 Welcome to Monet Café. I'm artist Susan Jenkins and I'm calling this painting Gentle Breezes. Now we'll be painting with a bit of a limited palette today using a set of pastels. Well actually two. They're by the Paul Rubens Company and this is the 36th set and they also have a 40 set. Now listen to my message for a chance to win the 36th set of Paul Rubens Pastels. Hello friends, subscribers, and newcomers to Monet Café. Well I'm not only excited about this tutorial bringing you an art lesson, but also about an amazing giveaway for the very soft pastels that I used in this lesson. It's the Paul Rubens Soft Pastel set of 36 pastels. Now I not only love these pastels for their quality, but they're quite affordable. So thank you Paul Rubens for agreeing to this giveaway. So watch the tutorial. I'm going to give you the basic rules, but you can find everything in the description of this video. It's pretty simple. You do have to be a subscriber of Monet Café. So click that subscribe button. Also click the link. It's to my Instagram page in the description of this video. You'll have to follow me my Instagram page at Susan Jenkins Artist. Follow Paul Rubens Art, their Instagram page as well. And leave a comment in the comment section of that post, that Instagram real post. And then I'll be having the drawing and will announce the winner on August 9th. Tuesday, August 9th. So be sure you do that and you can share this. Share the link with anyone who might want to be entered into the contest. Now it does have to be US only. Paul Rubens is only shipping to US. So get excited. Let's watch this lesson. Check out all the rules in the description and at the end of the video. Alright guys, let's get started. It should be fun. So there you have it. And like I said, subscribe to this channel to get more of these free videos and to be entered into the contest along with all the other rules. Also, if you would like to become a patron of mine, it's only $5 a month on my Patreon page. And you not only support this channel, but you get extra content and you become part of my beautiful Patreon family. Well, here they are. This is the 36th set of Paul Rubens soft pastels. I'm going to be talking about these pastels as I paint. Like I said, I love them. The packaging, it's already dirty here. I had fiddled with it with my hands with pastels all over them. But their packaging is always great, very secure for shipping. And look at that. They even have a couple of purples. One real light lavender and then that other purple there. I loved the vibrancy of these colors and there's the purple right there. And I did what's called the finger test. You can pretty quickly see the quality of soft pastels by doing this. This means it has a lot of pigment if a lot of color comes off on your finger. Now this is the 40th set. I got this set first. I've actually already done a tutorial using this set and I do use a few of these for this particular pastel painting tutorial. I'll have links to both of these sets in the description of this video if you just have to buy them right now. Now, I wanted to show you real quick one of the other products they sent me. It's called the Paul Rubens sketchbook. I love the sketchbook and I'm going to be sharing more about this in future videos. The surface I'll be using is one that I love. It's called Luxe Archival. It's a sanded pastel paper and I love the fact that it is water friendly. It's also pretty resistant to buckling which I love. Now it is a sanded surface so can you hear that nice sanded surface? It allows for a lot of layering. Lately I've been attaching my surfaces to a piece of black foam core board using some black artist tape. And the reference image is one of my own of some beautiful flowers. I don't think they're actually Queen Anne's lace. Someone told me this is more of a weed variety of them but they sure look like it to me and I just loved this reference image. If you're a patron of mine you will get a downloadable image in your Patreon post. Now I'm just using a piece of vine charcoal. The sketch is going to be super simple with this. It's just a few of the flowers that I feel is where the energy and the focal point needs to be. So it's just like a little reminder as I start to paint. And I've sped this up only slightly for this tutorial. You should be able to totally follow what I'm doing here. Now you can see somewhat most of the pastels that I'll be using of the two Paul Rubin sets. I put down one of the blues and now I'm looking for a little bit more of a turquoise color. And that's because the sky typically is more of a blue in the upper heavens, a cool blue. And then it goes gradually to a warm blue as you get down towards the horizon. That's because the sun is or it's light is closer to the horizon. So pay attention to that. Next time you're looking at a sky like on a bright sunny day, you'll see if you look straight up, the heavens are going to be a deep blue, kind of cool, like up in space. And then they get warmer gradually as you go down to the horizon line. Now here is where I am. I'm using my artistic license to make kind of like an imaginary distant tree bank. Now they're going to be far away, so I just used a really nice blue they have in this set. And you can see how I'm switching back and forth with these two sets. I really like this dark. The set has some nice darks in it as well. I really like this dark deep, almost like aquamarine deep blue, blue-green. Now I'm actually using the black. I had a question recently from someone who can't get, one of the dark colors I talk about a lot is the Terry Ludwig eggplant color. It's a dark, dark purple. It almost looks black. And she said, I'm frustrated I can't get this dark color. I'm just going to use my dark blue. And you can use black. You can literally just layer some other colors on top of it to give it a little more life. And