 Welcome to Monet Café and this lesson I'm calling bringing life to the green landscape. We're focusing on green landscapes this month in Monet Café and over on my Patreon page. I just loved these sheep in a lush and gorgeous green landscape. So here we go. The surface that I'm using is a surface that I love. It's called Sennelier Le Carte Pastel Card. I really love the surface especially when I'm going for an impressionistic look. It's very sanded but produces a soft result. However, it is not water friendly and I accidentally got some water on this surface after I washed my hands. It's a little white dot in the painting you'll see in a minute. But I tried for the first time this fixative made by the same company Sennelier. So you got to stay close to the end of the video to see how it worked. There's that little white dot. So check that out near the end. The reference image, oh it's so lovely. It's some sheep in a field. I got it from unsplash.com. By the way, I altered the reference image in Photoshop. I didn't really like the composition of how the one sheep was right in the middle. So if you're a patron of mine, you'll be getting my Photoshop altered image as well. And here is my setup. I have my surface on my board, on my easel and by the way that black board is a do-it-yourself board. I made it myself. It's really practical. I have a video on how to do that if you're interested. It saves me from having to put new black foam core boards up all the time. I have my reference photo, my altered one to my left. If you're a patron of mine, I have a printable for you and you will get this reference image. The surface size for the Sennelier paper is approximately, ignore my hand there. I'm doing a voiceover, approximately 15 wide by 12 tall. And I'm going to be painting it to result in a 14 inch by 11 inch final painting. As I always say, use what you have. You do not have to have these particular products, but I will have product links in the description of this video. Now let's talk about these pastels. I've pre-selected some pastels to begin with. I add a few. I do add one additional dark as well. And you can see the bottom portion of this is all greens. I have them arranged from warm to the left, going to cool to the right. And you can see that they gradually go from more of a yellowy green to a blue green or teal or turquoise towards the right hand side. These are pastels that I will use mostly for either shadowy areas in grasses or distant things like trees very far in the distance. They tend to blue out and lighten in value. You'll notice that as I paint. In the top portion you'll see on the right side. These are some of my colors for my mountain that's going to be in the distance. Also again for some of those distant trees and even some shadows under the trees and shadowy areas in the painting. The middle section there is my darks. I'm going to be putting down an underpainting that has a lot of a magenta. You see those three there? And the reason I'm doing that is I typically say if you're doing a lot of greens like my last tutorial this month's theme is painting green landscapes. I use often a red or orange or golden underpainting but I wanted to use these magenta colors because I didn't want it to be that warm. So how do you cool off orange? You make it more pink. These are the colors that I'm using for my sky and also for the sheep. We're going to start this painting but first a little favor. If you would go ahead and like this video and hit that subscribe button if you haven't already. You can actually share this video more based on the amount of likes and subscribes so thanks for that. Also the extra content you hear me talking about in this video is found on my Patreon page. If you would like to become a patron of mine it's only $5 a month and you not only support this channel but you get extra goodies and we have a lot of fun. I've made a light sketch of the basic elements just so I can just start painting and not have to think about it and again if you're a patron of mine I'm going to give you a printable where you can print out the basic, it's a black and white that I made, the basic sketch to get started. By the way this version here on the Monet Cafe YouTube channel, the free version here, is sped up more than the one that I have over on my Patreon page but and this one has less commentary. However, YouTube allows you to slow your videos down if you want. There's a gear icon at the lower right of every video and you can select your speed. I do recommend you turn the volume down. If you want to do that my voice is going to sound really weird otherwise. Alright, so what I've done is I've put in some dark values. Remember I said I was going for that magenta rather than a warm underpainting that's like red or oranges. I wanted it to feel a little cooler and yet I still didn't want to just use blue. Check out my last video. I do a neat comparison on how the underpainting can make such a difference in your final painting. I didn't know what an underpainting was when I first started. So it really does make a difference though. So I've got in my basic warm values with my pinks. Now I'm getting in some of these blues for shadowy colors. The second level there that I'm working on now is it's like a hill rolling down to that backside