 Welcome to Monet Café. I'm artist Susan Jenkins and I'm super excited about this video. I got a great request on the effects of an underpainting. How it affects the final painting, by the way, lots, almost all real-time footage in this tutorial with lots of instruction. I think you're going to find it very helpful. Hello and welcome to Monet Café. I'm artist Susan Jenkins and I'm going to be responding to a request from one of our subscribers on the YouTube channel about how does the background color of a paper affect the final painting. I thought that was a great question. I've talked a lot about underpaintings and how to tone your paper but I thought it would be really neat to reveal how the color of the paper can make a difference. And I'd like to share a lot of things about that in this video. But what I'm going to be using is you can buy papers that already are toned or you can tone them yourself. And I'm going to be using these acrylic inks to tone two pieces of UART paper, exact same sizes. And this is just kind of a neat and fast easy way to tone the paper. But you could use other things that I'll talk about if you don't have these acrylic inks. So join me in this lesson where I will describe and demonstrate how the color of the paper or the underpainting can affect the final painting and your own mood. Alright, so we're going to have fun with this. Let's get started. Okay, I wanted to show you my setup. I will be zooming in later, but I wanted you to see my supplies and how I'm going to approach this again. I'll be using the acrylic inks to tone two separate pieces of UART paper that are. It's a 400 grit UART paper and they're both 9 by 12. And I have a beautiful reference image that I took the other day, you know, right now at the timing of this video, I, you know, it may be watched later than what's going on in our world events, but currently it's when we're dealing with the coronavirus and so many people are limited with the things that they can do. But my husband and I realized that he loves to go mountain biking. Yes, you can mountain bike in Florida. It sounds crazy, but they took this phosphate mine, an old phosphate mine and made these awesome mountain biking trails. So that was still open. It's one of the only things around here. So we went and of course, I looked at all the beautiful scenery and I took this lovely photo of some flowers that just looked like this pretty trail and it looks so hopeful. So I decided to paint it and that video is right before this video of that particular painting. And so when I finished that painting, I realized, you know what? This is a good opportunity. I kind of wanted to paint it again. Sometimes if you paint the same thing multiple times, you learn things and you loosen up more. So because I want to do it again, I thought this is a perfect opportunity for me to do this demonstration where I tone two different pieces of paper and use the same pastels that I used for the first painting. So I literally still have my pastels out here that I use for the first painting. Please go back and see that video if you want a little bit more detail into what I used. But basically I have some assortments here and I have some Diane Townsend pastels but I hadn't even used yet. And so that was a really, really fun video. I really love these. So I will be toning one paper with this Dayler Rowney. Let me see the name of this color again. I love this golden color. It is called Indian Yellow and it's just that beautiful warm glow underneath the painting. The other one is called Fluorescent Pink. Now I was actually going to do a gold and like a beautiful turquoise that I have. But I realized that would affect my color choices more. I wanted to go with two that were at least warm. If I had done a turquoise, I would have had to choose a little bit different color palette than what I have here. So I'm going to demonstrate two warm, warm on the color wheel under paintings and see how the same pastels affect the final painting. And like I said, even affect the mood of the artist. I find sometimes I've painted some things that were just like lime green and all of a sudden it made me feel fresh and spring like. And so there is no hard fast rule as to what color and under painting has to be. But as you grow as an artist, you learn to get creative play around experiment. Definitely experiment and try to do it with pieces that aren't so serious. You know, cut you up some smaller pieces. And but anyway, I encourage you to try this and I'm excited to see. I've never done two at the same time. I do have an idea. I'm a bit ambidextrous because I'm left-handed and most left-handed people are in a right-handed world. So one day I want to do a video where I paint with both hands. I don't even know if I can do that. Doesn't that sound fun? All right. So let's get started. I'll go over all of the information about how I'm approaching this. Here we go. Oh, and I always forget to share because sometimes I forget to do it myself to even put my apron on that we have a Monet Cafe apron. It is on a site called Zazzle Z A Z Z L E and I can put the link in the description section of this video. But if you go on Zazzle.com and you type in Monet Cafe, there's a coffee mug and there's the apron, but I barely make anything from the sale of these. So I literally just share it because it's a great apron. It's adjustable. It's got a little thing. It's got the logo. This one has one of my paintings on it, but it has the regular Monet Cafe logo. It's got pockets, three pockets, and it is just really, really well made. It washes well and the texture clothes. I always forget to put it on. So I'm trying to get better at that. Also I have on, I don't mean to be like the model for the products, but I have the Monet Cafe bracelet on. There's three styles. It's the designer artist series bracelet. It's got the little Monet Cafe logo and a charm and they're just so cute and dangly and make you feel artistic. And I just love thinking that others in the on the channel or subscribers or members are where I'll wearing them together. It kind of connects us together. So anyway, those links will be in the description section. Okay, it's time to get started for real now. Okay, so I'm going to try to do this and keep my big head out of the way. Sometimes it's just a challenge to set things up, not just to do it, but to film yourself doing it. So sometimes it gets crazy doing everything at once. I did have my UART paper was a little bit warped. It curls up in humidity and I'm in Florida. I had to refer back to my own video. I have a video on it's like help my UART paper worked and it gives a little technique of how you can flatten it out with your blow dryer and just a damp sponge. So I think I've got it down. I really have a hard time when it curls on the edges. So I've got it taped down with some artist tape. I do love my artist tape dispenser. I share it a lot in my videos across the studio. So I won't grab it now. But what I'm going to do, I have this little, this little tray that, you know, I use for putting paints in and in the tray in one of the sections. I have some alcohol in it and you'll see how I use that just whatever, whatever like drugstore alcohol that you have, it doesn't really matter the percentage alcohol just makes things dry faster. The reason I have it, you can either use water or alcohol for this. And the reason I use it is sometimes I don't want, I want it a little diluted. I don't want this, that bold and it gives me the flexibility. