 Welcome to Monet Café. I'm artist Susan Jenkins, and I'm going to share with you how to get soft effects using pastel and Yes, gouache. I don't think I've done a video using gouache before. This is gouache paint applied to pastel matte, a colored surface, and I'm going to share with you why I love combining gouache and pastel in this way. So I'll be sharing a lot about my products, a lot about the techniques, and it should be a lot of fun. I mean this little guy was just so adorable. And this original painting while it's still available will be offered in my Etsy shop. I'll have a link for that in the description of this video. Also too, I am providing some printables for you on a site that I have called Coffee. I like it Coffee, Monet Café. But if you go to my little shop, you'll be able to purchase for only two dollars the printables that I made. The printables are two pages, a right and a left, and I'm going to be sharing in the video with you how you can use it to transfer an image and get started. Also, my patrons don't have to buy the printable because if you're a patron of mine, it's only five dollars a month. You get all these goodies for free. And if you haven't subscribed yet, I hope you will. I think you'll love it here. Okay, here we go. Hello, and welcome to Monet Café. I'm artist Susan Jenkins, and normally I don't film when my studio is this messy, but I've been doing a lot of painting and I didn't have time to straighten up. Also, I wanted to go ahead and share with you something I just discovered that I'm very excited about. I often work with wet mediums on certain surfaces to do a pastel painting on top. It's called an underpainting. And there's a lot of pastel papers that are water-friendly, such as pastel matte. And I have recently been working mostly on white pastel matte because it's white and I can do like a watercolor underpainting or use acrylic inks or recently like I've been using wax pastels. I can wet them and the color will be very vibrant because the paper is white. Well, I've hesitated on using wet mediums on pastel matte that is colored because, you know, how would you do a watercolor painting on pastel matte if it's colored? It's got a colored surface. The watercolor, you know, it's translucent, so it's not going to show up. So let me scoot over here so I can show you this surface. So I recently I'm going to be doing this cute little painting of this little chipmunk. Thanks to A.R. Mason. What a lovely photograph. She's one of my patrons and she shared that photograph. So pastel matte comes in colors and I'll first tell you a little bit about pastel matte. It's a surface that works great with pastels. You may know sanded surfaces are awesome for pastel painting, but what's interesting about pastel matte? I was so shocked the first time that I Got some it's not it has a nice little piece of blasting between every page. It doesn't feel sanded and yet it takes nice amounts of layering and this particular pad Comes with it's called number four. It comes with wine, dark blue, light blue and sand, okay? So you get four different color types in this pad. All right back to the dilemma I couldn't really do a watercolor painting on this again watercolors translucent. It's gonna show through You're not gonna get the color. It won't even show up. So I decided to try gouache now if you know a little bit about the difference between watercolor and gouache What's the difference watercolors translucent and gouache is? Opaque and it kind of depends on how much water you add to it But I realized because it's opaque behaves a little bit more like acrylic paint I can use gouache to do an underpainting on colored pastel water-friendly papers and Pastel matte is awesome. It receives wet mediums so nicely So I did a little test down here another thing that's really nice is it has a real Neutral feel to it when you apply it especially the colors that I'm choosing here And I thought that would be perfect for this wonderful reference photo because I wanted to keep some of these Background flowers a bit more neutral. I wanted to push those back and have the chipmunk Obviously and some of these foreground flowers as the main focal point and that will be perfect for adding pastel to So I'm excited about this Say a prayer for me that it comes out as good as I'm hoping and I think it should be a lot of fun All right guys, here we go the gouache paints. I'll be using are from Arteza. I got the 60 set I'll be sharing more about this as well And I bought a set or actually I didn't buy it Arteza gives me products for free Thank you Arteza and I use them in my videos But I bought this 48 pan empty set to put my gouache paints in now look can you notice that they're all dried up I Work with gouache paints when they're wet, but they're kind of like watercolor if you wait and let them dry You can just rewet them. I thought I'd show you the sets on the Arteza website This is the set of 24 for 2199. This is the set of 60 for 4499 and because you can mix colors with this medium you could really just go with the smaller set You'll see me or this set you saw before is the empty Watercolor palette it's called but you can put gouache paint in it There's 48 little sections in there, but they also have a set of 24 there's not that big of a price difference. You might as well get the 48 Also the pastel matte that I'll be using is from this pad that's on dickblick.com And this is the 12 by 16 pad with four colors. This stuff is not cheap So they also have a size on Amazon That's a 9 by 12 and it's on sale right now for around $30 And as I always say use what you have there