 Welcome to Monet Café. I'm artist Susan Jenkins. Join me in this pastel painting tutorial that I'm calling Lily Morning in Blue. It's really impressionistic and I love the effect of a painterly style when I create artwork on my own homemade surfaces. The video prior to this one shows how I create my own homemade boards and I give them different colors and I let the color of the board inspire me for the painting. So join me in this tutorial as I create on this gorgeous aqua blue board. Oh and if you haven't subscribed to this channel I really hope you will. It's lots of free content and it's fun. Also too a big thank you for my patrons on my Patreon page. It's because of them that I'm able to keep this free content coming. You can become a patron if you would like. It's only $5 a month at that link right there. And a big thank you for this lovely reference image. It's from Azalea Lynn. Look her name is even like a flower. She's from the Monet Café art group on Facebook which is a great community of artists. You can learn so much and there's so many resources as well. Now here are the pastels. I used this set a lot, the Sennelier 40 half-stick set. I love Sennelier pastels. They are soft. I know they're a little expensive but this little 40 half-stick set really allows me to create many times paintings in themselves using mostly just these pastels. And I always recommend half-sticks whenever possible. You can get double the pastels for your money. These are some of the additional pastels I used. Some of them are terry Ludwigs. The square or rectangular ones are terry Ludwigs. And I'm using a Prismacolor new pastel, spelled N-U pastel, to just get in a sketch. Now I decided there was a lot going on in this reference image. You will have some real time in this by the way. I'm speeding up the sketch. But this particular reference image, as beautiful as it was, there were some elements I decided to leave out. It looks like there's a screen behind in the middle left area there. And I also felt there was a lot of lilies going on. They're actually, I don't know if these are lily pads. These are more like elephant ears. Or again, you guys help me all the time with these flowers. They look a little bit like elephant ears to me. I played around with this a lot and had fun with it. But I decided to change some things. You will see as I work to actually make some of them more like lily pads with a little bit of water in the center. And later you'll see kind of that area I'm working on right there. I felt like I wanted more water showing on the left side of that main kind of elephant ear stalk that's coming up. But typical for pastel painting, I'm getting in some of my darks. Even though the sketch is pretty loose, it gives me a roadmap. And I'm squinting my eyes. If you squint your eyes and look at the reference image there, and you look at the areas I'm adding this darker value to, you can see I'm just kind of giving myself an idea of where some of the darkest values are. Now something else you will see me do in this lesson that I actually sort of discovered not too long ago that works really well on these boards. I think it would work on other pastel papers too. But when I need to blend an area, a lot of times if something just looks too rough, and these homemade boards are pretty textural. But if you want to soften something up, you don't want to have let it have that much texture, kind of like what you see I'm working on right now. You can often use blending methods that's like a piece of pipe foam insulation. Sometimes I use a chamois cloth. Sometimes just to blend quickly, I'll use my finger. But here, I found that you can use a stiff bristle paintbrush not just to kind of erase an area. That area was a little bit too dark, or I changed something up in the composition. I think I had added the value in the wrong spot. But also later you will see me, once I get a few more layers down, you'll see me soften things with the same paintbrush approach. So it's kind of handy to keep a stiff bristle paintbrush, that's like a tongue twister, near you to either knock some pastel off if you need to kind of correct an area or blend it in. Now this is where I'm picking up some of the pastel and I'm almost using it to get a little bit on the paintbrush and make some marks and make some almost like sketching with it and softening as well. So you'll see me use this technique throughout and you see it definitely softens things up. So if you have made your own pastel boards and you're not happy with the texture, you feel like you can't get enough softness. I happen to really love a lot of texture. But sometimes the subject matter doesn't lend itself to a lot of texture. Then you may consider using this technique. You'll also see me, I'm giving a lot of commentary here because I'm going to play some music and you guys can just remember these things I'm saying and take note of it. But another area in this that I wanted to keep soft was the water in the background. I do end up with still some texture in the water, but there's sometimes that I use the brush to kind of blend the water a bit and give some of the areas in the background a little bit of a reflection. So I just wanted to point that out with this brush technique because I don't think I've used it a lot in previous videos. Now I'm still working on the darkest values and with this flower, now this is the star of the show. You'll see me, I decided I wanted to add a few more flowers to this to make it a little more balanced. So you'll see me later add a few more flowers. But you would think this is so bright pink. Why didn't you just grab a really bright pink, reddish pink? And it's because if I just put the pink down alone, there's no contrast. So I usually work darker to middle to lightest values. And now you can see when I