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to put a little of the pink. I'm going to move my, well, I don't think it'll get in my pastel. So this is just my little handy dandy homemade, very easy way to catch your pastels. It's just aluminum foil and I just find it works real great. After a while, it fills up. You can save your pastel dust if you want. Or you can just throw it all away and start over. It's kind of an inexpensive way. Make sure you shake these really good because they do settle. Okay. So this is the Daylor Rowney fluorescent pink. And I'm just going to put a little bit. Let's just start one at a time before I put both of them in here. It should only take for this is a 9 by 12. You are a paper each one of them. So I did like a drop and a half. And now what I'm going to do, I'm going to take another one of these little areas. I'm kind of cleaning it out with my paper towel and I'm going to kind of mix it with some alcohol. So let me get some of the pink. I could just put it. You know what? I'll just do that. I'm going to put it straight on here and then add alcohol. How about that? Now I'm dipping it in the alcohol and you can see how we're in that beautiful. I just love these acrylic eggs. They're so fun. I might need a little bit more than the dropper and a half. Yeah, I think I will because I don't want to dilute it too awfully much. Yeah, let me get a little bit more of that. So it looks like I would probably need more like maybe like a total of three droppers just to be safe. So let me add another. I don't think I had a full dropper the first time. Now I definitely have plenty and don't worry about the drips and all of that. Look at that. Oh my gosh, it's gorgeous. I love the drips. I think they're just gorgeous. You could actually I have done an underpainting not just toning it. This is basically just toning it, but I've done an underpainting with different colors of acrylic inks and and that's really fun. The neat thing about oops, I got pastel on it. The neat thing about doing an underpainting with acrylic inks is that it doesn't take up any of the tooth of the of the sanded paper. So you're not decreasing the amount of layering potential that you have now say I didn't have to add actually as much alcohol as I thought. Again, I've wanted some of those drips and I wanted it to be flowy and neat and that's just kind of cool looking sometimes a an underpainting with a little more texture or movement in it. It also has an effect of your final painting, but as an example, when I was saying sometimes I do an underpainting with acrylic ink, I could literally let this dry and I have other colors that are darker. I could go in and do my like a value study with the acrylic inks. So so this is probably pretty good to start. I go ahead and get a little more down here and then I'm just going to let that dry. You can you can get a blow dryer and and go ahead and speed up the process if you want, but you don't have to in that a gorgeous color. Okay. Now let's let's go ahead and do this golden color now. I actually love this color as an underpainting. Anyway, it's just a great warm if you do a lot of landscapes that have a lot of green in them. The warmer it's a complimentary color to green and blue really the yellow or the golden colors work really well. All right, so I'm going to pause real quick. I forgot water to rinse my brush out. I'll be right back. All right, we're going to do the same thing with the golden or the Indian yellow acrylic ink and by the way, this is just a cheap brush. I think I got it from Walmart. I kind of like working with cheaper brushes that has more texture. Okay, so here we go. I'm going to put the Indian yellow. Let's do three drops. One, two, three, there we go. And I did shake that one up already pretty good. I've rinsed my brush out with water and now I'm going to grab some of the golden or sorry, Indian yellow. I want to say golden yellow and you just wash it off. This part to me is just fun. Right? Look at that color. Oh my goodness. I love it. It reminds me a bit of now I'm getting some alcohol alcohols here. It reminds me a bit of that alcohol does to that. Hang on a bit of the I call it the Rita Kirkman technique. I didn't do it that time where she creates her own textured surface and she uses this quinacridone gold color and her paintings, all of her paintings just glow. She is actually a member in our Monet cafe group on Facebook and she shares her work on there. I love how that group the Facebook group for Monet cafe. It is a private group. You do have to ask to join but the good thing about that is you don't have to worry about if you're just a budding artist. You don't want the whole world to see your work and you just need some advice. It's a great place to go because artists will help you even you get artists like Rita Kirkman. You've got Bethany Fields is a member in our group. We've got I think Alan Picard. Well, I can't remember if he's a member in our group or not, but some amazing pastel artists. Oh, Jen Evanhouse. I think she's a member in our group. I mean, we're talking about high caliber pastel artist. I mean people that I you know aspire to be like so you get a lot of what I picked up on my brush. You get a lot of people in there that can give you great advice and that's just the beautiful thing about that group. It's so awesome. So anyway, I don't know what again I got on the on the paper here, but I'm sure that'll brush off. Let me put a little bit more of this indian yellow at the bottom and hopefully that'll kind of rectify itself and not create too much texture. But if it does, hey, you just go with it. You know, whatever. Happy accident. Right. Okay. So now we've got two under paintings different color. Both would be considered warmer. What do I mean by that? All right. Sorry for that little break there. I had an Amazon guy come to my door and my dog just barks his little head off again. So we've got anything if you've got landscapes that have blues and greens of blue sky green grasses, you know, that's what a lot of landscapes have the opposite across the color wheel is what's called the compliment. So to this blue green, the compliment would be this red orange and so I've got two colors here. Oh, that's warping a bit again. That are compliments to the greens and the things that are going to be in my image that I'm choosing to paint and use as a reference image. If I had chosen like that turquoisey color for an underpain, this one's a little too dark. If I had chosen something bright, I probably wouldn't have made the same selection of pastels as I would if I had a warm painting. So that's why I went with two of these. So that's actually probably a good point to note is that if I wanted to do something a little bit crazier or interesting in color, I might choose a purple underpainting or a teal underpainting and decide to paint my flowers and my grass a different color. In other words, I wouldn't pick a green, say I painted my underpainting this color or let's just say even a bright green, this color. Man, your grass has nothing to contrast it. So that's why compliments are good. They give a little play interaction of color when you have something different or the compliment underneath. I hope that makes sense. Okay, I'm gonna let these dry and then we're going to get started. One other thing I forgot to share is that if you do not have acrylic inks, find yourself a pastel that is similar in color. These are harder pastels. They're called new pastels by Prismacolor in you