if you're limited, you can definitely do that. So I wanted to mention too, notice how I'm just putting in little, blocking in of color. I'm not trying to really cover up all of the surface yet. I'm getting in my big shapes and my basic values and basic colors for the base of this painting. Think of it as when you're painting, you're working from the ground up. You're working from the one layer that is just going to be your general values and colors. And you're going to be layering the other final touches and final colors on top. So once you kind of grasp the whole layering concept of soft pastels, it's going to change your painting world. We're not having to paint all of those greens just yet. We're getting in our values first. That just means the darks and the lights. It looks like a mess at first, right? Now, I could just use water for this. I'm going to be doing water on this because this Luxe archival is water friendly. But I have been loving the airbrush medium made by Golden. And let me tell you why. I feel that it turns the pastel more into a paint that you can just, it just flows around. It also seems to make the pastels richer in color than just water. Or sometimes you see me using alcohol, like drugstore alcohol. So I do use both water and alcohol still to blend pastels or liquefy. I like to call it in this way. But there's something about this airbrush medium that just has a bit more punch to the color and it just flows so nicely. So you can see I'm just kind of working around some of the flower shapes. Once I get this blue sky background in, I'm going to be adding some of the clouds and it doesn't even matter if you cover up your flower shape drawings. Again, it was just kind of a guideline. Now that lighter gray area I put down because that was where there was a cloud that's kind of a blue gray, not quite white. So once I get the sky in, then I start working on the darker values. I wanted to get those light ones in first. I didn't want to have to go wash my brush if I had started using the airbrush medium on the dark values first. You don't want to really contaminate the dark into the light. And now, because I want these grasses to be loose and reaching upward, oh heavens, why did I turn it upside down? Well, gravity and just the whole process of adding these strokes, if it's a little drippy, it's going to drip down, which when you turn it back over, it's reaching upward. So it's just kind of a technique I've been doing recently where I flip things upside down often when I'm doing an underpainting for trees or for grasses. So this looks like a mess, right? And it's okay. Embrace that. Your painting is going to go through an adolescent stage of just getting in, like I said, blocking in the big shapes, the values, and just some basic colors. And so now is where the fun begins. Now I had this idea of, I imagined that there was some sunlight on some of those clouds that are down at the horizon. There were some little clouds peeking up. And so this is a little too yellow, but I know that I can layer with soft pastel. So I just wanted a hint of that yellow, and I can layer some of this lighter value on top of it, and it just gives a little feeling of warmth. Now I'm getting in some of these things early on, because I know that I'm going to be adding grasses and flowers, and I didn't want to have to try to paint the grasses and flowers first, and then carve in all of that sky clouds later in between all the little blades of grass. Sometimes I like some negative painting of carving things in, but if it's going to be a lot like that, I usually will just get something in as a base first. Now I'm getting in a little bit more of this pretty blue, like I said, a cooler blue in the upper heavens, and not getting fussy yet about filling in all of the spaces. I'm going to do a little blending trick in a minute, you'll see. I'm getting a warmer blue to some of it, just toning it down a bit, and now I'm gradually getting lighter values as I move down to the horizon line. The sky will be darker in the upper heavens, gradually get lighter down towards the horizon line, and so again, I'm not getting too fussy about the flowers or the clouds because I'm going to come back in and add those. You can see I'm getting a little warmer values, I mean with my colors, warmer would be more like a teal or turquoise. Now I'm just getting in a few more of the values for the clouds. You can see the larger cloud in the upper right, it has a little bit more, probably some rain in it, that's the darker areas, and then there's just a few other wispy little clouds coming off from it, receding into the distance, so I'm just getting in a hint of all of that, and I'll be adding the flowers again, believe it or not. I can still kind of see my marks, but it doesn't matter if you cover them up a bit. And I wanted to talk a little bit more and watch me develop these clouds, but as I'm painting, I wanted to talk about these sets a little bit more. I really love the 36 set for the vibrant, bright color. I mean look at some of those pinks and those reds, and it has more greens in it. When I did my review on the 40 set, if you want to go find that video that I did, it was a field deep at sunset. I saw it had some nice warm tones in it, and I noticed that it didn't have many greens. It has some nice, or a couple of nice neutral greens, you kind of see at the top to the left there, and really just some nice colors, but it didn't have a lot of your regular greens you would think of for grass. Now this particular 36 set has a few greens. You can see the brighter greens at the top of the set there, and there's another green. My arm just moved out of the way towards the bottom right of that lower set. That's a nice grassy green. So I did find, too, that they compliment each other well. I didn't find any duplicates. Okay, now let me mention this. I'm