 Welcome to Monet Cafe and a very merry Christmas. Today's pastel painting tutorial will be of some hay bales in the snow. In today's tutorial you'll be learning about blocking in a painting and why it is so important to block in those big shapes and values to begin with. I'll be sharing my product information along with why this new surface that I used, new to me anyway, was one of my favorites. I'll definitely use it again. We'll even be painting falling snow. So get ready to learn lots and here we go. Welcome artists to Monet Cafe. Today's tutorial will be of some hay bales in a snowy scene. I love hay bales. I don't know they just look artistic. This is actually an old painting of mine many years ago that I had shared on my Facebook group that's just for my patrons from my Patreon page and some of them said I would love to see the tutorial of this. Well it's so old. I had only done a speed painting of it. So I thought I would paint from my painting and recreate a tutorial of some hay bales in the snow. Now I am using a surface that I've never used before. Yes there are surfaces I haven't tried it before. You know I'm always experimenting and trying new things. This is called pastel premiere. It's a nice sanded surface. I like this color just because it's a nice kind of taupe color. And I am going to try to keep this a little bit beginner friendly. I know a lot of you beginners with art or soft pastel medium are very hungry to get lessons that are easy to follow. So I'm gonna try to do that. And we're gonna have a lot of fun. So let's get started. The surface I'll be using is pastel premiere. You can find it on Amazon and other places and it comes in different colors. I'll be using the color Italian clay. Also this paper does work with wet media. And it will accept as many as 25 layers of pastel. And for this painting I used almost exclusively this set of Jack Richardson pastels. They are the hand rolled pastels the landscape set. I love these pastels and the colors were perfect for this lesson. Also I'll have all these links in the description of this video. I did use a white charcoal pencil made by Derwent that I just basically used to sketch in the scene. So I'm painting from a painting actually my own painting that I did so long ago. I discovered that the original reference image I used was from a site called wetcanvas.com. They had a reference library where artists could share some of their own photography. And I recently happened to notice that artist Karen Margolis and myself chose the same reference image to create a painting from. Now she's a fantastic artist and I've learned so much from her. So that's just a coincidence and what can happen sometimes if you use copyright free reference images. Now you can see how simple this sketch is. It's basically just the hay bales, the horizon line, the big bank of trees to the left and the distant trees. And I just threw in a couple little suggestions of grasses there. So now what we're going to be doing is blocking in. And what blocking in means is to really just get in your biggest shapes and values. If you want a painterly and impressionistic feel, this is an important crucial first step in pastel painting. And here I've just blocked in the large grouping of trees with a medium value blue. I'm going to be darkening those up in a minute and now I'm adding the same blue to the distant trees and they will stay pretty much the same value as the painting progresses. And if you're a patron of mine on my Patreon page, you will be receiving your extra goodies. It's only $5 a month to become a patron. You support this channel and you get extra content. But some of that extra content happens to be my color notes. So patrons, I'll be sharing with you all of the colors I used from this set. You know the deal. You'll get lots of extra goodies. Now I'm using the darker blue because what happens with value is value just means lightness to darkness on a scale. And things in the foreground are typically, if you take a similar element, like a flower, let's just say it's a blue flower, it will be darker in the foreground than it is when it's far away. Same thing with like things like mountains or even trees. They are darker in value in the foreground and lighter as they progress into the distance. This particular pastel had a little bit of a rough or edges to it. So sometimes if you find that happening, you can just sand your pastel down on another surface somewhere before applying it. Now I will say that I really love this pastel premiere surface. It's the first time I've used it. I bought it a while ago and I had never opened up the package or used it. And I am so, so pleased with this particular surface. As I mentioned, I'm using almost exclusively this one set of pastels, the Jack Richardson Landscape set. And I find that exciting things happen when you limit yourself or restrict yourself to one set of pastels. And I chose this set of 40 pastels because it had a range of blues and cooler tones that I really loved. But it also had some of these exciting magentas as well. And if you have a set of pastels that has enough colors and a decent value range, I think you'll find it's rather fun to limit yourself in this way. A word of advice is to choose value over color. And what I mean by that is try to get the value accurate, meaning the lightness or the darkness of the element before color and choose that as a priority. For example, this magenta was the correct value of some of the shadowy areas of those hay bales. And it, but it wasn't, you know, like your typical hay bale color. But I knew they