 Hello, my artist friends and visitors, and welcome to Monet Cafe. I hope you enjoy this painting demonstration that I'm sharing now. This was just one of those times where I just wanted to paint. I just kind of needed that, that mental break and don't you guys, I know a lot of you can relate to that, how the stresses of life and everything can be sometimes frustrating and overwhelming at times and the creation process of painting, drawing, is such an outlet and it's so therapeutic and so this time I just, I had a crazy past few weeks, everything's still a little nutty with our lives since the flooding of our home. Things are coming together, but it's still far from normal and so sometimes my painting is stretched out over a few days, so I have to, I'll sneak in a little time here and there, but the neat thing is I know you guys can relate. That's the beautiful thing about this channel I think and also the Monet Cafe art group on Facebook is that we all have so much in common. You know, it's funny in a world where everybody is divisive and speaking of so many differences and people are on one side of an issue or another. I think we're all really celebrating just the camaraderie and the connection that we have on this channel, in art in general and as a group in Monet Cafe on Facebook because I love being able to see your work and hear what you guys have to say. So, man, it just feels like a family, doesn't it? I just love you guys. So I'm not gonna give as much instruction in this video. I think I'm just gonna let you guys watch the process. It's only sped up four times. I know some artists will speed it up. You've got different degrees of how you can fast forward this and I don't ever like to do it too fast because you can't even see what I'm doing and so this one's only sped up four times, but this is a, in case you're wondering, what this bright red thing is I'm painting on with pastels. It's a board that I have created myself. I do have a few videos on how you can create your own pastel surfaces. Not only do pastel papers, sanded papers get expensive, but sometimes I like the results of making my own board better than a really smooth pastel paper that's already available for sale. The reason is because if you like the loose painterly style, often you can get your strokes that you use to apply your surface to kind of show through and it just has that neat artistic feel to it. So this is a piece of foam core board. One of the techniques I often use where I take foam core board or matte board. A lot of people have shared you can get scraps of matte board like people make mats and frame shops and often they will give you scraps for free so you can use that matte board as well to make your own painting surfaces. So this is a piece of foam board and I did, I painted on my concoction. I think this one was with Fine Pumice Gel and an acrylic paint that's very translucent. Notice how brilliant that reddish, orangeish, pinkish color is. I like to keep the translucent, the brilliance of the white paper still kind of in there. If you pick a real opaque color it's going to look kind of dead. So that's why I usually pick underpainting colors that are brighter like that. So I'm going to, you'll probably have already seen where I put up the little information icon where you can click if you want to see how to make your own boards like this. It's a lot of fun. It's good to kind of set some time for yourself just to have an afternoon of making your own pastel surfaces and then the neat thing is they're already for you. And sometimes it's just inspiring like I have all these different colors of these boards I've made and sometimes just pulling out one that has a certain color tone to it it just kind of gets me in a creative mood and is very just creative in itself. So as you can see I'm doing a lot of Terry Ludwig pastels, Terry Ludwig, Terry Ludwig pastels. They're the big chunky square ones and notice sometimes I paint with my right hand too. That's simply because sometimes it's more convenient on that side of the paper or the board and a lot of you, if some of you are left-handed you will realize and relate to what I'm saying is that left-handed people have to learn to be pretty ambidextrous because we're in a right-handed world and often like when I was in school we didn't have left-handed scissors hardly ever you know so I learned to cut right-handed and and so that's kind of an advantage that usually left-handed people are somewhat able to perform with their right hand. So and also you may want to try painting with your opposite hand just because it gives we get in patterns or habits with our dominant hand of strokes being a certain way or a certain flow to it and often if you switch hands you'll get a little variation and sometimes more creativity when you try that so just you know give it a try sometimes. So now I'm just going to let you guys enjoy this process and I just I wanted to say how much I appreciate you all. I spent a little melancholy the last week losing a pastel artist friend that I had never physically met but I had been her friend online actually before Facebook on a website for artists called Wet Canvas. I learned of her pastel work she's been doing pastel work longer than I have her name is Paula Ann Ford and I admired her pastel work for years and she was always so helpful and so generous to answer questions of anybody in the Wet Canvas soft pastel part of it. There's different forums in Wet Canvas it might be something you want to check out just find the the soft pastel forum and there's artists sharing their work kind of similar to Monet Café art group on Facebook but anyway so Paula was just just a beautiful soul and she loved God's earth and she just recently lost her battle with cancer but she was a believer and I can only imagine what beauty she's experiencing right now so we miss her and so I'm going to dedicate this video to her and I know a lot of you know her if you're in our group on Facebook and you've already expressed your your condolences and so anyway let us just all enjoy every precious moment that we have on this earth let's keep sharing and growing and loving and painting yes all right enjoy this I might pop back in in a minute