are so many different possibilities in creating this painting Now I'll also be using a combination of brushes I'm showing a lot of brushes here, but I really use primarily a watercolor brush You'll see it's called a Chinese watercolor brush now. This is the printable. I'm talking out Basically you print out both sides. You have to cut the little white edge down the center tape it together Put it up to a bright window You're gonna turn it backwards Okay, and then you'll be able to see the image you can here because it's on my easel and what I did I took a charcoal pencil and I traced the outline of some of the foliage and the chipmunk now You can't see it here but I used a white a white charcoal pencil to mark where like the lighter elements were the baby's breath and Here is what you do you tape it to your surface and you get something that can rub really hard It's like a burnishing tool a credit card would work and it leaves a little ghost image as a result And it really worked great now I don't often do a tracing method like this, but sometimes it's a good start, especially if you've got something that's a little bit more Detailed like this chipmunk and now we can get started. Oh, I love my essential oils while I paint Okay, here is I have my second camera where you can see my gouache paints. I've got some real time right here I will be speeding this up this painting. I think it took over three hours There was a lot of little details and things and of course by doing the gouache painting as an underpainting I That definitely took more time as well So what I'm doing is I'm just mixing up now if you let your gouache paints dry like I do sometimes You have to add, you know a decent amount of water to swirl around to get them Rewetted and I'm combining colors here and I know this video is not a color mixing video There's so much I'd love to share but the video would be way too long But what I'm doing is I'm trying to get those minty colored foliage and leaves and flowers in the background and I apologize that I can't have both my paint palette And my reference image in the same shot here the editing program I'm using only allows for one image to be inserted I do have another Editing program. I'm gonna be using soon that does allow for that. I just haven't taken the time to get super familiar with it So much to do But anyway, so I'm mixing up some of these minty greens And as I use this gouache, I want to talk a little bit about it. Also. I want to mention here is that watercolor brush I mentioned it's a chinese watercolor brush And I got mine on amazon. I'll try to provide a link in the description of this video But the set that I got it came with three They're no longer available. So I'll see if I can find something similar What I love about this brush is you see how large it is you can use it to It holds a lot of water you can put a lot of water and paint in it and get big wide strokes But it also goes to a really fine tip so you can get little fine points You can do fine lines You can lay it on its side and get kind of a dry brush effect So I think I literally used this brush for the whole painting Maybe another little brush for something but for the most part the entire gouache painting was done with this one Chinese watercolor brush So i'm just analyzing colors and values mixing colors now mixing colors is not something We really do with pastels when I start the pastels I often like to say you can mix pastel colors, but it's not in this method You can't like wet them and mix them like you do with gouache or acrylic or watercolor or oil And but you can do a little bit of color mixing on the surface by how you lay the pastels down so But once again, I am mixing colors and you get better at this based on Just experience how much you do it. I also recommend whether you're using gouache or watercolor To make you a color guide this particular little gouache set I don't even think I've done it with this one. I need to do it I I did a color guide of every single color that I got in the artes a 60 gouache set Um, but I only applied 48 colors in this little Travel or palette that they have an empty pan palette And so I've got to do that myself But what you do is you go ahead and make you something that shows every single color In um order of how your palette looks so that you can see what it looks like applied Watercolor and gouache well and other wet mediums too. They look very different Um dry, then they do wet. That's one neat thing about pastels They look pretty much exactly the same if you're holding it in your hand and you apply it to your surface The only thing that can be different is what you apply it next to it does kind of affect the color and the value Um, whether it's on a dark surface or light surface or next to other colors So you can see here how I'm just really keeping a little loose effect Um, and I like to work the whole you'll notice that I try to Maximize if I'm working with a certain color going ahead and putting it in other places Instead of you know having to try to remix that same color again later So I will work the whole painting if I see that color somewhere else I go ahead and add it there and I think it's more efficient. Um, you can paint faster that way Um, I have never been able to be an artist who can just Paint from one little area and work out with detail like that I've seen artists do it and it amazes me But I like to work the whole so that's why you see me kind of working around now this white charcoal and dark charcoal that I've applied one neat thing about it is it's very much Um akin to pastels like the texture and the