were warm. It was the right temperature as well. It was a warmer color and the value was right. Now I'm choosing this mossy kind of a green color. Again, based on the value, it is correct in the lightness or darkness that I'm trying to portray. And I'm still in the blocking in stage. Notice that at the base of the hay bales, that there is some shadow. And in my imagination in the scene, I can't remember the exact reference photo and what it looked like. Like I said, I'm painting from a painting. But there was some shadowy sides kind of to the back, the left, our left side of the hay bales. So I imagine the source of light was a little bit more up and to the right, just a little. And so then I can use those same cooler blues to represent those shadows. And shadows often are cooler. And in snow, you can definitely use blues and purples for shadows. Now this Jack Richardson set also had some really nice brownish warm tones. So I used that to first get down some of the lighter parts of the hay bales. And it's a little bit darker than it will be at the end result. But that's often how we paint with soft pastels is we choose our darkest layers, working them gradually to the lighter areas. And so I know that I can layer over this. The description of the pastel premiere that I was just looking at on Amazon said that it takes up to 25 layers of pastel. Now I wouldn't try to do 25 layers. I think it would get a bit too muddy. I purposely focused on this painting to keep it really fresh. I don't think I got more than I don't know, like six or seven layers. And some areas, it still showed the surface kind of peeking through. But I think that keeps it fresh when you don't overlay. But I know I have that confidence that I can layer over some of these values. Now this is not a pastel that's in that set. This is a Terry Ludwig beautiful dark kind of burgundy color. And so I chose that to compliment or be coordinated with the scene, the colors that I'm choosing for this palette. It's basically a darker version of that magenta that I put down. So I know there are still some pretty shadowy areas at the base of these hay bales. And so I'm just kind of just sketching it in lightly where some of those darker values are. And you'll notice that I'm not developing anything too specifically or detailed to begin with. That's another trick to keeping your piece very painterly and impressionistic. Resist the urge to get caught up or stuck on any one area too intensely. And if you find yourself doing that, just say, no, no, no, I have to move on. I have to work the whole. So I know that these shadowy areas are going to be, for the most part, in kind of the same places on these hay bales. I want to gradually lighten them up as they're receding into the distance. Remember values get lighter in the distance. I also knew that I wanted to vary the positioning of my hay bales. This painting would look very, I would use the word amateurish if they all were facing exactly like this front one. So I have the front one kind of turned a little bit towards the viewer with the front of it on the right side. The next one is turned slightly different with the front of it on the left side. This back one is kind of turned a little bit, a little bit more to the back. And then they're gradually going to get to where you can't even really see. You also want to vary the positioning of them. You don't want them like patterned. This seems a little patterned right here, but I'll add another one later that kind of breaks that up a little bit. What I just added there at the base of those trees. There was a little band of grasses that looked like there were some dried grasses, which were, in my imagination, the very same grasses that were used to make the hay bales before the snow came. And now I'm working on, there's a little blanket of snow covering each of the hay bales. I always seem to personify these things. They look, you're just cozy. And so this is back to why would I not be using white right here? But it's back to the principle of putting your darker value down first. There's going to be some little shadowy areas even in the snow. So I'm putting down this really nice, this is a beautiful gray. It's like a topi gray. And then I will layer my lightest layers on top of that. Now I'm just using a paper towel. There are various different things you can use to blend with on different pastel surfaces. I found the past the paper towel worked well to blend things in. I also tried later a piece of pipe foam insulation that you can get at any hardware store. It's a great blending tool. And I found that it did not brush off so much of the pastel. Again, I really loved this pastel premiere surface. I found that you can see the pastel falling off quite a bit there. So I would recommend the pipe foam insulation if you don't want that to happen. It wasn't bothering me all that much. I kind of liked the soft effect that I was getting. This is the second of the soft pastels that are not in the Jack Richardson set. It's a nice little lavendary type of purple. And I noticed this set, the Jack Richardson landscape set, along with many sets of soft pastels are lacking purples. I don't know why. Purple is one of my favorite colors. It's great for shadows. It's great for distant trees, distant mountains. And it's fun color. So I just wanted to sneak some of that in there. It was kind of going along with the same family of cool, cool reds, I would say. A cool red is a pink, leaning a little maybe towards purple. A purple is a warm blue. So not to get too much into color theory. But I didn't know any of