would probably be some cooler and darker tones in some areas So I'm just kind of working some of those and knowing that I can layer on top of them very similar to how I did the Bear I put darks down so that I could add those little highlights of Fur and in this case feathers on top of it and notice now here It's usually towards the end when you start adding more of your highlights And I noticed too underneath our brain would tell us those feathers like right over his leg are Pink and light pink like the ones at the top, but they're actually cooler in color temperature They're more in the shadow So that's why I went ahead and grabbed some of the purpley colors And this is a case to where I just grabbed what I had the legs are actually much darker than what I put down here And I darken them in a minute So our brains again tell us all those legs look like they're just lavender or a lighter color And then under his belly was darker than you might think so you're just constantly Looking at value comparing things and fortunately with this surface you can make changes, you know, it's not like you have to Freak out if you put the wrong thing down You've got a little bit of a leeway because of the ability to layer now That doesn't mean you shouldn't try to get it right the first time But it's a gradual process and you learn that the more that you progress as an artist So let me finish this little guy up. I am going to speed it up a bit But I think hopefully you got the general idea I'll also notice how I was able to just kind of work in kind of negative painting some of the darks and how I used that purple and adding those Fluffy feathers that are just floating across his back like that and Again notice how much layering capability I was able to get with this using a lot of softer pastels. So Again, I don't mean to rave on this paper for animals, but I really do think it's great I love this paper for landscape painting too So, you know, you can kind of see how I was able to build up with value and color To get the impression of flamingo feathers and now let's move on to another subject this cute little puppy What is that like a little lab puppy? He is so cute. I love dogs And I'm just going to turn this paper and focus. I know it's kind of weird focus on his ear and Show you the same concepts now again. I'm speeding this one up this video I'm trying to keep it like around, you know, 35 minutes or so so I can get it uploaded into you guys But again, look how I put down quite a bit of dark I just focused on the shape and I'm focusing on the values kind of working dark to light I know that my The fur is going to have to have something to lay upon So just like with the bear you've got to get that underneath coat of fur Which is going to be darker to be able to layer the Fur or feathers or whatever it is whatever animal you might be working on so you can see again I noticed that one was just too light That's why you some saw me soften it with my fingers a lot of times We go too light too soon and I'm trying to neutralize it right there I was adding a little bit of that lavender and now I've got kind of a neutral Topey color you see how I'm able to get the idea of That fluffiness or the fur on his ears again. This is a little light So I tap it down there is a little backlighting on his ear, but and now I'm adding a little bit of that more gestural Hair or fur growing on top and finally at the end just like with the others is the lightest value At the final layering now, I got a little silly and decided to go ahead and Put where I thought his eye would be and it ends up right almost on top of the flamingo But I hope these things have been helpful for you. I hope you'll try some animals Remember accuracy with the sketch getting your values right Directional strokes focal point. Oh and don't forget to have fun and don't be too hard on yourselves These things take time. I hope you enjoyed that. Please like this video subscribe comment come back Become a patron if you like to help me keep producing these videos and as always happy painting