substance of the pastels So it works great as an under painting for that, but it also worked really great with this gouache I was able to just apply um, you know the gouache right on top of it and um, this was a lot of fun I have to say this was really relaxing to me And I loved and now let me get back to one of the points about this video Um, three things. I loved how soft it appeared on this pastel matte surface I will also have a link to the pastel matte in the description of this video and I'll talk a little bit more about the product Um Soon as well, but I loved how soft the gouache appeared I also loved how I was able to get such a neutral feel Okay, it had a soft effect and I was able to get some really nice neutral colors. I'll be talking more too about um focal point getting neutral and soft effects Really helps you to establish focal point because The things that you want to be focused you're going to have not quite so neutral Not quite so soft a little bit more detail a little bit more edge To it and so the gouache worked great in this reference photo for being able to push back those flowers That I did not want to get center stage Um, I also apologize that my camera You can see me when I mix the paints down there But I tried to put it on auto focus lock where it locked into just the palette, but it keeps focusing on my arm So I'm probably soon gonna just go ahead and put up the reference image because I really don't think with it The small there's a whole lot that you can see but at least it gives you a little bit of an idea All right, so this was all real time here. I'm going to speed up the gouache section Until I get to the pastel portion And uh, but I am going to talk to you a little bit more While I paint and now I put the reference image up for you to be able to look at as I paint And as you can probably see There are so many nice neutral greens and Just some real subdued colors in the flowers that are behind the chipmunk And then there's some beautiful bold purples and And then those babies breath that are in the front are a really nice contrast So as I paint I'll be talking a little bit more about focal point As well and that's one of the Main reasons I got so excited about using gouache as an underpainting. I felt I had so much control over being able to Create a soft subtle and neutral feel And I think the reason for that is because with gouache paint or watercolor other wet mediums Unlike with pastel you can change the intensity of it based on how much water you add So with some of these I am Mixing a color up a little stronger less water And so it'll be a little darker and then I can add a little more water It's a little thinner and it doesn't go on with quite the intensity I'm also in control of being able to mix the colors Like I said a little bit unlike pastels. You can't mix them quite in the same way So I'm able to create colors That have more neutrality by simply combining Here's a little trick for making neutral colors. You combine the complement You see my color wheel over there up to the upper right It's usually a good idea to keep a pocket color wheel on hand But when you combine combine complements that just means the color opposite on the color wheel So it would be like purple and yellow or red and green And you combine those opposites on the color wheel and it creates a neutral tone And if you need to lighten it up you just add white So I was able to create my own neutrals or tone some things down by making them a little more neutral with this painting in gouache And here you'll see where I am working on the darks if you look at the reference photo You can see there is a darker flower kind of behind his head. Now. It's not going to stay this dark The thing that's neat about gouache is because it's opaque Similar to pastels and oils You can and acrylics you can lay darker values down and layer lighter values on top Unlike watercolor because watercolor is translucent. You have to work opposite. You have to work Light to dark. You don't want to lose your light values. You want to preserve the lights So that's one neat thing about gouache is that it layers similarly To pastels So you don't have to work kind of backwards in your thinking when it comes to layering So you can see the flower that I added behind his head there I layered some of that periwinkle blue on top now. I know i'm going to be adding pastels I can lighten them up even more But i'm wanting to get a basic idea of my values in and once again I like working the whole and here i'm adding some of the lighter values I know i'm going to be adding more darks to it as well But this was more of um, I call it my color notes or my roadmap Once again seeing where things are I want to create a overall Layout composition of my painting and then I can start working on other things just to get things right and As I mentioned before about doing the the little transfer that I did of the chipmunk I don't often paint that way the only exception when I do it is like now I I really did want to get to painting so I thought let's go ahead and do this rather than me just taking the time to tediously Sketch it out. I know most of you if you've watched my channel long You see I normally sketch from scratch But if you're doing an animal or a person sometimes just to get a little bit of a frame of reference does help The only other exception to where I will Do some sort of image transfer Is if I'm working very large sometimes it's a little easier to block things in that way But I always like to stress Good sketching and drawing skills is a foundation to good art and Beautiful paintings so