pastels. They're good because they don't fill up the tooth as much, but you can do the same thing. You could literally take this pastel just, you know, glaze it over the whole surface, get your brush with alcohol and wash it in. It'll create a nice wash of gold all over and the same thing with whatever pink color. This one's a little dark, but you get the idea. So that way you can use what and if you don't have the harder pastel, you can use a softer pastel. When you brush it in with alcohol, it kind of sets it anyway and you don't lose or lose your layering capability very much. Okay, so now I'm going to get started. All right, so now I'm ready to get started. Here's my reference image and I'm going to try to do kind of the same thing I did with the other painting with the same pastels. So I got, I took this photo, like I said, when I was out on the mountain biking trail and it just looks so hopeful and happy. And so if I remember right, I'm sorry if I'm bouncing the camera around, I had these trees. I thought I liked how they, they looked like they were reaching. I had a little bit of a gap or an opening in here and they were, they just were kind of curving over, which was really kind of neat. It's nice to give your trees like a gestural quality and then there was some sort of a tree back here that had like some different kind of foliage on it. So then I had my little field here and then it kind of had a sweeping motion almost like it was a road here, but I use, I do that more with value than I do with line and drawing a line. So that's kind of the general idea there. So let's do the same thing over here. We've got this tree. We've kind of got it reaching up high. We've got our little break in the, oops, it's a little wider, our little break in here and then we've got our other tree reaching over. I find sometimes the crazier you kind of make these, the more energy and movement and things that they have. So it's kind of, it's kind of fun to just be a little crazy instead of drawing it perfectly is all I'm saying. All right. So we've got our general tree shapes going in and then if I recall, I probably should go back and watch the video. I actually used some of these new pastels for an underpainting. Okay. They were some orange. It I mean some pinks and some kind of different values of pinks and I think I used like this darker color over on the left side. Oh, actually I wanted to draw my flowers in. I drew some flowers and I remember I had one kind of up here kind of high and then I had some more in here got a little smaller. I had one that looked like it was kind of opening. I kind of liked that and then I had a few more down here that were a little bigger and it doesn't matter if all these flowers are perfect. They kind of felt like they were reaching and going back in the distance like that. All right. I can tell my iPad is going to be a little crazy with this. Okay. So let's kind of get these same flower shapes. We've got one here and I have a video on trying to get your flowers random and you have to force yourself to do that. It doesn't happen easily. It's kind of hard. So you want to avoid things being like spaced equally apart and sometimes it's hard to do that. Nature has the best and most beauty. See I made like a pattern right there by just putting that flower there. Nature does this so beautifully and so naturally obviously. Okay. So now I've got those shapes in now. Again, I think I recalled putting in kind of like a darker value here. I wanted to create something for these flowers to bury down into and also in the reference image. I don't know if you can see it from the camera. It was darker here, but then the road gets lighter on this side. So I just kind of and this all doesn't have to be perfect. It's okay. If you go over your flowers, we can reestablish those and I'm dealing with this these curved edges. It won't let my pastel go onto the side. Man, just anybody comment if you're in a northern climate, do you even have to deal with this? I don't even know. All right. So we got this going on and there was even darker up in here behind these flowers. Okay. And then I think I went ahead and put the dark in the trees and then I actually go back and do more dark to a darker value. Usually I break these because they're easier for me to work with, but I don't think I'm going to in this case. It's hard to get it to work for me. You can get them eventually to where they're almost sharp to keep working with like this almost where you have like a pencil point. I am going to resort to breaking it. I'm just breaking it in half. Oh, much easier. I can't believe I hadn't already broken that one actually. Okay. We're going to do the same thing here. I'm going to get this right now. We can already see look at the difference that this makes on this one because the value or the color underneath was a different color. Big trees in here. And again, these are just blobs right now because this is just getting in the color and the value to begin with. We're not worried about any detail. No detail. I should put a little sign on my easel to remind everybody, including myself, no detail. We don't even need to think about detail early on big shapes. Okay. All right. I feel like we've got a little energy now. Why didn't I put any little flowers over here because they're going to be added on top later? All right. So we've got really just the underpainting. I mean, just the sketch underneath and just the one pastel that we've added. Now, I think I recall that I did a lighter pastel or kind of a medium kind of a medium value pastel a little bit in here. And again, I am still working with a warm underpainting. I'm going to add grasses on top of this. They will be added some of these. See this one doesn't even show up that much on here because it's almost it's just a little bit of a hit darker than the value of the underpainting. See it almost you can't even hardly tell the difference, but you can on this one. So there's one example of how it makes a difference. Okay. So let's see now. Did I have I think I did have a lighter one, but I'm because these are already toned with the pink and the warm underpainting and my original one wasn't. I'm not going to add any other lighter value there. I'm going to use my piece of pipe foam insulation. I shared in one video that you can use a chamois cloth for blending little piece of chamois cloth, but it only works for me anyway on the pastel matte paper. Pastel matte doesn't have the grittiness that you start does. So don't use the chamois cloth unless you can use it differently than I did on the you art paper. It doesn't work as good. Okay. So what I'm going to do now is I'm just scrubbing this in actually. Let me find a part of this that's not as dirty. I see I'm getting some of my yeah, that's better. Okay. So I'm blending it in and what this does it just kind of softens it up. It starts filling up some of those blank spaces and it pushes it back further because you're not seeing all that texture so much texture and again don't worry if you cover up some of your flowers. I'm just kind of moving it in and around and about and it's all right. I'm going to use a little bit of that to blend it on over into this trail here. Okay. I think we can already see there's definitely a difference same colors used but definitely a different feel to this. Okay. So let's do the same thing here and this one tree in again. I liked how those trees were kind of all leaning over very gestural and free very free. Okay. Working around my little