 Welcome to Monet Cafe Studio. If you have a goal to learn more about color and become a better artist, you're gonna love this lesson. And here's three things I think you'll really like. One, it's really easy to follow along. And two, I'm gonna be introducing some new tools that are so fun for exploring color. And three, this tutorial is great for artists of every level. So it's time to have some fun in Monet Cafe Studio and create with color in ways like never before. Let's get right into this and talk about the products. I'll be using the very affordable toned gray Strathmore pad of paper. I really like using these to create pastel sketches and studies. Here's a study from a similar lesson in some color theory that you guys love. You guys gave it lots of views, likes and comments. So I can tell you like this format. By the way, I'll have this video as a clickable link at the end of this particular lesson. And oh my goodness, what is this? Color Cube 1 and 2? I'm going to share with you about this product that is so fun for creating color palettes. Now you certainly don't have to have this to follow along with this video. I'm gonna give you neat ideas of how to create color palettes, but it is a fun product. So let me walk you through this before we get started. This is Color Cube 1 and I found that just one color cube would have been fine for me, but I went ahead and bought both of them. There's so many different color palettes, literally at your fingertips, allowing you to select some creative color palettes you might not ordinarily choose as an artist. And if you're in a little bit of a color rut, these are so very helpful. I find these are also a great way to stretch your knowledge of color and value. I'll talk about that by choosing a limited palette within a particular color palette family. And like I said, you certainly don't have to have this product to follow along with this tutorial. I'm going to show you what my method has been for years in coming up with creative color palettes. But let's talk about these in case you want to know a little bit more about how they work. As I said, you can buy one or both. Two sets is called a bundle. And it comes with these instructions. There's some great information on how to use the cards. Also a way to share your work by using the hashtag Color Cube. And if you're a patron of mine, oh, I Patreon page, you will be getting a copy of this card. And if you are wondering what is a patron and how do I get the extra goodies, a patron is just a way to support this channel and get extra content and become part of my Patreon family. It's only $5 a month. You can cancel at any time. And what I love is I get to see your work. Now I would love it too. If you would like this video, leave me a comment. And by all means subscribe. We are on the cusp of hitting 100,000 subscribers here in Monet Cafe. As of the making or editing of this video, we were at 98,000 subscribers. And hey, I have 644 videos here on Monet Cafe. So be sure to check out all the learning fun. Let me give a brief description on how to use these or how I use them. As you can see, there's a photo on one side. And then on the back side, you have these color swatches. And they're conveniently printed right to the edge of the card. So you can compare colors right next to something, whether it's a photograph or whatever medium you're using to try to match the color. Also, too, on the right side, they have three different values. The main value is in the middle. And then you have a 20% value lighter and a 20% value darker kind of sandwiching the main color. And I'll be using these cards to choose my three color palettes for this lesson. But here's what I have done in the past. I like to study the artists that I love. And many of them are Monet, Van Gogh, you know, some of the old masters, you can literally copy another artist's color palette, don't copy their painting, but you can steal a color palette from another artist that is in no way a copyright infringement. So I do this all the time. I look at other artists work that I love, and I emulate their color palettes in my own pieces. I have in my studio this really neat tea collection. And each box has a famous artist work on it. And I'm always admiring this. And I think I'm actually going to steal some of these color palettes for future paintings. Here we go. I am using three of these cards. If you're a patron of mine on my Patreon page, you will get downloadable copies of these cards and more real time footage and commentary. But don't worry, Monet cafe, you should be able to see these cards very clearly during the video and follow along if you like. And I'm using some of my other color studies as reference images. Those are the paintings you see in the back there. And I'm just going to switch the color palettes, recreate the little studies with a brand new color palette. This is such a great exercise. And I believe it's going to give you more artistic confidence to create your own unique color palettes. Oh, and I primarily used pastels from the Paris collection. It's called made by Sennelier. It's 120 half sticks of absolutely gorgeous colors. And I'm happy to say it's one of the best buys for soft pastels of this quality. And I love this set. I'll have a link to this set in the description of this video. Gosh, I just love the combination of the teal blues and these golden colors, even the browns. I find I don't use a lot of browns and yellows. So another advantage for me in using this color cube was the fact that it's going to stretch me to use color palettes that I wouldn't normally go to. Now, here is how I am using this. The card does explain the instructions. Use it. You can stretch the parameters of this. You don't have to use just these colors that are on the card. What I'm doing is I'm my very dirty pastels here is I'm choosing some pastels that are of a similar color family and different values. And if you've watched many of my videos, you know, I sometimes like to add a little pop of color sometimes towards the end of a painting. So I'm using this as a guide. And I was so happy with limiting my color palettes this way. Now I'm just speeding up where I'm actually making some little color swatches underneath. I think this is important if you keep a journal like