of the sheep. So I knew it was going to be a little bit in shadow. So that's why I added a little bit of that blue. Now I want to go ahead and get this mountain in the distance. It's very blue even in the photo and that's because of aerial perspective. When things are far away there's a lot of air between you. There's a lot of distance and a lot of air and air believe it or not affects color temperature so it cools things off. That's why I'm getting cooler temperatures in those trees I'm adding really far away right there. I loved punching up that color and adding some brilliant turquoise blue colors. I added a little purple to that mountain as well and now I'm just getting in some of these basic layers of grasses with that pink. And now that I've blocked in the main painting I'm using, I started using a piece of paper towel to blend this with and I forgot oh yeah this is Sennelier, LaCarte and it's very textural. So it started eating up my paper towel. I mean it worked but it was deteriorating the paper towel so I remembered and switched to this tool which is just a piece of pipe foam insulation you can get at a hardware store. It's almost like a pool noodle if you know what that is and it blends things very nicely. So this is really just what's called blocking in, getting something down on your surface, an underpainting of sorts, we're getting our values established and I just established a soft mood by blending it. Now I left blank the area where the sheep are, I approach these sheep like I do flowers. If it's a pretty large subject matter I kind of leave a space for it but if it's smaller I just paint those in as I go like the distant sheep you'll see me do later. Now I lost my little sketch of the sheep so I just used a charcoal pencil to re-establish it and I had a sheep challenged in this tutorial. Actually I was very challenged in this whole painting process. I share that story over on my Patreon page just things happening you know I've tripped over my chair when I backed up. I dropped my pastels and you'll see later I actually go and take my painting to knock it off outside, knock it off painting but I sometimes do that. I'll knock off some of the extra pastel and it knocked off almost all of the green that you'll see me add in a minute. I don't know why I've never had this happen with Sennelier so I'll talk about that in a minute but anyway so I just have to laugh at these things. So I decided to just blur out my sheep and work on it some more. I had it a little bit low so I'm working here. I just went ahead and brought my reference image in that I have it the same proportions. Now here's a hard challenge with chunky pastels is getting little features such as this sheep. I really wanted to paint this very large that would have made it much easier to paint the face of this sheep. However I didn't have really any large surfaces available so but this this was challenging. So the the trick here is to just keep it very suggestive and impressionistic. We're not trying to get every detail on the sheep and really the other sheep are a whole lot easier. They don't have their faces towards the viewer and they're further away. So yeah I kind of blurred them out again didn't I? So I'm adding a little bit of a lighter value to the backs of these sheep. Now we want to determine the source of light. It's coming from the kind of the back of the sheep and up to the upper right. That's why the tops of their backs are going to have a light almost they're almost back lit and a little bit of light coming around the form of the back. And here's where I'm adding some of my greens so this is just going to be some of the pastel I was talking about that I hit my painting on the back is literally what I do. I do this take it outside don't do it in your studio or your home and just hit the back of your painting. It just releases any loose particles and I find it's just a good idea and I felt like you know it was getting a little bit dusty so that's why I did that. And again never have I had a lot of the pastels come off like that. I found that as I painted more once I fixed that problem I didn't have any problem with it it's fine now so that was just one of those weird things I was saying it was just such a unusual painting experience for me you ever have one of those days where it just seems like man one thing after another but hey I got to count my blessings hey my kids are healthy my life is good I'm healthy and so you know you just count your blessings in times like that I'm like hey this is just a painting right but I didn't let it beat me I kept on I kept pressing on alright so here's you can see I'm adding some of those cooler greens remember the ones that lean a little more blue towards the shadowy side or where there might be a hill oh look at this pretty it's like a blue color that I'm carving in some of the tree shapes they look a little weird right now so you'll see me as I work just carving those shapes to give it some negative painting typically we paint the spaces in between the trees rather than trying to paint branches and things coming out from the trees that's why we block them in to begin with you can always shape those trees up as you work now I'm pulling some of those pretty warmer greens to the foreground now why would I do that