added that little bit of pink right there on top of that darker red, it almost gave it that little shadow of a petal. Now you may not see purple in this flower. I actually do see a little hint of purple on my screen, but purple is a great shadowy color. Areas that are a bit more on the cooler side or in the shadow side, I always say when wondering about color temperature, just think about what happens to you when you're in the shadows or you're in the shape. You cool off. So colors typically cool off, which means you're going to be more on the cooler side of the color wheel, which are more like blues and purples. Now this is an area where I was going to go ahead and get some of that background grass back there. There were some other lily pads going on. Later you'll see I felt it was competing with the main subject matter. It's still pretty soft and subdued here, but I decided to brush it out a bit, soften it with the bristle brush, and make it very subdued and impressionistic in the back, out of focus so to speak, because I didn't want it to compete with that main flower. So one thing that you can see here, or you will see as the painting develops, is you still have a lot of flexibility and a lot of layering capability with using your own homemade boards. You could of course do this lesson on whatever surface you have. You guys know I like to work on watercolor paper a lot. I'll do a nice watercolor underpainting, then I'll apply some clear liquid gesso, not regular gesso, clear gesso for two reasons. It's clear if you paint over your watercolor painting. You can see through it, you know, to put pastels on top. And clear gesso has a little bit of grit, a little bit of sand in it that acts kind of like this board. It gives you some texture for the pastels to hold on to. And you'll see if you go back and look at the video on making your own pastel boards, you'll see that this particular board, I'm pretty sure, I give you a free link to a recipe card and a free link in that video, in the description of the video, to a guide, a cutting guide, for cutting your own boards to get the maximum standard sizes out of one large piece of mat board. So check that video out, but I believe this recipe was using, I believe I toned the board first. I might have added acrylic paint. I think I did. I think I added acrylic paint to the clear gesso and some golden fine pumice gel. You could use just clear gesso if you want. So instead of trying to, you know, give that all of that information here, check out that video, get the free recipe card, and maybe play around with that yourself. But once again, you can use whatever you have. You may have a already prepared pastel surface. You can do this on other mediums too. I mean these, the neat thing about pastel painting is even though the consistency and the the make of the medium is different, actually the concepts are very much the same as acrylic painting, oil painting, and really pretty much like wash painting. The mediums are opaque. The only different one that I work with a lot is watercolor. It's a little backwards. You don't put your darkest layers down first with watercolor. You usually preserve the light. You keep it light and work to dark. So definitely try, I mean if you wanted to do this in acrylic, the same things apply. And now the water in the background, in the reference image, it's pretty green, right? But I don't know for some reason I thought this blue background, I wanted to keep it peeking through. I wanted the water to appear blue. So I'm going, now I'm adding a cooler green. Okay it's not as warm as the green I put down before and you'll see me blending it, but I like this aqua. This is back to what I was saying here and in the Make Your Own Boards video is one of the common questions I get is how do you know if you're going to start a pastel painting? You know I don't like to work on white surfaces. Often I'll just tone the board or I'll do a you know a general underpainting. And the question I get is how do you know what color to tone the board based on your reference image? And sometimes as in this example, making your own boards, you let the color of the board inspire the choice of your reference image rather than vice versa. So that's what I love about making these boards. I've got one that is a brilliant red, like a crimson red. I made one that's a lime green or a couple. I made one that was purple and then I made quite a few of them. That's my favorite color which is a golden color. Again, check out that video to see. But now you can see how I used even my finger to kind of blend that background but I'm keeping some of that aqua showing through. Now this is sped up only slightly. I ended up spending more time on this little painting than I ever would have planned. I got called away quite a bit during this process. If you're one of my patrons, my patrons, we're kind of like a little family and I get to know you guys a little bit more on my Patreon page and you guys get a little bit more behind-the-scenes information. For me, I share behind-the-scenes stuff in my studio and sometimes I'll share some of the things that are going on in my life which is why sometimes I have to take a little break and handle things. I know you guys know about that. Everybody's got a crazy life, right? But the reason I got pulled away from this painting a lot is because many of you may know my own mother passed away. Gosh, what has it been? Four months ago? It feels crazy that it feels like it was yesterday and it feels like it's forever at the same time. But before that happened, my husband and I were literally had moved my mother-in-law, his mother, into our home because she had terminal cancer. They only gave her two to four months to live. And so after my mom passed away unexpectedly, I wouldn't stay with my dad for three