the stuff when I first started, by the way, guys. So if I can learn it, you can learn it. Now I'm going to speed up this blocking in stage a bit. So the video won't be so long. The whole painting took me about an hour in 15 minutes, I'd say. So I don't want to make this video that long. So let me speed this up with some Christmas music. How about that? But this is just for the blocking in stage. I will be back to talk and teach more about the snow. Let me first take a little moment to ask you if you've liked this video so far. Click that like button. Subscribe to my channel. Leave me a comment. I love to hear what you have to say. And if you would like to get the extra goodies that I talk about, it's on my Patreon page. You can find me at patreon.com slash Susan Jenkins, lots of extra footage, a beautiful Patreon family, and you get the extra goodies I always mention. So enjoy this little section where I continue to block in this painting and I will be back soon. Well, that was perfect timing for the ending of that song. Here I'm using a paper towel once again, and you can still see how much of the pastel is falling off again. If you don't want as much to fall off, I did find that the pipe foam insulation worked a little bit better as a blending tool, but I really did like the soft effect. So I'm just blending it. I did like some of the textural feel of the snow, but I kind of wanted to get that softness as a base layer. And then you'll see me later add some of some more of the textural marks on the top layers. But it is giving that nice soft snow feeling. Coming up a few pastels here to show some of the warmer tones that I'll be using for the hay bales. I don't use all of these. But I wanted a selection of some other golden and brown colors to put in the grasses that I'm working on here and in the hay bales themselves. At this point in the lesson is where my Patreon only real time content will continue along with extra commentary. But don't worry, Monet Cafe, the version you're seeing here is only sped up slightly. You'll be able to hear some lovely Christmas music while I paint and don't go anywhere because I am going to be back at the end when I'm painting the snow with some tips on how to achieve that. Also too, I will have this original painting available in my Etsy shop. And also I will have prints and products of this painting available on my Fine Art America site. Feel free to recreate from this tutorial and share. But it's proper artist etiquette to give credit to whoever you learned or created the tutorial from. So you can tag me if you recreate from this. If you share it on Instagram, you can tag me at Susan Jenkins Artist. And if you're on Facebook, you can tag me at the Art of Susan Jenkins. Also, if you'd like to join the Monet Cafe Art Group on Facebook, it's a closed group. You have to ask or answer a few questions to be admitted into the group. They're really easy. And it's a great art family. You can learn so much in our Facebook group. I think there's like over 16,000 artists in that group. So enjoy this. I'll be back at the end and Merry Christmas. Now, even though this is a snow painting and you would think I would instantly go for white, I have reserved my whitest white for the final strokes. You can see here I'm using a very light white. This is actually within the Jack Richardson set. But this is another white that's even brighter. I believe this is a small unison pastel. And it's just a really nice light value and a bright white. So I'm just sprinkling it on areas on the hay bales, and also little bits in the snow, just glazing it over the values that I've already put down. And while the general color palette is very cool, I did decide to add a little bit of warmth to the trees. I had previously added a little bit of the green. It's a darker kind of a muted green. And now I'm adding bits of those browns in the trees as well. It brings the painting together. This is called echoing color where you take color that's in one area of your painting and kind of echo it throughout the painting. And now the fun begins adding the falling snow. Now I've typically used a method for adding snow in the past. That's a little dusting technique. You can literally lay your painting down flat and use like a little cheese grater or a lemon zester and literally grate some pastel onto your surface. And then you can put a piece of tracing paper over it and you roll something really hard to make it set down into the pastel surface so it won't fall off when you pick it up. But lately I've been enjoying adding snowflakes by hand in a little bit of a random method with snowflakes. It's very similar to other elements in a painting. You want to make sure there's a variety of sizes and you don't want things to be too patterned. Remember there's going to be snowflakes that are close in front of certain items and then some that are very far away. So I didn't want to add too much. I wanted to make it like it was it had just started snowing again. Here is the final and I really did enjoy creating this scene even though it doesn't snow here in Florida. I really do like snow and especially snow scenes. So I hope this was a blessing. Stay tuned for my little message here at the end and Merry Christmas. Thank you so much for joining me in today's lesson. I hope it blessed you and it would bless me if you would consider subscribing to my channel, liking this video and if you would like extra content or just to support Monet Cafe consider becoming a patron of mine on my Patreon page. All right, artists until next time. God bless and happy painting.