that's because color temperature typically gets warmer the closer it is to you especially if it's something that is a warm color like green grasses so I'm adding those warmer colors more where the sun might be hitting it and and where they're closer and I'm adding cooler color greens where they're in shadow also even added some of that lighter green to the distant mountains but not too much since they're so far away this is the point where I took the painting out knocked off the majority of that green that I added but before I show you that let me share this with you I'm just showing you my Monet cafe art store under my YouTube videos I have products t-shirts that I've made I love this one I wear this one myself all the time this one says I have no Monet for digas to make the van go this one clawed Monet get it also many of you have seen that I wear Christian t-shirts a lot this from another company I decided just to make them myself so these are some that I've made and I'm gonna have a 25% off coupon code for you in this video description and on the patreon page okay look what happened I was like what is going on today most of the green that I put on it just came right off so I was like I am determined to finish this painting so what I'm doing here is I'm working on the sheep again it did have some warmer tones in it the sheep is primarily light other than the shadowy areas down under his neck around his face and kind of in between his legs there but I decided to add a little bit of tan and this other lighter kind of a tan color as well just to get in just the the different values in general areas and I often like to share this about pastel painting or really any painting often your painting goes through what I have heard called an adolescent stage you know where you ever I was I got so tall quickly when I was young and I was a little bit clumsy and I don't know I just went through a really awkward dorky stage and that's kind of what your paintings do sometimes when you're first starting them kind of like those middle early-to-middle phases and it's really actually a good thing because we don't want things to be so set in stone we want to keep things loose especially if you like the impressionistic painterly style like I do it's best to not overwork or over detail things so now I've zoomed in a little bit so you could see this sheep it's really some little subtle values going on here there's some light areas kind of on that bridge of his nose and up to the top of his head or her and again the light source is kind of coming from behind to the right and there's where you could see how I added some more of those little dark marks with that big old pastel it wasn't easy now this was pretty tough so just giving a little bit of a impression of some of that wool and again don't overdo this we want the viewer not to get stuck on that sheep that's the obvious focal point but we want the viewer to meander through the painting these sheep here they look a little weird for a little while but they're going to be just very subdued later you'll see how I increased the the height of the grasses around them so it kind of nestles them down into the painting and here is where I'm reworking the whole landscape again so I had to reestablish some of that magenta color because it just wasn't really showing up and I added some of those cooler colors where there might be shadows and keep in mind too if the light source is from behind to the right there's going to be a little bit more of a darker shadow in the front of the sheep kind of to the left so I'm really kind of doing some of the same thing right here so pardon me if it gets a little monotonous I know where the source of light is that's why I added some of that warmer green but I had a little bit of this cooler green too so again the theme of this month is I'm calling it now going green but I've also at the beginning called it it's not easy being green does anybody remember Kermit the Frog so that's why I like to have an assortment of greens if I'm doing a mostly green landscape I like to get an underpainting down to give some color contrast and interest and make those greens really show up alright now that I've got that established I can start working on the sheep again you can see I'm adding a little bit of blue still in these shadow side of the sheep I add a little blue down on the ground on their shadow side too as well I'm often I say this a lot but if you've got a pastel in your hand see where you can use it somewhere else in your painting the reason is not just because it's efficient and faster but it's also because it's going to connect your painting it's going to make it feel more like a whole rather than segmented color adding a little bit of the lighter this is my lightest value I've used so far I felt like it was a little too light but it was based on what values I have in the landscape right now I actually do really lighten up some of those distant fields so that the highlights on the sheet make more sense and that's one thing we need to keep in mind when we're painting it has to logically make sense your light source should feel consistent throughout the painting in other words all right now here is where you see that white mark there it's because I washed my hands and I often use my pinky as