don't shortcut learning how to sketch and sketch from what I like I say sketch from scratch All right now i'm working on getting in some of these pink flowers Another thing I wanted to make note of is often with gouache Applying it to this kind of rosy colored pastel matte. You notice how those flowers dried a lot lighter there You have to keep in mind that sometimes just by wetting the surface it's going to look a little darker So you need to kind of let it dry now took my reference image of the way here because I wanted to show you How i'm using this chinese watercolor brush for a dry effect. I have my paint to water ratio To where there's more paint than water And i'm laying it on its side and you see how i'm able to get kind of those rough Broken strokes and it gave the impression or the feel of kind of how that wood texture would be rough Now I do go in and add some other values to this But I just wanted to point that out. I really love this brush. It is so versatile Here i'm really speeding up this little short section Because I want to get to another technique that I used that I just sort of discovered and it worked pretty well So check out how I use a q-tip Since the point of my chinese watercolor brush was so pointy I thought you know what let me try a q-tip and so I alternated the consistency And the value of the gouache paints that I used to give the impression of some of these being Um a little bit more buried They're going to be a little darker in value a little cooler in color temperature When the and smaller if they're kind of in those deep areas and they'll gradually get a little bit brighter And larger as they come to the surface This is where I added a decent amount of water to it And it caused them to have such a nice subtle look with no hard edges All right back to getting in some of my values as you can see I'm getting close to having the whole background Finished with gouache and I know I'm going to put pastel over this So even though it looks kind of really soft That's exactly what I was going for and I'm going to keep some of those areas very soft But then choose the areas to have more vibrancy where there will be more focal point And I'm going to be talking about focal point more very soon And no, I haven't forgotten about little chipmunk I was asking on uh instagram and some of the other social media sites or saying I hadn't named them yet Anybody have a name idea and I think it was um Yeah, it was bethany fields. Oh, she's such an amazing pastel artist. Um, and she's just precious and beautiful So I think she's the one who said how about alvin like alvin in the chipmunks if you've had kids and Uh, I guess that's all over the world. I don't know but in the states I know alvin in the chipmunks was a cute little Cartoon and uh, anyway, so I think this is alvin. I like that. Uh, so this is the same strategy But i'm just working on the um The chipmunk, which does have a little bit more things have to be precise on him Especially his little face and his little eye There's a a light area around his eye and also there's that little highlight Which is often so typical In the eye with people and animals and it really does give that three dimensional feel I've zoomed in a bit here so you can see notice that, uh, chinese watercolor brush. Look at that point. Um, Somebody I think it was in one of my facebook groups Was like, what is that you're using it look like a piece of wood Because the bristles were all splayed out But anyway, so now I've kind of purposely splayed out the bristles to get a little bit more width And it actually creates some nice fur to this brush. So um, so yeah, I'm definitely a fan of this brush Okay, so in order to keep this video from being so incredibly long I'm going to really speed up the rest of the chipmunk painting portion that's in gouache so that we can get to pastel Hopefully you got the idea with what i've presented so far So i'm gonna add a little music here and it'll just be a couple minutes and i'll be back with the pastel portion And by the way, this song is from the youtube audio library It's called dance of the fireflies by nathan more. Enjoy And here is a quick glimpse of the pastels i'll be using i used primarily the set of unison 120 half stick set I love buying half sticks because you literally get double the pastel for your money Double the colors and plus I don't like removing labels. Anyway, and usually when you buy half stick They don't have labels Also, they're already the nice little perfect size for me. I typically break the larger pastels anyway So I find half sticks are the way to go and this set just so you know is kind of all inclusive You have some great color great values and some neutrals. I love how the palette is arranged according to Value if you kind of look in the middle and then go out to the edges It gets lighter at the outer edges top to bottom in this video here So anyway, i'm not inserting this down into the bottom even though I tried to time it right with my painting I i'm not sure if you guys can even see it good enough anyway So I'd love for you guys to comment and say in the past few videos where I've tried to put that in If it's even working. So I would love your feedback. All right guys. Let's get to the pastel portion I've sped this up ever so slightly but what i'm doing now is I am going in and brightening some areas or giving a little bit more color Or refining some edges by using the pastels notice how oh it had that nice Cool green look at that and a cool green is basically a green that leans a little more towards blue Rather than yellow and this image had a lot of