this for color studies that you can go back and see the color palettes that you liked. And you can create another painting. You can use it as your own guide to create future pieces. I'm first trying to match the colors pretty closely. And then I'm exploring with some different values underneath. And you don't have to stay so strict to this, I would advise try to stay pretty close to it. But you'll see how I do add a few colors, for example, like this dark, this is the Terry Ludwig egg plant. My brown is pretty dark already. But I thought that other purpley dark would add a nice touch. These are some Prismacolor new pastels. I'll talk about why I use those as I paint. As I said, my reference image is from a former color study that I did also a lesson here on my Patreon page. Now here's why I'm using this Prismacolor new pastel, you can tell the shape is different. It's still considered a soft pastel, but on the range of hardness to softness, it's a little bit harder. When working on an unsanded surface like this, you don't get many layers of soft pastel. So I'm purposely I'm choosing a color right now to tone my little painting area here. By the way, these little areas are three inches by five inches. And I'm using a nine by 12 gray tones pad. In case you want to know. So I like to tone my paper often not always before I start painting. And I think it just gives it a nice mood. So I like to that kind of lighter teal to get started. Now I'm using this little bit of a darker turquoise blue to get in the sketch once again using the Prismacolor new pastel. You don't have to use this. You could just use a charcoal pencil, a pencil, you know, whatever you have. I am always trying to save you guys money. And I never want to say you have to go buy these products that I have. I just try to give you some good ideas in case you, you know, get some birthday money. You want to buy some art supplies yourselves. So I'm just getting in a basic sketch similar to my reference image, which is one of my studies. And this is such a simplistic composition that I think it'll be great for beginners. And when doing these, you want to focus on the color and not have such a complicated composition. And I advise that if you do these for yourselves to follow along with mine, of course, or choose a reference image that's very simple. The point of this is to learn more about color, stretch yourself with color. Like I said, one of the greatest assets for me anyway, for this is breaking out of a rut of choosing some of the same colors you always use. I have a habit of I love purple. You've probably seen from some of my tutorials. I just love purples. I love cool blues and just that type of cool and easy color palette. So doing these types of color studies is just a great advantage for you artistically to stretch yourselves. Now I'm using the Terry Ludwig pastel I mentioned. You might be thinking, if you know what they look like, how'd you get such a small Terry Ludwig? They're usually rectangular and chunky. I break them in half sometimes. So that just got in a nice dark for those trees. I'm getting in my darks first. So this is now the brown. I thought that purple base would add a little bit of interest to the color of the trees, but I really do stay pretty close to all of the colors that were on the card. I did add a little bit of green. You can see a little swatch of green down there at the bottom that I thought gave it a little bit more interest. So now I'm just using the browns. I got the brown over the trees. I'm getting my darkest values first, and I'm getting some of this brown just as some of the foreground grasses will have a little bit of shadow to them. And this is all real time, by the way, I'm including a full real time painting on the Monet Cafe channel where you can watch this for free. And the other two will be sped up substantially. But again, if you're a patron of mine, you'll have a slower version of that as well and more commentary. Okay, so this is that beautiful golden color. I love this color. Why I don't use it more in my paintings. I mean, I might use it for a sunflower, but I don't often use it for grass colors. I really do just love the combination of teal colors and golden colors together. Now, can you see a little bit why the under painting, I guess you would call it, you know how I took that Prismacolor new pastel, the one on the top right there, and I toned the paper. Can you see how it's making an influence already with some of those golden colors that I put down? Now, here's a neat thing I was saying at the beginning of this video where you'll learn more about value by doing these things too, by doing these color studies. I know that I need to choose for those distant mountains. I'm going to have distant mountains. I'm going to have a little tree line beneath them and then just field under that. I know that it can't be very dark. It's far away. You know how mountains cool off in the distance. So I purposely chose this teal color. It's a little cooler and it's not too dark in value. So you really learn to stretch yourselves and learn more about when and where to use certain values. I just put a little bit of that that teal down at the bottom of the road there. I feel this could be a road or a river. It's up to your interpretation. I made it a road. So I made my lines a little bit more vertical rather than horizontal. So I gave a little shadow with that teal down on the bottom of the road. And now I'm adding a little bit of the screen. This is where I used my artistic license to bring in just another color. They're most likely would be some greens in a scene like this. But I still picked a very warm green. Notice that a cool green would be a little bit more of a green turquoise color. And I don't know. I feel like that would work very well. Putting a little bit more of this warm green just where some of these grasses are. And can you see again how simple this painting is? I mean anybody could do this. And I think it is a great way for beginner artists to learn. Wow. I can really do this. And it's not that hard. It's just a few rules. It's like I always say painting is easy once you know the rules. Does help to have the right products, which is what I'm always trying to share to don't buy cheap pastels. I know sometimes