months and, you know, just to help us all through it. He lives about three hours away. And then I finally came back home where my husband had been taking care of my mother-in-law and she has actually done better than many people thought. She's still terminal but they think she may have a little longer and so we've been trying to find her a place. dementia has set in. You know, some of you guys, I used to say, I'm sorry I'm talking about this stuff, I've had a lot of you guys comment and say, I love listening to you talk, so pardon me for sharing this. But again, the reason I got pulled away a lot is we've been trying to find a facility for her that is a good facility. Again, she's got dementia, it's getting to where she doesn't really know who people are anymore and it's getting to be where the level of care is intense. And my husband and I have been handling that along with hospice. But it's been hard. Anybody been in that situation before? It's emotionally, physically, and spiritually a lot of heartache with all of that. So anyway, so we have finally found her a good place. I think it'll be great for her, just the social element involved. She's very social and very sweet. So that has been a lot going on in our lives. So we actually are going to be leaving to go to Mississippi fairly soon and I wanted to get this video processed and out so you guys could enjoy it and maybe paint from it yourselves. If you're a patron of mine, you know if you create from this video, we have a homework album and you share it in the album and I get to see your work. We have lots of ways you can share as a patron of mine. So this will be my last video upload for until I can get back, get all that handled and get back. So and you guys are so awesome. Many of you guys, I know you're praying people. I so appreciate your prayers. I pray for my patrons and we, you know, we all have times in our lives where we need support and love. All right, so comment if that was TMI, too much information. But I wanted to let you know a little bit about what's going on behind the scenes in Monet Cafe. Now I felt I, I was trying to get these shadows. You notice that main elephant ear in the center. It had a lot of dark values and also dark values create contrast, which will help it be a focal point. But I felt like I fiddled around a little too much on that lily pad and I end up softening and and re-establishing and softening those edges. So that that became something I worked a little bit too much on. Just so you know, so you guys won't do that. And once again, this background I'm working on here, I'm getting in the general shapes, but you'll see me later. Soften the whole thing. You see right now how it's kind of confusing that main lily pad and flower. There's too much going on. I just had a lesson on this in my Patreon page. We also have something usually once a month that I call critique my painting please. And it's an opportunity for my patrons to submit one piece of their artwork. It doesn't even have to be from one of my tutorials into our critique my painting album. And it's an opportunity for them to have a chance for me to give some constructive feedback on their artwork. It is truly a Patreon favorite and I just had one. And I was talking about keeping your level of information to a minimum in a painting or at least giving it a strategy to where other elements that are not the focal point are more subdued. They're not getting as much attention. So that's what I did myself in this painting is realized I had a little bit too much going on. So now I'm giving a little purple to create some shadows in this. And you know, I am not talking on this a little bit more than I thought I would. I hope it's helpful. But I think now I'm going to add that lovely music that was at the beginning. I don't know. I felt a I don't know. I'm like an Asian influence on this with the subject matter for some reason. I love that type of music. Whatever the instruments are in some of the Asian types of music. And I just love the Asian culture. I really do. It just seems so peaceful and wonderful. So anyway, I'll add a little bit of music here. I don't think I have enough of that one song. So I may add a few more songs you guys enjoy to the end. You know, I'll be back and I hope you guys have learned thus far. All right, I'll be back soon. This is the point where I mentioned earlier. I realized that one little pad behind it. I realized I just wanted more water showing. So I don't know how I've held this paint on my arm. But again, the strategy I just turned it sideways. You used my stiff bristle brush to kind of brush off a lot of the pastel. And what that does in essence is it kind of regains some of the texture to be able to add more pastel. So you see it's still very textural here. And I'm covering up that other lily pad slash elephony or whatever it is. And now I'm using my little piece of pipe foam insulation. If you pull down when you're creating the concept of water, it really makes it feel reflective and flat. You would think that you brush across it, but really we save that horizontal stroke for adding a highlight or a flatness to the water. So I continue to work on the water a bit. And again, I didn't want to get the water too smooth because I really liked the texture. You know, I don't know how you guys feel about that. But sometimes I just think it's kind of fun and expressive. So anyway, you can see too I added sort of some of the little water in the actual little what I turned into lily pads. And I thought it was fun. Here's a little frame. It's only a five by seven painting. I love these little frames from Ikea. So I hope you enjoyed that. And again, I hope you'll subscribe if you haven't and become a patron if you'd like to support this channel. And God bless you all. As always, happy painting.