an anchor to as I'm painting I was painting the sheep and so pastel a cart is not water friendly and I'm telling you if a little bit of that surface comes off with water there's almost no fixing it so I tried to cover it up a little bit and I had in my mind a strategy of what I'm going to try you'll see me do it in a minute so I moved on like I suggest to do often don't get overly frustrated and I continued to paint kind of softening some of the greens and the landscape you probably noticed there was still a lot of the underpainting showing through even though I like some of it showing through so I just keep adding these are some cooler greens and just developing this soft pretty green landscape and this was where I added a little bit of a yellowy white to the sky and to the sheep remember I said it has to be consistent so if that kind of a warmer white is in the sky that's the same kind of light or color that has to be reflected on the sheep I mean it's just going to make more sense that's how it really works in real life so I'm adding a little bit more of that pretty light beige color and now I'm adding more purple in this mountain and a little bit more purple in some other areas purple makes a great shadow and it just brings interest so I put a little bit of a shadow down at the base of some of those trees at the base of the sheep and voila things are starting to feel more connected this is a really pretty light green notice I just turned it on its side and I'm just glazing it and again I've got it in my hand let me see where else I can use it I'm using it across these distant fields again flat horizontal strokes and it's starting to come together this is a pretty blue green I love this color so wherever I think there might be some valleys or shadow sides on the distant trees I'm using that color and now I'm going for one of my lightest values this is where I said it's going to make the sheep make sense they looked a little too light in the landscape until I started adding some of this sunlight that's coming from behind that mountain over there the top left it is obviously going to shine onto this field and because things lighten up in the distance and value that's why I added some of the lightest greens in horizontal strokes to the distant fields and not only were they lighter greens they were cooler greens you remember the the rule of how color behaves in the distance and on that note colors get warmer as they move closer to the foreground that's why I'm using some of these warmer greens and remember what I said about this being a hill and or valley down behind the sheep it's why the values are just a little bit darker right behind that initial bank that the sheep are standing on therefore I wanted the colors to be a little bit darker I wanted the greens that are kind of on the top side of the hill to be warmer because they're closer but I wanted this the part of the hill that's right behind the sheep to be a little cooler because it's more in the shadow eventually I hope all this stuff comes together it took me years but the way to learn what do they say repetition is the mother of learning truly is just by doing it a lot and observing keep looking looking at the world looking at other artist work observing how nature works and and painting a lot so there's really not a shortcut to that and that's why I always say paint just to have fun because every painting is a learning experience they don't all have to be masterpieces they're not all going to be masterpieces mine art I have so many failed paintings and those are the ones we don't show right I should show more of those and now I'm feeling a little bit better about my green field and I'm adding a little bit more green to those trees they felt just a little too dark even though they looked really dark in the reference image adding a little bit of this to the mountain remember I said I was going to do something to make it feel like there was some of that grass on the mountain but because it's far away it's going to be cooler and it's going to be lighter so it kind of connected the mountain to the rest of the scene I loved this pretty blue gray color right there all right now I am going to after I soften this road remember I said I was going to soften that in the distance I cooled it off it's not as dark as the foreground part you'll see me add some fence posts in a little while but I'm going to show you after I add some of these little shadows with this pretty blue I'm going to show you my fix for that little white dot that's there so I had heard about this fixative many of you know that Blair fixative is no more I don't know why I talked about it all the time but I was told about this Sennelier fixative as it's the same company that makes this surface so what I'm going to do I wasn't even sure if it would work because you know this surface is a non-water-friendly surface but I thought okay I'm gonna try it it is the same company so what I'm doing is I'm going to kind of try to cover up some areas not very well but I'm gonna spray some of this fixative at this point I was like oh no what have I done but I had read many artist reviews that says it doesn't darken the painting very much I hit this the first time I totally used it and so I was like whatever if this painting is failed I'm