using some packing peanuts. These are literally what people use to protect their items when they're shipping them. And I had a shipment of something months ago, and I was like, oh, yay, packing peanuts. These are great for blending. So I find these work good on really sanded surfaces, like this Lux Archival, whereas if I'm working on something like pastel matte or even watercolor paper, I can even use a tissue or a paper towel. But a tissue or a paper towel on this gritty sanded surface is going to just tear up on you, so I don't advise that. Now, can you see how that just blended that sky so nicely? Now, I'm using the neutrals from the 40s set. It's kind of a purpley neutral. I really like this color. It's kind of in between a brownish purple. Now, why would I be using such a dark value here on top of this sky? In our brains, we see these white flowers and we just go for the white when we're first beginning to paint. But because the sun is behind these flowers, you're going to get some shadow on the viewer side of the flowers. Also, we need something of contrast, something of a dark value to layer the lighter colors on top of, or they're just not going to show up. So these flowers reaching up into the heavens, and keep a light touch with this, by the way, because you are going to be layering some other colors on top. And we're just creating little shapes. Keep them gestural and lyrical in their movement. But you will notice later, I'll add more of the greens and a little bit lighter values on top of these flowers that are reaching up towards the sky. So just get in a few of your flower shapes, make sure they have various sizes. I mean, you can use the reference photo, of course, as a guide, but sometimes I'll change that up a bit. And make sure they're turning in different directions within reason. You don't want to flip them all over the place. Keep it consistent with the feel of the motion and the focal point. So for the next few minutes, you'll see me still kind of developing a little bit of this tree line in the back. It's just a suggestion. It's not like I'm trying to draw or paint trees individually or anything. It just gives the viewer a feeling of depth to the painting. It gives levels. I love to have reference images or create my own paintings to use my artistic license, as I say, to feel like there's different levels or a feeling of distance in the painting. And by adding this Bank of Trees, I felt like it did that. It wasn't just a big old section of grass and a sky, kind of like you see in the reference image. But again, I'm going to continue to develop the sky a little bit. I know that when I go to add the flowers I don't want to have to go back and fiddle a whole lot with adding the clouds between the flowers. So this was kind of an easier way for me to do this. And I'm keeping the clouds pretty similar to what I saw in the reference image, because I did like how they were flowing. To me, the focal energy was the flowers, of course, reaching up. And there's a few of them looking like they're celebrating or praising the Lord way up above the horizon line. And then the clouds just pulling the viewer's eye back deeper into the painting. So this was one of those photos where I got down really low on the ground. And by the way, a trick for that, if you're using a cell phone turn your camera to where the lens is on the ground. You know, a lot of times we'll hold our camera upright and we'll get down low on the ground and take a picture. Well, usually the lens is at the top of the camera. So if you flip it upside down, you're getting an even lower view and you get that feeling of really deep grasses looking up to the sky. That's just something I experimented with a while ago and was like, oh yeah, this is a better way to do it. I'm adding a little bit more of darks to the base. Now you look at the flowers in the reference image. Can you see how dark they are against the sky? Again, there is some green there. But down towards the point of the flower where it meets the stem, there's a little area that's a little darker. So just grabbing that pretty dark bluish turquoise color that's in the 40 set. And by the way, these pastels, if I had to say somebody asked me this question, if I had to say which brand they're similar to, I would say Sennelier. They're almost to me. I mean, they're so darn close to Sennelier. They feel like it. They apply like it, which is one of my favorite brands anyway. I love the size of these pastels too. They don't have full sticks or half sticks. This is just the size of the stick. So I love that. I love that. I don't have to peel off any labels. So really, I'm a big fan of these pastels. But again, I love the fact that they are affordable. Beginners can afford these sets. They're less than $50 each. And now I'm giving a little bit of that pretty lavender to those clouds. You see how that just gave a little bit of warmth and color interest to the clouds? Lavender is a great way to add some grays that have a little bit of color, a neutral color. You know, I just added it to some of the grays that were already there. And now I'm getting pretty done with the sky. A few more little areas where I want to soften some of the edges or give a little bit more color. And the painting, by the way, I've sped this up slightly. But I think it took just a little over an hour. And in comparison to everything else in the painting, I think I did spend a decent amount of time getting the sky right again, because I didn't want to have to go back and develop it after I was ready to start having fun with the flowers. So once I got the sky done and those general shapes of the flowers in, then it's time to have some fun adding some of those flower colors and those lively grasses. I've been keeping the footage zoomed out a bit so you could somewhat see the color choices I'm making, grabbing from the