those cooler green colors anyway, so I really liked it Now let me mention another advantage to using gouache or water color If you're working on white pastel matte you could use watercolor But when you use those types of wet mediums on a surface like this What you've done you've allowed to get your painting started in a really neat way And you haven't used up any of the what we call tooth Of a pastel surface like this even though pastel matte doesn't feel like it's got a sanded surface It does have the ability to take layers. So with gouache You have not taken or compromised any layers in this so it's like you're working from fresh Which is really kind of neat Now i'm showing here that would be a warmer green that would be a cooler green leaning more towards blue So hopefully that helps. That's why I said it's good. Just keep a pocket color wheel near you It has so much great information on it anyway You may have noticed in the gouache portion that I Preserved or reserved painting the chipmunk into last And even though I've done a little bit of pastel work here. I wanted to go ahead and get in Some of the chipmunk really I think I pretty much finish the chipmunk and then move on to the flowers the reasoning is the flowers I already have them as I wouldn't say complete but some of the background flowers I don't do a whole lot more to once again the neutral the subtlety of it It's it's going to keep them looking like they're behind him. I'm actually talking here if you see my jaw moving Um, but I want the chipmunk to be the focal point. You may notice right now He is a little dull And one of the methods for creating a focal point is to have brighter bolder More saturated color. So he's going to get more color. I thought I'd zoom in here and show you he's got some interesting markings around his eye And uh accuracy with respect to animals and anatomy Things like that are very important So I'm using these big old chunky pastels to get into some kind of small spaces And I often have people ask me how do you how can you even tell where it's going? Because often the pastel is getting in the way of your view But you actually learn to work by feel by just pressing you make a little test mark You can kind of see where it is and then you're literally working from the touch rather than the visual So his eye also had some neat color to it Often what I'll do people ask me a lot is how did you see that color there? I wouldn't have put purple in the eye or blue in the eye I look for little subtleties of color that may just be there If you also just learn the rules of how color works, you're almost able to see through my glasses there You can Punch things up with respect to the rules of color And so I knew a lot of times a little highlight or a little something in the eye is going to have those cooler tones I worked on the background a bit more to just establish some things and then I go back to the chipmunk to go ahead and finish him out In the way I like to work in life and in art is I like to tackle the harder things first usually so that the rest Is more fun and the chipmunk is definitely I shouldn't say harder just more tedious So now you can see how I'm getting in darker values That's another a third thing with focal point Which is actually called contrast when you have areas of contrast that means dark and lights next to each other um Our brains our eyes usually go to that By default and as opposed to neutral things. So in this Painting I am making it a goal to give him darker values More contrast, which will definitely Intensify his focal point energy Also, too. Another great thing about this reference photo is that he gets a focal point Little alvin gets a focal point Advantage right away because do you notice anything about him that's Different from the rest of the painting? I mean other than the fact that he's an animal But do you see a color difference notice the chipmunk is Primarily warm in his color tones and the background is more cool Um, there are a few warmer greens I add but not many And so that makes little alvin the star of the show for sure So I think that's four things now. I've talked about with focal point And I do have a video on focal point. I think it's five ways to create a focal point And I really liked creating that video a lot of times I learn a lot when I'm creating videos because I research a lot And um, so that would be one I think that would be very advantageous for you Um Learning focal point I find uh with my patrons and my patreon group Um, I have something it's called critique my painting, please And my patrons usually once a month as long as my life isn't having too much drama in it in it Which it does at the moment. Um as long as I can I have a little critique my painting session And they are able to upload their paintings and I choose a few of them that I think will benefit the group as a whole I don't even like the word critique. I call it constructive criticism And so I give them suggestions on how to Maybe improve things a bit and a lot of times it has to do with focal point I also like to mention with focal point. It's best to keep your focal energy interest and attention Not along the edges of the painting think of you know how you can do photo editing and you can do what's called any Lips around the edges. Usually it blurs out like an oval around your painting the outer edges get a little softer lighter usually And that is a great way to keep the eye in the painting in other words You're not having some high contrast or highly saturated color out on the edge of your painting Which is going to pull the eye right out of the