flowers almost done with that. Now I know these trees are in this reference photo. The darkest thing is this shadow. You can tell the sun looks like it's coming like this way behind like this side of the trees. That's why this is shadow that's why that's all shaded and then it's hitting kind of on these sides of the flowers. You can look at the flower if you could see it's super close there's a shadow on that side. So the sun's got to be coming from this way. All right. So that's now I'm going to work on those darker values like I said there's going to be a shadow underneath this tree. It's almost like it's curved underneath now. I'm going to use let's see. I think I can't remember which one I'm going to go ahead and use this. It's a new pastel and it happens to have the numbers still on it. It's the 305 and it really makes for some nice darks. See I've kind of gotten this one almost like a point because I've used this one as a full stick quite a few times. It'd be good. I'm going to actually hold my reference photo over here and look at it while I do this again. I'm just getting in some dark side here because tall trees anything that's perpendicular to the horizon line is going to be darker. Yeah, I'm not able to get it really good because it is a long stick. Yep. I'm going to break this one too. They're much easier at the same point as the last one. I think. All right. Now while I have it, I know I've got some deeper roots down in here and I'm kind of creating a visual path or trail of sorts that's going to kind of lead the eye back. I don't want to overdo it with this. There's that curled up paper again. Okay, so a little bit of that going on and when I blend it it'll make more sense. Now this is working much better because I have this one already in half and again curled up paper does affect my strokes a lot. This is the one again that has more of that dark down the bottom. I'm sort of doing a little bit more at the base usually down at the roots of the trees is where you get more of the shadow and more of the darker values. Okay, all this I got to get the roots down here again. God and you don't even have to worry about this stage of it being like in the shape of grasses or anything because all those the layering and everything's going to take care of that. See, I'm not even being careful there. All right, so now we're going to get our pipe foam insulation again. I'm going to wipe my hands off home insulation and there's a part what already used it for dark. So I'm going to do that. Yeah, see how that works? It just blends it so nicely. I like that. All right, this is that dark part right down there. I get a lot of people asking questions about the toxicity of pastels. I have never had a problem, but I think you know, there are people who have more sensitivity with their respiratory systems and things like that. So I do think there are people who have issues, but I have never had that issue and you if you do you want to make sure you have a ventilated room and that you can have a fan, maybe actually I'm not sure if the fan would be good. You can have one of those air conditioner kind of things that circulates the air maybe sucks dust into it. I don't know. I haven't done much of that because I haven't had many issues. Give suggestions in the comments though if you have recommendations for other artists who may have issues. Okay, so now why did we put all that dark down? Because we've got to have some value or nothing light is going to show up. The paper was already kind of luminous and you want to make sure you have some darker values for things to play off of. Yay, messy, right? I love how I don't know what artists came up with it, but the term but it's so true. My arms actually getting tired. It's so true that paintings go through what they call the puberty stage. You know when you're a teenager and there's this awkward state man, I had that my whole. Oh my gosh, junior high and high school year. I felt like but um but anyway, it's just that kind of awkward, you know, kind of growing into yourself and things aren't all quite right and that's kind of what happens with your paintings too. All right, we've got our under paintings. We've got our same pastels applied same general idea and now we've got a base to put our other painting too. All right, so speaking about the dust and everything, I'm going to get up and wash my hands real quick and then we'll get started on both of these. Okay, I tried to move my light a little closer so you could see better but unfortunately the way the lighting is in here. You guys can't see how luminous this is. Oh my gosh, it is like brilliant and gorgeous. I love that. So, you know, hopefully you get you have enough to see. Now, I do recall that when I did the other painting, I really oh actually I do need to get a little bit more. This is I don't think it's the egg. It might be the Terry Ludwig egg plant. Unfortunately, it broke. I bought a set of Terry Ludwig darks and um and one of them broke but that's okay because I like to work in these little sections. Anyway, now all I'm doing here is working on the those darkest areas in the trees and the distance that are you know the backside of where the sun is that have more of the shadows on it. Again, I'm working with this curvy you art paper, but I see a few places where there's just a little more shadow to the trees. So I'm kind of accentuating those. It's kind of like, you know, trees have parts that go in and that's where those shadows would be this tree back here because it's getting a little further away. I'm going to kind of lighten it up in value and cool it off. There are some kind of darker shadows. Something's going on back here like a bunch of weeds or something might actually even blend that a little bit more to okay. Let's do the same thing over here. Okay. I think I am actually going to blend some of this into it comes off kind of a lot actually. So yeah, that's funny how that really rubs off but it's still darker. I can still see that it it did come out darker than that new pastel the blue and it's a good thing. I'm not allergic to this stuff or have a problem because it's flying everywhere. All right, let's get this one again. We've got if you squint your eyes and look at your reference photo that's going to help you seeing where the values are darker and lighter and you really want to establish those dark values early on because that's what you're going to layer all your other colors on top of and these areas back here. I haven't done it yet, but now we're going to do the sky because that's where these are the little pieces of openings or whatever where the sky is peeking through now the colors that I used for the sky was a combination of some purples and blues. I think I even later used a little teal somewhere in there. It's much later. It's because I had that bright color but maybe that one I can't remember but it's in this color range for the sky. Now typically seems like it was a lighter purple than that. Yeah, yeah, yeah, this purple not that one. That one's too dark. Typically skies are darker in the heavens and they get lighter at the horizon lines. Not always the case but it's almost always the case. So what I like to do often is go ahead and get my this is a deeper blue. It's not my lightest blue, but I'm just kind of getting some ideas and I don't think I had as much blue there but I'm going to go ahead and do it anyway in this one. My other painting I didn't show much sky in that part. Well, can you see how that blue is behaving