just gonna keep trying it and I thought those little spots might stay I went ahead and sprayed it in areas that I wouldn't mind it darkening and you know look at that it really didn't darken the painting much and what it does it gives you a little extra tooth so that was my strategy would it give it enough tooth to cover up that white spot and it absolutely did you'll see it even gets better the more that I layer on top of it so thank you Lord that something I did that day worked because I was like what is happening and so anyway that is going to be a video I make in the future where I really play with this fixative so I don't recommend you go buy it and spray it you know just haphazardly on your paintings I'm gonna really do a review of it and spray an entire painting and see if it darkens it very much but for this exercise and this fix it definitely worked and by the way let me go ahead and say again I noticed that I can see the analytics of my videos there are a lot of people who keep coming back and watching my videos and still haven't subscribed to my channel and I don't say that just subscribe to my channel because it makes me feel important I say that because when you subscribe to my channel and click the like button on the video and comment it all helps YouTube shares my video more and there are so many people out there in the world who are hungry for art lessons and may want to learn more about soft pastel and there are many people who don't have any other resource to paint and I get to hear your stories often I love it when you tell me you know a little bit of your your personal story we had on a few videos ago I recognized an artist who's in Ukraine she was just thanking me for my tutorials and sharing a little bit about just how hard it is so keep praying for everybody in Ukraine here I'm adding some of those fence posts that are rolling over the hill they gradually meander down into another little valley and just get lighter in value in the distance smaller you'll see me even soften up that distant kind of impression of a fence and I'm painting in between the fence posts here my pastel I used to create them was too dark and I knew it but I and they were also kind of too thick it's best to do these with little quick gesture remarks and at this point I was just using whatever I had in front of me you know what I was saying about this whole painting process but you can see how I softened the fence up now let me talk about the sheep that I'm adding in the distance they're really pretty easy the further away they get I know they're in shadow remember the light source is up to the upper right so I put the blue down first really just to get the darker shadowy side and then I just kind of added a little bit of light kind of curved it over to suggest kind of the form and the shape of the sheep and they're super easy if you just kind of look at some sheep or anything far away just kind of examine the fact that you can't see a lot of detail here I'm still trying to fiddle with that main sheep's eye and get it right those things drive me crazy if their features that you know it doesn't have to be detailed but it does have to be anatomically correct so you can see I have added a few more sheep I'm using this little blending tool it's just a little you could use a eye makeup applicator make sure it's clean but it's a tool from pan pastels I have another pan pastel video coming soon now I've slowed this down to real time here's where I was talking about earlier rather than carving rather than painting your trees with all of their branches and things that a lot of the way to make a tree look believable and painterly is what's called painting sky holes it's the spaces behind the trees that you're carving negatively into the trees in this case I would call it mountain holes because it's the mountain that's behind the tree so you want to use similar colors and values to whatever is behind the tree when you do that technique now here I'm just getting in a little bit more interesting shapes I'm carving in some of the distant grass this would be called almost like grass holes because in some cases like that tree I just did it's grassy areas that are behind the tree and which show in those negative spaces sky holes can be a little challenging but they get easier the more you do it now remember what I said about the light source I knew I was going to eventually lighten up this field even more because I added a little bit of a glow to the sky like a warm glow added a little bit of yellow more than I did at the initial blocking in stage and I made sure to add some of that little yellowy color on my sheep as well to keep it consistent all right here is the final and in spite of all those crazy challenges I had with this painting I was still happy with it and it was a beautiful experience I hope you learned a lot and I hope you count your blessings that's what I have to do pardon my bragging here but one of my sweetest blessings is my first grandchild his name is Rush he's four months old he's helping us with our new home construction project and this boy loves tools all right everyone I pray art and painting can bring you some healing in this really crazy world right now so keep smiling keep shining your light and as always God bless and happy painting