we're on a budget. I'd prefer you to buy limited smaller sets of pastels that are quality than, you know, some cheap pastels that have a lot of color, but you're just not going to get the vibrancy. So I just added a little bit of that pretty yellow there. I'm imagining the sun is kind of coming from the upper right and it's hitting on some of those grasses that are popping up. But in the distant field, it's going to be lighter. Values get lighter typically as they go into the distance. And just to create some color harmony. This is called color echoing. When you add a color throughout the painting, and I didn't want that yellow to feel like it was just segmented in one area. So I added a little to the road. And guess what this did? Because I put in that teal to begin with the one on the upper right, the light colored teal. When I added the yellow to it, it almost made green. I had a video recently on how you can really mix colors with soft pastels if you layer lightly and let them interact with each other. Now I'm using that same teal that I used to layer with at the very beginning. And I'm just creating some motion, like some direction in the sky, adding a little bit of it to the road. Again, that's called color echoing. It makes your painting feel cohesive and have harmony. If I just painted everything with its own color segmented like that, it would look more like a paint by number. It wouldn't feel like impressionism, which is what I love. Now I've got a little bit of that turquoise color, which is very similar to the original turquoise swatch that I put down beneath the painting. Again, all of my colors with the Prismacolor new pastels are consistent with the colors on the card as well. Adding a little bit of that to the shadowy side of the grasses. And I know that tree is casting a shadow. I know that shadows are cooler and I know that it's going to be a little bit darker than the grasses. So voila, that color worked perfect. Another thing with painting is you can learn to use your common sense and study nature. If you study nature and you just watch how color and light and temperature behaves and then you just start trying to emulate that in your work, you're going to find that, wow, I'm really learning how to paint just by using nature as my guide. And like I said, some of it is common sense. If there's a shadow, what happens, I always say this, what happens when you get in the shadows or in the shade? You cool off, right? So does color temperature. So it's just a general rule of thumb. Not that you can't use warm colors for shadows, you can too. That's a whole other topic. So now I'm getting in some of these distant trees. Now, because I'm limited, I kind of didn't have a lot of colors to choose. Normally, I know that trees are typically darker, like my foreground trees, but they're kind of far away. So they're not going to be as dark as the foreground trees. So I put in a little bit of the green, and then I'm adding a little bit of this brown down at the base. And now I also know things in the distance cool off. So look what I did. I got some of the teal that I used for the mountain. I couldn't make the trees the same color as the mountain. It wouldn't even show up. So I got in my green and my darker base and then I cool it off by putting a little bit of that turquoisey color over those distant trees. It did make them feel a little further away. I think I even accentuate that a little bit more. So now I've got everything really filled in as far as blocking in all of the parts of the painting. And now I'm just going to play a little bit. I'm going to use some of that same orangey color. Prismacolor new pastels are really great for making little sketchy grass marks. It's because they're harder and it's because they're kind of thinner. You can get more of an edge with it. I wouldn't have been able to get those types of marks if I had used the Sennelier pastel of a similar color. Now I'm almost done. I'm just getting in a little bit more of this eggplant color to suggest some inner branches. And by the way, this was about the end of my layering ability. This is just drawing paper, toned gray drawing paper. And so I know I'm only going to get about three, three or four layers really. That's why it's so important to keep a light touch when doing these. Don't think you have to fill in and cover up the surface. That was the mistake I made when I first started painting. These colors all start to layer together and they will look so much more impressionistic. You'll get more layering ability if you keep a light touch. So now I've got one of these little Prismacolor new pastels getting just a little suggestion of some grassy marks in the distance not much because they're far away. Grasses in the distance typically will start to look more like horizontal bands rather than individual vertical strokes. And they gradually, like I'm doing now, they'll get more vertical and taller as you move forward into the foreground. But I've learned over the years and I'm trying to even get better at this to not add too many grass marks because you can overdo it to where your painting just gets so busy. So just a suggestion of a few and try to place them where it enhances your focal point. For me, the focal point is really the there's a compositional element of the road. It just pulls you in around that corner. Of course, the trees, and it just kind of pulls you into the point of that road where that tree is. And then your eye just kinds of kind of explores throughout the painting. The painting is pretty much complete at this point. I am speeding up this last little bit of it. Adding a little bit more color in the sky. I wanted to put some of that yellow in the sky again to echo some of the colors that were in the road. And I do add a little bit of that lightest color down at the base of the mountain and a little bit more of that pretty turquoisey color throughout. And this painting took about a little bit more than 10 minutes. And I do advise that you keep these quick, maybe set a timer if you need to. So here we go with color palette number one. You can see I used many of the same colors, stayed pretty close to the card and the reference colors on it. Now here's a quick little trick. I like to clean up my area sometimes pastel dust in your