differently here than it did on the other one? Now I know I got this. This was the thing that really attracted me about this photo was that little opening right there. So cool. All right, let's get this one over here. Again, I'm putting down the same blue everywhere and then I'll layer over it to create the different values. Now hope I'm not getting my head in the way here. This is not the normal place that I work, but I just felt like sitting down today. A lot going on. I think I need to reestablish a little bit more of that dark in here. All right, so we got to I can see such a difference with the see why I love this color so much. You see how it vibrates with that blue? All right, so that was the blue I used there. So now what I'm going to do I'm going to get this little bit of a lighter blue and I'm just kind of I think I'll turn it sideways a little bit. I'm just kind of blending a little bit here. In with that blue just to create a little bit lighter value that's going to draw the eye back here because of that contrast. I don't think I want as much of it over here, but I'm going to do a little bit of that. Okay, and now let's get it over here and I'm going to try to let some of the this paper color peek through. See the pretty golden colors back there. I always love that. You see some of the paper color. Okay, see how that's just vibrating. Man, that's just so nice. Now here's that purple that I had and I'm just going to add also to let me give another hint. I'm not ready to do the what's called the sky holes. That's what we call it instead of drawing branches for trees or leaves, we negative paint them in being we make the blob and then like say, for example, then we carve in where there might be a space in the tree. Typically when you do sky holes, they're called. It's where the sky is shining through the tree. Typically they're a little shade one hint of a value shade deeper darker than whatever the color of the sky is that you painted the sky. So I would use like this purple as a sky hole rather than that blue or even the light of blue, of course. So and then because it's up in the heavens up here. That's why I'm adding that purple kind of up there. Okay, so we got those in same thing on both sides. I think I got everything in just right there. Okay, so now let's see what did I do next in this? I think what I did next, I got this set of Diane Townsend's I had not you. I think I experimented with one of the greens in here, but now you can see with my last painting I used all of the ones that have the wrappers off. Okay, I usually I've got this new system. I like to keep some of my sets together instead of mixing it in with my regular pastels. And of course you want to keep this one. I would keep this one separate because the shape is so much larger than the other pastels. And I actually really like these. It forces you to work chunky, you know, instead of getting too nitpicky. So so the ones that don't have their wrappers on the other video, I actually showed the numbers like this one, for example, I would hold it up and show what number it was. All right, so I want to use the darkest of the screens and it is this one. I know it's all covered up with pastel right now. I think I am going to have to work with my right hand here. Actually, I think, oh, you know what? It wasn't this one. I saw that right away. It was this deep. It doesn't look like a green, but it's actually a green and it's not as dark as you can see now when I put it on here that it's a green. Now these are they look like cedar trees to me and they have these neat ways that they they grow in these little kind of clumps and they kind of reach up and carve around. So I'm just trying to represent that. I got to cover up that green by just kind of softly blending in here a little bit. Again, curvy paper. And I'm going to go over these with a little bit of light highlights. I might have gotten that a little bit too much on there. So again, we work dark to light with pastel. I wouldn't want to put down my lightest colors of tree branches here or tree leaves tree clumps. I should say we're not drawing leaves or drawing shapes because you don't you don't layer that way with pastels. They work great with watercolor. You work light to dark and with oil paint acrylic paint pastel paint. You typically work dark to light you get your darkest values in first now I'm going to go ahead and get this one tree color in here. Told you I was going to cool it off a bit but I'll do that in a minute. I wanted to go ahead and get that color and there's a little bit of this color up in here. I'm going to make this one not that noticeable. I'm going to make it kind of blurry. All right, let's do the same thing over here. This one just so you know is easier for me to work with being left-handed. This is awkward for me. This one way over here. I have to have a camera over here and it's hard for me to reach over there. So this one might come out better. It's not really fair to this. So I'm keeping my pastel kind of upright and then I'll turn it a little bit to represent those kind of cedar-y the way the branches grow. None of this is very specific. It's all very loose because these trees are not the center of attention with this. It's these flowers. So we're going to keep these guys kind of subdued and dreamy dreamy looking. It's okay if you blend a little bit of the tree over into the sky that works fine too. All right. Now a lot of times when I have a color in my hand, I think where else can I use that? And I might go ahead and put a little bit of this green in between where I see where some of those darks are going to be where the ground gets a little darker. Don't really want to cover all that up because this is a little lighter with where the sun's shining and this I'm not going to blend. Poor paper over there. It doesn't it doesn't get the right strokes because of the curl darn it. Okay. So yeah, let me get this in here. I'm going to add probably some more flowers, but some of these flowers are going to be buried anyway beneath grasses. So I think I have the same thing for all of them. All right. Now let me recall what I did with the ground. I think I went ahead and started adding some of the greens. Yes, I think I did. I think this is the point where I started using kind of this darker green. Now this is what I was saying. This is a cooler green. Okay. As opposed to that green. Why is it cooler? It's closer to the cooler side of the color wheel closer to the blues. This one's closer to the yellows. You see more and more yellow in it. All right. So I'm going to get make sure this one is the yeah. See this one's bolder in color. It's a gorgeous color. Wow. I love these dying towns and they're really fun. All right. So we've got kind of some little bit of shadowy to this road, but I want to kind of keep some of that the pink showing through there. Same thing over here while I'm at it. I noticed I got my tree down a little low so I can just kind of cover it up a little bit with that. I'm not making anything that looks like brasses yet. I'm just making them. I call it scumbling. I mean that's an actual term, but I don't know if that's really exactly what I'm doing here. But okay. I'm cooling this off now. So I was going to cool this tree off a little bit. It's a little further away. Some of that light that's shining on it gives and it'll push it back. It'll make it feel like it's further away when you do that. And let's see this one. This one doesn't have a whole lot of that going on, but maybe just