painting So focal point is something that I find if you if you're advancing in your art You're feeling good and but you know, you're just wondering why you're not going past another level A lot of times it has to do with establishing a clear and beautiful focal point So you may have noticed too. I added some blues in his little stripe there and a couple of blues in other areas His tail back to focal point. I didn't want to give his tail a dark dark It's not super dark in the reference photo. Anyway, you can tell it's black based on Just the markings of the chipmunk But it was softer than the rest of the darker elements Oh, by the way, that little tool i'm using it looks like a makeup brush applicator You could use a makeup brush applicator. I don't have many of those I don't like to wear makeup that much, but I do have those little applicators that are for pan pastels I've got to do another tutorial using pan pastels. They're literally like little Round they look like a makeup compact like a circular thing and they have pastels in this little round palette And you use tools like a paintbrush to paint with it So that's one of those pan pastels blenders and it worked really great I don't like to do a lot of blending in my artwork But sometimes with something like this little chipmunk if I want to knock something down a bit with respect to Value or color intensity or take an edge or detail away You can use some sort of a little blending tool to do that And I'm about at 33 minutes into this video editing production right now And I like to keep my videos Under an hour for multiple reasons But I I'm speeding it up But I'm also going to talk a little bit more Notice that I'm using some warmer values here and that is once again another Thing that will create the focal point to be what I want it to be which is this chipmunk I did like that. I you know added the little bits You see some of the blue like I said in the stripe and a little bit of the blues and purples and the tail And like behind his little ear there and what that does is it creates a cohesiveness to the painting Even though he is primarily warm if I didn't have any cool colors in him at all He would feel almost pasted on so it does create a Congruency in your painting when you are able to use some of the same colors Throughout the whole painting. I really love that dark. I have right there. That's a terry Ludwig dark It's part of their their dark set So every so often you will see that I grab another pastel Other than the unisons. I think I grabbed some Neutrals that I just have in my regular workshop palette that I've accumulated over the years And some of those terry Ludwig darks terry Ludwig also makes a wonderful pastel And the people at the company are so awesome. So All right, I think I'll add a little music now you guys enjoy and by the way It really does help if you just take a moment and click that little thumbs up on this video and even leave me a comment I love to get your feedback. It helps me to Make these videos better and more like what you want and what you want to see So I really appreciate that effort I'm also loving how you guys are tagging me on social media and sharing your recreations from these tutorials On instagram, you can find me at susan jinkins artist. You can find my facebook page It's the art of susan jinkins and of course we have two facebook groups The mone cafe art group on facebook anybody can join you just have to answer a few questions And then I have my private Patreon facebook group. It's a little more intimate with my patrons. I can Give you guys more feedback see your work. So that's another little Benefit of becoming a patron. All right. I know I said I was going to add the music back But I wanted to mention here. I forgot I used some pastel pencils In this painting. I don't use pastel pencils often But I thought with his fur it might be nice I'm mostly just getting some scratchy marks And I have the 48 set they do have smaller sets and pastel pencils work great on this Mat surface my set of pastel pencils has lasted me for years But that's probably because I don't use them all that often and now I'm really going to add that music So you guys enjoy and I will be back soon At this point you can see how I have added some of the baby's breath and what I've done is If you look I know I'm working on something else now, but if you look deep in there, you'll see there are They're not all white and and actually this isn't a pure white that I've added the brightest lightest value that you see Most of the baby's breath are more of a neutral color because there's so many of them behind one another And deeper into the foliage. I have really enjoyed this discovery of using gouache with pastel on this lovely pastel mat surface I hope you learned a lot. This is the cute little final and once again, it is available in my etsy shop Um, sometimes they sell before you might see it. So if you don't see it in there, it's gone But I also have prints and products available on my fine art America account And they do such great work and someone recently asked why this painting wasn't available in my etsy shop Well, it's sold right after the video was created So fine art america is a great way for you to be able to buy prints and other products of my art And I really do love this company. I've been using them for years So all of those things can be found in the description of this video And in all of these places here on this end screen and I want to say a personal Thank you. The success of monnaie cafe is because of you. You are monnaie cafe. All right guys Be blessed and happy painting