 Hello my friends in Monet cafe. This is artist Susan Jenkins and I am so glad to be sitting here back at my tabletop easel my other easel is up here and I have not been able to paint for a little while because of just some Things going on in my life company coming in town. My husband was sick for a while. He's much better praise the Lord and I am now Sneaking in a moment to just do a little painting kind of getting warmed up again And I just wanted to kind of share with you what I do to get warmed up again when you've been away from your easel a While it's good not to get too serious too quickly So what I'm going to do today is I've taken some of my watercolor. It's a pad a watercolor I think it's called a block of watercolor paper. I have it here To show you this is a an older one that I have but this is an example of it It's basically a block of watercolor paper that's all glued together now Why would they do that the reason is because if you've worked with watercolor paper and I'm using this for pastels like I've done in the past watercolor paper buckles and When you add the water It will warp and a lot of times you have to tape it down. Well, when you have it on this block You're able to paint on it And the block is already adhered each page is already almost like taped down on the sides So you're able to use it without it buckling and then when you're finished You've got a nice little corner or right in here where you basically can get just like a little Exacto blade or the edge of a palette knife and just kind of start peeling back that one sheet To peel it off and that way you don't have any buckling So that's what I've done here and what I'm going to do to warm up is I've just blocked out a Few shapes. I already had a pre-cut piece of pastel board. I had made A five by seven. I believe this is a six by four. This is another five by seven landscape Size and this is just a random little square piece I had so I just filled up the watercolor paper with some some sizes that I typically work in and I thought I'm just going to get some inspiration from paint my photo It is the PMP dash art comm website You guys if you've been on my channel before you've seen how I use the this website to get reference images and this is just my My photo Album that I've already pre-saved photos to this is a I think this one is fields And so I have a bunch of photos already pre-saved So I don't have to sit down and go through all the photos and waste my time You know, usually I get so into looking at the photos. I never end up painting So this is a great way for me just to get to work really quickly so I'm just going to quickly pick some of these images and start painting and the great thing about doing it this way is Like I said again, the purpose is just to warm up to get back into things is that you don't take it So seriously this is going to be fun and a lot of times when you have that attitude and that approach It comes out better than when you do take things seriously So my technique that I'm going to be using for this is some of you guys have seen my videos where I actually use the Clear gesso to paint on the watercolor paper to give it the grit the surface so I can apply Pastels to it. It will hold to it right now if I just took pastels and started painting on this It would hold a little but it would fall right off and I wouldn't get any layering So that's why we use the clear gesso But what I often do first, which is what I'm going to do today is I'm going to do an underpainting I'm going to keep it free and loose. I love using these neocolor water soluble. They're actually called wax pastels I really don't know why they're called wax pastels, but they work great for getting an underpainting down they look literally like coloring crayons like Crayola crayons and I break mine up a lot just to use them in different shading and things So what I do is you'll see is I'll do a quick little sketch underpainting I'll wet it with water again. This won't buckle as bad because it's on a block And then after that dries I will paint on this clear gesso to give it the grit and then I can use the pastels on top So I'm giving too much explanation. I need to just get to it right now and we're gonna have fun I've missed you guys and I'm very happy to see the Facebook Monet cafe art group growing and wow what amazing comments I'm getting from you guys and I love it as much as y'all do so anyway if you want to Ask to join that group. That would be great You do have to ask to join but just mention that you there's three questions It'll ask you but one of the questions is how did you find out about this group? Just say you saw it on, you know, Susan's Monet cafe channel or Monet cafe on YouTube and Someone will very likely Accept you into the group. Okay, so let's get started on this and I'm ready to have fun I've got a hurry because I got an art student coming later. Okay. Here we go. I Apologize that my camera ran out of Space and so I have a couple of spots at the beginning of this that did not get all Of my footage. So in this particular spot, I have already sketched in with the wax pastels the Underpainting and now here flash Like magic if this is where I had applied the water now I'm going to go over to the other one and the same thing happens But don't worry you have two more sections to watch me actually apply the wax pastels and The water while this one was drying. That's probably already dry I've sketched in this one reference image of these beautiful flowers and Again using the wax pastels and now I'm just going to work on Getting the water in I'm going to be a little bit more particular with the petals with this one Not all of them. I Might go ahead and get those in with the smaller brush right now. So right now. I'm going to work on these petals Again, I've got a decent amount of water on here. I don't care if it drips It's okay because it makes it look more impressionistic as you can see like I said the brightness of these Really shows up When you apply the water Look how gorgeous that is and again I don't want to get too fussy with