a little bit sun because the sun's coming from here. It's like this one's closer to you. Okay. See, I didn't get these over here like that. Did I? All right. Got a little bit of this in here. That's a little that looks so much lighter to me than that one does. That's interesting. I think I'm going to add a little bit more of that green to this one. I've got to keep on the same, right? So let's see. I can actually look at my painting to see. Yeah. Okay. So now I actually, I do need to add a little bit more of some of this dark over here. I kind of have more over here that's dark than that one. So let me fix that up a little bit. Dang, I'm squinting. All right. Now I think I worked some with this burgundy, but I think, yeah, that was in the center of the flowers. So let's see. Let's see here. I think I did some purple somewhere in here because this is kind of shadowy in some areas, but it's not as shadowy as these flowers here because this is in the shade more. This has a little bit of shadowy depth to some of the grasses way in the distance. Oh yeah. This had a little patch back here that the sun was kind of hitting and I'm putting the purple. I'm going to add some green, but this cool purple is going to push it back a little more. All right. At this point, I think is when I was using some of these different Dian Townsend's to get the greens in the field. Trying to recall. If I put anything else, I think I did. I think I put a little bit more of some of these pale or pink hues underneath here just to give it a little contrast instead of just the gold there because the gold underpainting is a little bit too light. So it means a little bit more dark or the grass to hold onto. I think Karen Margulis calls it dirt and it makes perfect sense. You're putting down a warm dirt color and see how this one doesn't show up nearly as much as this one because the underpainting happens to be pink like this. So that already you can see that does create a different look, right? I think I need a little bit of something richer down in here for the dirt color and here to kind of blend it out a little bit. All right. I think we've got a decent base for our grasses to be on. I'm tempted to blend some of this in. It's a little chunky that that dark that I put in. I think I'm just going to knock it down just a bit so there's not quite so much texture on that in here. Oh, I got this in here and I didn't add that over there. I've got to do that. I'm going to call the way to too many different things I have to do. Okay, so right here is where I added some of this darker green. I believe let's check that color. Yep. So I'm just going to look at my reference photo. It's really kind of darker over in here. So I'm going to add too much of that. Let's get some of these greens out. I really need to add my flowers as soon as I kind of work on this a little bit. All right. Now I'm going to get some of these flowers in and for the flowers I use these Diane Townsend's. I think it's called the mood for Matisse. I looked at these and I really liked them. I thought that would make a nice cityscape. I don't know. They just have looked like like city colors to me. So I got to try to do that eventually. But I think for the flowers, you want to get a base in for your flowers. You would think that you would just do them white, but you have to get some sort of base color in for white to stand up out against. And I think I didn't use this one. I used one a little darker, but I think I like I used this one, I think for the base of the flowers. It was a little too dark. I think so I'm using this one, which is number 140. And let's see how those do. I still want to keep and I think I'm not going to do the daisies in this one. I'm going to do ones that are just a little bit more maybe more poppy ish or queen and lace ish. Oh, yeah, really kind of like that. This is almost like a gray green. Oh, that's a beautiful color. Okay, so I'm just getting in like some flower shapes and I'm trying to do. I talked about in my last video where I'm trying to create a sense of randomness and I call in one of my videos, I call it a forced randomness because we have a tendency in our brains to make things in a pattern. And to divide things more like soldiers in a line and that's not really how nature behaves. So we've got to forcefully create that. So I know this probably doesn't make a lot of sense right now to have this darker color down, but it will make sense later. I hope and I don't have all of my flowers exactly the same, but that's okay. And I kind of like some of that color showing through there and I may actually get this darker one now. I'm going to bury some of these other flowers down here and I kind of like having this little darker color down here for some of these ones that are more in the deeper grasses. Some are higher, some are lower. Still trying to resist creating a pattern here. I may add a little bit of this down. I'm going to make these flowers, maybe like I said a little more poppy-ish where they kind of have a face at the bottom and more wider petals than daisies have. And I'm trying to keep in mind where my light source is kind of coming from this way. So that's why I'm adding the shadows more to the lower side. Eventually we'll brighten those flowers up. I kind of like that. I kind of like those colors. I really like these two colors. They both have a warmth to them. You know, it's always everybody tries to find a nice gray because greys are so enough like to paint your walls and it's hard to find that nice warm gray. And I really like that color. Okay, now let's see. We did our, I probably should stick with the flower colors the same, but I kind of want to do the flowers a little bit more of the background's gold here. Wondering if the golden flowers will show up. I could make them golden with white highlights. See, that's how the background of the paper effects your choices. So I'm thinking I don't really want to do them all just white like the other ones. Oh, but I don't want to be too far away from that. So I'm going to go, you know what I'll do? I'll do like a some reds and some goldens and a little bit of lighter yellowy highlights. Let's try that. Okay, I haven't gotten to use this good red anyway. So I'm going to use the reds. They're going to be kind of like a reddish orangeish color of like a poppy or something. How about that? This is color 49. Man, I'm really loving these Diantowns. Those are very cool. So I think I'll get a little bit more of the flowers in and then I'll start focusing on these grasses a little bit. All right, so before I get that red in, I'm going to get a little bit of these, you work dark to light. So I'm going to get a little bit of these rich colors. I'm already losing a little bit of layering. So I might want to be careful with this. Yeah, I think the Diantowns go on better than the Terry Ludwig's in this case and I'm about to find out. Yeah, because that's not going on really good at all. I might just abandon that effort and scratch that. All right, let's check these out. Yep, I'm losing some layering. I'm going to reestablish and get some more layering when I do a spray some workable fixative. I'm having to press really hard to get any good color down, but I think I am going to still go ahead and try to get kind of like this color here. And this is one I didn't try. It was real close though. These are pretty close in value or in color. This is an 80. Actually, I need to get some dark centers on some of these. All right, I'm going to add a few