sets of pastels. But I'm going to zoom in a little bit right now so you can watch me develop these flowers. And this is one of the colors from the 40 set that at first glance, you wouldn't think of it as a green, but it actually is a kind of a nice neutral green. You see how it feels a little green as you apply it? And it was just such a pretty color with some of that turquoise dark blue. And I'm just lightly glazing a little bit over the darker values. You're going to see that layer of value changes in the flowers that start to really give them shape and depth. Once again I am trying to keep them full of gesture and movement and life. I don't want flowers that feel stiff or heavy. So often all you need is a little quick gestural stroke and then just let it be because if you fuss around with it too much before you know it your elements that you wanted to have life and movement are going to start feeling very heavy. So this is something that's been a constant goal of mine. I still don't think I have it totally where I want it to be, but definitely been getting better at that because I have a purposeful intention to get better at that. Now I'm adding a few little hints. These are going to be flowers that are far away. Now because they're far away, they're going to be a little lighter in value. Values will increase in the distance. It gets lighter. So I didn't use those dark colors or that dark turquoisey color for the distant flowers. Just a little bit of that pretty neutral greenish brown. This is a really pretty color. I love this color. It's from the 40 set. It's a neutral purpley mauve. Oh it's just so pretty. And at this point I'm just kind of playing with color having fun. These two sets work so well together. I think the top set has lots of nice neutrals in it. Of course it has some brights. It has some beautiful reds in it. Cool reds and warm reds. Some pretty golden colors. A nice coral color and a coral pink in that set. So really some fun colors in that set as well. But I think they work well together because the lower set, the 36 set has so many nice brights in it. So you can definitely for under $100 if you got both of these sets I'm hesitant of saying prices because you know prices change on Amazon. And this is the place the only place I've found them. Now thank you Paul Rubens. They provided the sets for me so that I could do these demos. But they're on Amazon. And if you enter the contest to get the 36 set, great. But if you can't wait, you can go ahead and buy it for like around $40. So pretty awesome price comparatively to some of the other nicer pastels. I mean you'd spend $100 each a set on these easily for some of the other brands that I won't mention their names. So I think it's pretty obvious. I'm a big fan of these pastels. And I would say one of the big reasons is because I absolutely love it when I can offer affordable quality products to beginners or people who may have even been painting a while but you just don't have the budget. And I think that's my heart because that's me. And that's definitely where I was. You know now I'm blessed to be able to have a channel and sometimes get products to do demos and things like that. But these products are expensive so it is great when I can say hey guys you can really start painting now with some quality pastels and not spend an arm and a leg on it. So you won't have to starve to be able to buy some quality soft pastels. Some of us might do that. Okay now here's that beautiful purple. Yay I was so glad there was a pretty purple in the 36 set. I've mentioned this in other videos where I demo some sets of pastels. Purple is a rare color in nature but it's a rare color in pastel sets as well. Often they are lacking good purples. It's one of my favorite colors. By the way my favorite color. But it's one of my favorite colors to add into shadows especially when it's kind of a nice neutral purple. So I thought that added some life to the painting in the reference image again if you're a patron of mine you'll get the actual reference image. You can zoom into it and see what I'm talking about. There were some brilliant blue ish flowers and often when I create those pretty royal blue flowers I add a bit of purple as well. So I think I do that a little bit at the end. And now is when it starts to get really fun. I've gotten in most of the general positioning of the flowers. I get to start adding some of the grasses, some other colors and some interesting textures. And now you'll be able to see how even though I used black it's the black from the 36 set. That's the only dark in the 36 set by the way. It's a black. I mean I know color is relative but it looks pretty much like black. There are some darks you can see in the 40 set up there. One of them is more of a bluish black and I think one is more of a brownish black. So still a couple of nice darks in the 40 set as well. But you'll be able to see how even though I used black for the basic grass value as I start adding these other colors on top it still really starts to come to life with color. So don't worry. Whomever that person was who can't get the Terry Ludwig eggplant color I think it's called V100. It is a great color. Don't worry you can use black and other dark colors and just layer some pretty colors on top. You can see here now where I'm adding it's a pretty kind of a brownish color. And often even though I love really pretty vibrant colors sometimes I'm really drawn to images that have just a really neutral dulled out color palette and you just splash a few other colors in there. I love that look. And by the way next month well it is next month now by the time I post this video the month of August where you're seeing this we're going to focus in my Patreon group and on the Monet Cafe Art Group on Facebook on neutrals a neutral palette and the power of a neutral palette. We've talked about