this because then it's going to lose that spontaneity. That's the trick keeping things somewhat accurate with The way flowers really grow, but at the same time Getting that looseness That's why I think this watercolor approach works because when you load up your Brush with whoops, I'm getting into that one. You load up your brush with Enough water. That's a trick. I had to learn how much is too much and how much is not enough But when you get just the right amount, it does create those loose edges. That's another video I want to do it sometime talking about Lost edges. It's called where there's really no lines in nature These are just a little short ones here things Just have a an edge more than a line and the edge is created by whatever value is next to it I'll save that for another lesson, but it's a really important lesson in art. All right I'll probably need to move this tape now over to this side To protect this guy here And again this one you need to recognize or I do too that Flowers aren't always going to have even though. They're the same flower and they're probably the same color They're not the same color in nature depending on where they are in the shadows or in the light and Um, if you paint them all the exact same color pink or the centers all the same It's going to look very amateurish So you need to constantly be checking those values. I know I talk about value all the time But it is so so very important. All right So we've got a general idea of these and I probably have these even too fixed right now, but Um It's okay because again, this is just for a warm up now I'm going to go ahead and get in behind some of these and then this one will get a little more blurry As I add the water which is okay I'm using the smaller brush here Because I need to kind of get in between those petals at least a little bit And I kind of like this getting uh four paintings going at once. It's uh again. It's going to Um help me to stay very loose and again, I want to show you here what I'm doing when I dip this in the water I'm just dabbing it just a little so I get most of that water off but not too much of it. Whoops. I really got on that flower That's okay Some of the flowers you want just as hints Um, it's just a hint that it's there. It doesn't have to be Um the one that's popping out as the star Okay, so We're getting This one just about ready to have some fun with it And I do have some white still showing Which is okay. I'm not going to worry about that too much. All right, and I'll re-establish my darks Um, whether there's some pastels or acrylic inks or something. Okay, so there's number two Time to work on number three All right with this one. I really don't have a lot of time because I've got an appointment. I've got to get to Um, but what I'm going to do here is just to sort of get this Building accurate sometimes um, I like to sketch holding my pencil like this Sometimes if things are uh intricate and have to get to some sometimes I have to hold it, you know like this But um, I like to hold it like this because it helps keep me um things to look more sketchy And I often will use my other hand just as a prop, you know to keep my hand steady but I'm going to get in the basics of this building here in this one and um Even though I don't like the fact that this roof line is kind of right here in the center See here's a situation where I can't hold my hand up because I don't have enough room down here Even though I don't like it right in the center um, it is Okay, because um I have this horizon line back here Down in a actually it's a much lower third like this, which I like And then I've got a grouping of trees in here Which is comes down kind of low and The trees are kind of in here And this roof line. See now I can correct this a little bit Comes up Comes down Looking at big shapes again No, I actually love painting Flowers and trees for the fact that if you get something a little off It's not that big a deal But you want to get if you're doing anything that is uh structural Then you definitely want to get your Angles right and your perspective and everything right So um, but at the same time if you get it too perfect, then you've lost that sketch Sketch early painterly look again. All right, these trees actually come in front of that building So this is just a hint a little hint to this building. You almost don't even see this edge But um, this value is going to be darker in here on this side And then we've got little shimmery things in the roof line Okay, now time to sketch Actually think I'm gonna do this building Let's see here. It's really dark And so are these trees Get my darkest dark for the trees And we've got these trees in the distance back here. I'm just gonna kind of Give an idea of that The sky is really what's gorgeous in here. And I actually I wish I had a longer format here Let me get this building I'm just going to go a little crazy with this Just to get the General idea of this The side is even darker Alrighty, so now I have my fourth one. I will be working on and I think I'm going to do for this one It's just got this brilliant beautiful sky. It's a darker reference photo more of a moody late evening or a late afternoon feel and I think I'm going to combine some of the Neo color wax pastels also with a little bit of watercolor these watercolors I think come out sometimes a little more brilliant And so I'm going to play around with this one now and see what I get again. These are just for Having fun. Sometimes you have to do that. Don't get so serious about all of your artwork. All right. Here we go Actually going to add some Watercolor to this one too. I feel like it wasn't bold enough So I'm just going to enhance it a bit right with all of these dry now I think I'm going to just go ahead and start working on this one because I have the reference photo pulled up But what I did is I just quickly picked out some pastels that look Accurate to a degree for the reference image Again, I'm doing this really quickly. So I might grab another color or two But this is again just for the point of getting