grasses and then I'm going to spray this with workable fixative because I've lost so much layering. I'm surprised I lost it that quickly. Maybe these Diane Townsend's just fill up a lot of the tooth. All right, so now what I'm going to do is I'm going to use some more of these Diane Townsend greens. Notice we still got not a lot of green in the grasses. So I'm going to get kind of this nice, vibrant green. And I'm going to look at my reference photo. I am going to try to work right handed here. And things typically in the distance, they things grasses and things go more horizontally. Whereas in the when you get closer, they tend to grasses tend to go more vertically up and down. So then gradually they'll start behaving more this way. And I'm going to add some more flowers over in here. I think I need a little bit more richer colors down in here. So let me get a little more grasses that have a little cooler green like they're kind of hidden deep. I still want to let that pink shine through a little bit. Let me go ahead and add some of that over here. Let me do some of these horizontal bands. We'll gradually start getting more grassy. All right, I've moved my camera back, which is my iPhone. This is my camera back and I've covered up my pastels with some paper towels and I've moved my iPad because I don't want to get any of this workable fixative on it. After I spray this, I'm actually going to move my camera, turn it off, move it even further because I really don't want to get this on the little camera lens. But the workable fixative I'm using is one that works great. I've had a challenge with finding fixatives that I like and I saw that Karen Margulis had used this years ago and I really like it Blair very low odor spray fixative. And I don't ever use this at the end of a painting. That's probably one of the most common questions we get as artists, pastel artists. It darkens your painting. You're about to see how that actually happens. So when you're finished with the painting, you don't want to darken it up. That's going to change the whole look of your whole painting. So what I'm going to do is use it in the working process. What it does, it actually adds, it darkens it. So I'm going to use it in my favor. I want all this a little darker in here anyway. And it also adds a little bit of texture. So you kind of re-sand your surface in a way, not a lot, but a little bit. So you can kind of see how this works. And I also don't want to breathe this. So I'll be getting out of this room soon too. I got a little bit of a shoulder issue here too. So it's hard time using my right arm. Oh, old age is no fun. All right, so I'm going to purposely try to get some of these flowers too so that I get a little more grit because I was, I think I was more heavy-handed with the Diane Townsend's than I thought I was being. And I purposely do the little splatters. I kind of like that look. It's going to give it a more of an impressionistic look. I'm smelling it right now. That's for sure. The fog has settled and I've actually added some other reds that I have here. This is a Terry Ludwig. I believe this one is out of the, one of the intense darks. There's two sets. There's intense darks, one and two, and I think this is one of the reds out of that set. Then I've got a little bit of a paler, kind of a cool red and then an orangey red, or orangey orange. And then of course, I still have the red from the Diane Townsend. So I'm kind of see how it behaves because it seemed to take up the tooth so quickly. So a little bit of experimenting. All right, so let's go again. I'm going to reestablish some of these centers and see if that, yeah, see the fixative did allow me to get a little bit more tooth to that. So that helped for sure. I don't want to add centers to all of them. I almost did, but I'm going to be adding some more flowers too because I'm going to kind of cover up some of these centers and again, you like your flowers all kind of facing different directions and having some personality. I like to think of it that way. All right, so now let's see how these other pastels behave. Again, we're working dark to light. Let me see how this dark works here. Get a little bit of dark. The light is coming from here again. That's a little dead. I don't like that color. It's just a dead color. So I'm going to go ahead and get me some of these petals kind of reaching up like poppies would and I'll add some highlights to make them appear more three dimensional and to give you a sense of where the light is coming from. And I think I need, this one probably just needs to be bigger. It's just reaching up and saying, look at me, some little stragglers down in certain areas that are kind of almost hiding in the grasses somewhere. Now, because I changed my palette of flowers, I'm going to have to adjust for that in these distant flowers. There, I can still have some white ones, you know, going in the distance. I think I do want to add a center here right there. So they'll be more of an orangey kind of a blanket going around with the urge to make them all the same. Let's make this one again kind of bigger, reaching up a different way. In my other painting, this little one on the side, let's get him here, was actually kind of a flower bud, but I'm not going to do it that way. All right. So we've got the darkest of these reds on there. Now this one, as you can see, is a little bit brighter and a little cooler. So let's think about where that sun's coming from. It's kind of hitting some of these petals like on the tops. So we're just trying to focus on where that light is and where the sun might be just catching on some of those petals. They won't be getting down on the underneath because just like this tree on this side, the sun's coming this way. Only done the flowers that are prominent right now. I'm going to be adding more that are going to be these, what would you call it? They're not the leading lady. They're the supporting actor or actress of that. There's our main star puppies. And now I am going to add a few more hints of these and you know, like I said, I've got to try to kind of alter my color palette a bit because I changed it from white flowers to red. So I'm adding like some poppies that are kind of just randomly positioned and closer together because they're far away. They don't stand out as individual flowers as much. So you just kind of make a little subdued hint of that. Now I think I know I'm a shoulder starting because I'm trying to hold like this and it's really hard doing this. I'm going to have to get over here. I apologize. So let's get our little blanket of poppies kind of some of them are peeking up a little bit that might be a little big. Again, trying to resist the urge for too many patterns or to think I am going to get this darker one and get just maybe just a few more ideas of some that are hidden. I did some more in here. I didn't pick it up in here though. And notice I still haven't added some of my main grasses. Okay, now turn on the lights even more with this brighter one. Okay, we don't necessarily want to go lighter in value. We want to go brighter in color. And again, it's where the light might be just hitting on some of these pedals. Think about where the sun is also to that notice how that workable fixative light over there that workable fixative really did give me more tooth. Isn't that neat? Also to remember sometimes you just want to suggest you don't necessarily have to spell it out for people. You know, just go this is somewhat like a flower, but