this a little before but I don't think I've ever devoted a whole month to it. So and by the way guys I learn from while I'm providing these lessons because trust me I researched so much stuff before I give it to you guys and so I always say I started Monet Cafe when I started learning a few things I wanted to share it and I just always said I'm learning and sharing it and bringing you guys along for the ride so I'm always appreciative to those of you who are understanding that I am a self-taught artist only learning pastel painting from the internet so I'm just like a lot of you guys I haven't had any formal training in pastel I had one in person workshop that was awesome but other than that you know just a life that hasn't allowed me to do a lot of that so I know a lot of you can relate to that look at some of these pretty tealish colors that I'm sneaking in here and the colors are really I was really happy with that kind of neutrally browns almost like a topi color in some of the flowers and then gradually I'll start to add some life with some greens coming along I'm just doing a little more blending with my little packing peanut they're called and the sky still looks nice and loose and I'm zooming in again here for you to see me using that pretty green that's in the that one I think was too light it's the other green that's in the 36 set and this is where I start adding some of my pretty green colors to this and bringing it to life just a little bit I don't want to get those flowers that are contrasted against the sky too awfully light I noticed that the particular flowers they had a few of them up top they weren't quite open yet this type of flowers they have all these little long filaments or they almost look like spider legs where they are reaching up and curling in before the flower actually opens and they have a lot of little curly areas on there so I was having fun just trying to suggest some of those shapes and textures I used a few of the greens that neutral green I just had and this brighter green from the 36 set I was using before to also just suggest some of the flowers that were deeper within the grasses because when you're especially when you're down at a level like this taking a photo or just this vantage point many of the flowers they're not floating on top they're buried deep within the grasses and hidden behind certain blades of grass here's where I'm using one of the vibrant blues is this one from this blue might be from the 40 set actually I wish I could have zoomed out further to show you both of the sets in full but then the painting would have been just too far away for you to even see what I'm doing see now how I'm adding a little bit of purple to those little blue flowers there just a little bit to give it a little life and color interest let's see where I put that one blue when I put it back up maybe I'll be able to tell where I put it yep it was back up in the 40 set so that's a nice blue really pretty for some I love painting blue flowers and I would definitely use that color for some of the blue flowers I love to create alright a few more these are little little tidbits of things often I'll just look for a shape of some of the grasses or some sort of little weed that's growing and I'll just incorporate that little shape in a few areas of interest now this is that pretty light green from the 36 set and it added some contrast with the flowers kind of in in front of those background trees now I'm using this really pretty neutral pale blue it's like a gray blue and I noticed that the flowers in this image our brain says they're white Queen Anne's lace but they weren't really all that dark in this particular image again I was on the shadow side of the flowers the sun was shining behind them in the instance where I used anything other than the Paul Rubin's two sets of pastels it's a Prismacolor new pastel these are long rectangular sticks of pastel that are harder and they're great for making stems and grasses so I just used it to give some suggestion to stems also I noticed some little interesting textures of weedy type of grasses growing up I gave them a few interesting shapes keep your focal point in mind when you're doing this don't add things that will compete with your focal energy for me that energy was these flowers just reaching up into the sky like they're saying praise the lord so everything else is just like a supporting character I've only got about three minutes to go in this tutorial so I'm zooming in here so you can see a little better I'm adding some music for your enjoyment but be sure to listen to the end I'm going to go over those rules again to win this set the 36th set of the Paul Rubin soft pastels by the way of course if you're seeing this video after the first week of August 2022 obviously the contest is over so this is just for when this video first airs alright guys enjoy the music I'll be back in just a few minutes there was a really pretty pink in the 36th set and often I like to add just a pop of interesting color at the end so here is the final really soft and lyrical and also too I'm going to give you a quick recap of the contest rules if you're watching this video during the contest period as a recap here is how to enter to win the 36th set of Paul Rubin soft pastels of course subscribe to this YouTube channel that's easy just click the subscribe button click the Instagram link that's in the description of this video yes that does mean that it's an Instagram account comment on the Instagram post that it will lead you to that describes the contest just say hey I want to win whatever you want to say and be sure to follow my Instagram page at Susan Jenkins artist also follow Paul Rubin's art on Instagram that's it and the winner will be announced on August 9th 2022 it is us only alright guys good luck happy painting God bless and I hope you learned a lot