hand can sometimes get smudges. This is a kneaded eraser and it works great for cleaning up the excess pastel. And now it's time to start painting number two. And here on the Monet Cafe channel, you will see painting number two and three sped up a bit. I think you should still be able to follow along just fine. I am going to still give limited commentary. And my Patreon version is the full version with lots of commentary and content. Now you can slow down these videos. If it's going too fast for you to follow, there's a little gear icon in the bottom right of the video screen. And you can always slow it down. So I'm just doing the same thing as I did in painting number one. I'm choosing colors similar to the card from the color cube. And I am choosing also to a darker value. That was that Terry Ludwig eggplant color. And that's a really nice neutral gray that's almost a little purple. I added a dark green as well. And I'm doing the same concept of an underpainting. I'm choosing a pretty pink color. That's another Prismacolor new pastel, a harder pastel. I'm choosing a darker Prismacolor new pastel to get in my sketch. The same dark trees with the Terry Ludwig eggplant. And now I'm going to make this really dramatic sunset scene. The colors on the color cube card were perfect for sunset. And I am just adding a little bit of drama to the sky, echoing the color into the road, some deep magentas for the grasses, that gray I used for the distant trees, and a pink for the distant mountains. The values worked right for that. Added a little bit more of that pink to the road, more magenta to the trees. It's starting to take shape, right? Some brilliant oranges and yellows in the distance because that's where that sun will be casting its light onto the distant field. And just playing with color. I've got pretty much everything blocked in now. I decided to darken up the foreground a bit. I felt like there would be some decent shadows in that foreground with the sunset being so far back in the distance. I found this pretty pink color. So I accentuated some of that. This painting also took about 10 minutes or so to create. And it was also a fun little lesson in getting creative with color palettes. I gave a little more drama to the sun, a little more sunlight on the field, and some vibrant oranges just to jazz things up a bit. Teller studies are great to pull back out again and look at them and remember, oh yeah, this is how I created a sunset scene. And you already have your color notes to choose similar colors. They're very handy for future paintings. And now we move on to color palette number three. I really liked this one. The scene was a cityscape, but it just reminded me of an evening scene with these colors. I loved the cooler, darker colors in this. And I'm choosing many of these are also from the Sennelier 120 half stick set. And just like before, I'm picking colors that are kind of close to the colors on the card. And I'm choosing a few other values of the same colors, a little lighter. And also I decided I was going to add a little pink to this. I did see some pink and a bit of yellow. It may have been the moon's reflection in the water. Here I am again with my Prismacolor new pastel because it is harder and it doesn't take up as much of the layering ability. I'm able to layer more soft pastels on top. I thought that would be a nice cool color to start this painting. I decided to change this one up. I'm using a different color study from before. I liked these evergreen trees and just a little bit of a sweeping little trail coming around the corner there. So I'm using this purple Prismacolor new pastel just to get in a little sketch. I did like how the trees were slanted. I like to give trees some character and not just be straight up and down. I'm adding some of this pretty dark evergreen color and I'm making the evergreen shapes. It's really just kind of some zigzaggy marks to suggest evergreen trees. Getting in my darks like before the trees and the foreground grasses, this pretty blue that felt like such a pretty night color. And as I create this third color study, I just want to talk a little bit more in general about color and how to use color when you have a limited palette like this. Basically, what I do is I use my darker colors for any element in the painting or in the reference image that's vertical and especially close to you. Vertical elements like trees are always going to be darker because the sun is above it. So the sides of it are not getting direct sun. As things progress into the distance or recede into the distance, they gradually get a little bit lighter in value. So that's why with each band of trees, the further away they get, they get a little bit lighter. That's why in that second band of trees, I don't have the same darks that I have in the foreground trees. And way in the distance, I have an indication of a little bit of blue and a little bit of purple to suggest some very distant trees. Another band of trees way back. It could even be a mountain and it's cooler and lighter in value because it's further away. I really had fun with these colors and I really liked that one kind of green. It's almost like a teal green. It's kind of unusual and I don't usually use that color. And here I'm adding a little bit of that pink that I pulled out that was my color punch. I decided to add to this painting. Now I'm going to add some of the pretty yellows, that little bit of yellow that I saw in the image on the back. And I decided not just to make stars, I thought what the heck, I'm gonna make fireflies, fireflies and stars. I just love doing these little color studies. I hope you guys will too. Here are my final color studies. Oh and did I add one more advantage to these? They're fun. They're fast and fun and you learn lots. Again, you don't have to have the color cube to follow along with me. But if you would like to get it, I will have a clickable link in this video description. And I do get a little kickback if you purchase from the link that I'll provide. No extra cost to you of course. So this was so fun. I'm so glad you joined me for this painting adventure. And I hope you learned lots. Consider becoming a patron of mine if you would like the extra content. And as always, God bless and happy painting.