our brains put things together, you know. Okay, so I didn't do this one. Come over here. Get these guys and I am keeping this rather impressionistic. I kind of like it that way. Now let's get a few of these in here. These some little bit of a blanket of some of these reaching off into the distance there. I don't want to get too many over here because this is a little bit deeper grass. This might be a little bit bold of an orange to be that far back. I need to probably go with this. That's why I got this kind of peachy color here because things cool off in the distance. They don't get they don't stay as warm like yellowy. So I kind of like it in this one, but I'm going to cool off a little bit down here. I want to over do that either. Okay, that's probably pretty good. All right. So now we've got to start adding in some of these grasses. You know, I might add a few stems right now while I'm at it because they're kind of floating in the air and dark, but you got with me with stems. It depends on what's behind it. Sometimes they show up and sometimes a sometimes a dark shows up and sometimes a light shows up. So you've got to pay attention to what kind of is behind the flower that you're doing with this one. I kind of want to make a lot of them kind of reaching out. I think I like that better. I do actually. I wish I hadn't done these this way. We should have done I can change it though. Look at this. How nice is that? I'll just cover those up with grass. Again, these are ones that are a little bit more prominent. But some of them aren't going to really show any stems at all. Okay, we've got some basics established and now I believe I can start adding some of these grasses more of the more of the green grassy colors. This is one that I used in the other painting and I think I'm going to just kind of skip this along. Oh, you know what I would be nice if I had my reference photo, right? Let me grab that. Okay, so now I will be adding more greens for the grasses. I want to be careful with this because I don't want to cover up too much of this dark. So I need to this is the one that I had used before and I do like that. So I think I'm going to vary some of these flowers. I need a little more dark down here. Yeah, this is that darker really dark green. Kind of get some of the roots down in here, but I want to be careful not to overdo it and cover up all this gorgeous underpain. Oh, here's this one here. I think this one was the one that was a little more of a dead color. Yeah, it's a little more grayed out kind of like keeping this cooler over here because it's definitely more in the shadows. See how kind of just glazed over that one and cover it up? That one I'll cover part of it up a little bit more maybe. There we go. Okay, now we can add some more grasses. I said I was going to get up and get my reference image and I didn't. My husband pulled me away. We're actually trying to do a little garden right now to be able to have our own homegrown food like I need another project. Let's take a look and again I kind of veer away from the reference photo a lot, but at the same time I want to remember where certain things were regarding value and color and there are some nice greens. I squint my eyes. It's definitely darker in here like I have it, but there's some nice little hints of these little greens kind of going along in places and I want to try to get a little bit of those. I don't want to create too much detail, but there are certain places where there is a little bit more individuality to some of the grasses and things. Places there's like a leaf or something kind of coming up. Again, I don't want to cover up all of this beautiful underpainting. Look at this in here actually. Seems like that should even be darker in value. I don't think I have many. This is the darkest green of this other than the these colors here like all the other ones are much lighter. So I'm looking for something maybe a little deader like this one. So I'm going to try this one. I don't want it to stand. Yeah, this is a little warmer actually. I sort of like this working on two paintings at once. It's kind of neat. I still feel like I need a green that is deeper or something. I'm going to go grab another green maybe like this. Yeah, there we go. I'll have this. I actually haven't added the highlights to the trees yet. And I really kind of like this green. It's not too awfully light. Trying to get an edge here that works curled up paper. And I do like to avoid the repetition of these looking too similar. I like how this one is also going off the page and how this one is not. So I'm going to raise those two up and give a little bit more. I just want those to look different. I really like this purple. It just adds a little more color variety. I got to be careful how much I add it than all the green. It just adds a little in some places. Now I'm going to add just a few more hints of some grasses. Again, I want to keep this very impressionistic and create some sky holes in these trees because there's still a little blobby right now. So I'll carve in some sky holes and for the rest of that because my shoulder and back is hurting. I think I'm going to do them one at a time and move my camera and I have enjoyed being able to talk to you guys. This is really nice. Let me know if you'd like more of this and I'll try to oblige but you know life gets crazy. My studio is not always quiet and it's sometimes hard for me to make that happen. So I can't guarantee it but I can try. I wanted to zoom in the camera a little bit while I was at this stage before at the final and I don't do a whole lot more to this but so that you could kind of get more of a feel of how the under painting affects the final and I like them both. If I had to pick which one was my favorite, I don't know. What do you think? I will provide a close-up when the video is done of both of the finished paintings as well. Alright guys, I'm wrapping it up at this point. I hope you'll try it. It's a great experiment and if you do, if you happen to be one of my patrons on my Patreon page, then I'd love for you to share your results in our private group just for my patrons. If you're not a patron and you'd like to become one, you can do that by just going to patreon.com slash Susan Jenkins. It's only $5 a month. It really helps me out especially at this time in my life where my other business is done because it's it's been shut down for the moment but and but I do understand times are hard for a lot of people. So, you know, only if you can do that, that would be great. Now there's really not that much more to see at this point. I did add some of that beautiful purple kind of to the centers of the poppies there. It just really makes it sparkle and I added some grasses with some new pastels. Just speeding this up a bit but I think I'm just going to go ahead and show you the final and you can compare for yourself. Now, here is a little bit closer of the final of the one that had the pink background and now the one with the golden Indian yellow background. See the golden one has a little bit more of a glow to it and the differences in these may seem subtle on your computer screen but it really is more impactful with you realize and of course it will make even more of a difference if you used a completely different temperature of color. So, I hope you learned a lot guys. Please subscribe to this channel. If you haven't I plan on bringing a whole lot during our coronavirus challenge these days and blessings to everyone and happy painting.