Warmed up and loose Oh, I didn't do the gesso I can tell right away. I need to put the gesso down. Let me do that All right. Now I'm going to be applying the clear gesso to all of these so that I have Some tooth to the paper to be able to apply the pastels and this again is just going to be loose and sloppy and free kind of like the Under paintings that I did And you'll notice that they do smear a little bit But I actually kind of like that You get a nice Just a impressionistic type of a background All right, there's one I'll wipe this off a little to get some of the color off And here's two And again the purpose of an under painting Even though they can be just really loose and free is to Cover up that white stark paper. It gives more of a loose I'm going to keep this going sideways interesting feel to it and to get those big shapes in kind of as a Guide, it's a general guide I'm just putting it on the little foam brush And typically I'm going top to bottom again because sometimes I have some lighter colors at the top And I don't want them to get Muddied up by the darker colors. I am wiping this brush off I have a little piece of noobs print here and I'm just sort of wiping it off To get um Some of the darker color off of it. All right last one All right, so I'll just let this dry and get started All right, I've given myself a timer. I just sat in my kitchen of 15 minutes to work on each one of these Um again just to keep it quick and loose and I have picked out um some pastels here I may have to grab a couple more. I don't think I have enough uh light values for the sky But um anyway 15 minutes. I better get going All right now I'm going to start working on the next one and again I have set my timer at 15 minutes. So I better get going I actually did this one more in like I think it was more like 12 minutes 11 or 12 minutes Um, and I think I'm working even faster, which is probably a good thing because I'm not really happy with the The real bumpy texture of this. I'm not it's not working as as good as it did when I applied the gesso to A different watercolor paper. This one is a lot more textured So the point of this is really like I said just to get loosened up and to have some fun So I actually already set the timer to do them even more quickly. I'm going to do this one Um in I set the timer for 10 minutes, but I probably already run out of that time So anyway, here I go again more fun And I'm just going to work with the pastels I have already here because I'm Don't really want to get up and and fuss about getting other ones. So all right Time to get started again. All right, I'm going to do this last one now and I'm probably going to do this one really fast because I don't really love my image that I cropped and um So I'll just get play around with it now I didn't set my timer, but I'm probably going to do this one faster than the other ones And my crop changed so I've got to change some things real quickly I don't normally blend with my finger But this because of the texture is not blending well at all With uh, even if I take a hard pastel, which is my typical approach to blending It's just not blending and I want the sky to look further I want to push it back But what I am doing if in the rare Time you have to use your finger I'm cleaning it off each time so it doesn't muddy up the colors quite as you see It's already muddy to mop a little bit, but Anyway, again, this is just a study Not an important serious piece Like a little bit of that Tealish green in there. It's kind of what's in the underpainting anyway And I don't know. It's just kind of interesting to me. I wish I had it a tad darker. Oh, I do Here's a little more It's a little darker here, and it's usually a good idea If you have a color that you're using that's not anywhere else in the painting It's usually a good idea to introduce it at least A couple of other spots on this dark maybe here These are those little foreground. They look almost like cat tails or What's that called? Sawgrass And um I don't want to overdo it actually already. This is the heavier side I probably should have gone lighter on this side and heavier on this side, but again Getting a little too serious For a study. I can use this and tone these down over here Okay, and I don't like to have a total border across my painting. So I typically try to introduce A little openings here and there So that it's not like a barrier to the painting. All right now. I'm just going to get Some of those cat tails and all I have is this For the darkest darker these chunky Terry Ludwig so I can't get probably as small as I need but Just a couple of little indications is all you need Sometimes you want one higher than another one and you don't want them Lining up in a straight line. So all right. So here we go with our final little warm-up paintings Just to get loose and and work quickly As you can see when I started working this one I took the most time on and it probably looks the most fussy And I gradually decreased my time as I went around Um, I'm not sure this one might have been the least amount of time or maybe this one And again, these are just to work quickly and to kind of Get back into the swing of things when you haven't been painting for a while And what would I do differently? I think from here on out I will probably work on a less coarse piece of watercolor paper as you can see I really got the texture in there But you know, if you like texture then, you know, you might want to use this technique But anyway, you can see how quickly you can pop these out and uh and just get kind of warmed up and have some fun We don't need to always be so so serious about our artwork. This is about just exploring and having fun And uh, just learning more as we go. So anyway guys, thanks for joining me And if you haven't joined our facebook group yet, uh, you can find it at monay cafe art group on facebook You will have to ask to join but just say that you saw Or you learned about it from the youtube channel monay cafe. So anyway guys, thanks so much And I hope you learned something. Happy painting