 Welcome to Monet Café. Come on in the studio with me as I give a real-time lesson on light, how it behaves. And this tutorial is actually for both my Monet Café channel here, where I give free art lessons all over the world and for my patrons. And I do usually have a little extra content for my patrons, but in this video it's all available here. I will be providing the reference image I used just for my patrons though. And if you'd like to become a patron it's only $5 a month at that link above and it really helps support this channel, Monet Café. And here's a little sneak peek into my Patreon page. We have things like drawings for free painting giveaways. I give color perception tests. Often you get the full video when you're a patron. Access to my reference photos and lots more fun. We just have a great group. So if you'd like to become a patron it supports Monet Café helping me to make this channel better and to provide more free lessons again all over the world, which is awesome. Okay let's get started with this particular lesson. You know I'm really fascinated with these flowers called cone flowers. I believe also called echinacea. And they come in various colors even though I've typically painted them in pink like I do here. But I'd like to try some of these other colors. And here's a little studio quick tip. I love to provide these in my Patreon page. But this little tray is an appetizer tray. I got at the dollar store $1. It's like a color wheel and it is a great way to hold your pastels while you're working. The painting in today's lesson is a small painting more of an artist trading card size. And just so you know I have a playlist in this YouTube channel with all kinds of lessons on painting small. So check that playlist out if you'd like to learn more about that. I captured some video footage of this honey bee in my backyard. I am just drawn to these magnificent creatures. And yes I am going to be adding some little bees in our cone flower painting. As I get started here I'd like to give you a quick supply list. This is just a small sheet of Sennelier Le Carte Pastel card. Feels very much like sandpaper. I love Sennelier. It's a little coarse and rough. Some people might not like it as much as you art which is smoother. But I happen to love Sennelier Le Cart because it is lends itself towards a more painterly style because of its texture. I also like because it's a card it's a little bit thicker than you art and it doesn't warp. But here's a little note. Do not add water to Sennelier Le Cart Pastel card. I know with a lot of other pastel surfaces they are water-friendly. You can add watercolors as an underpainting or any other water-based product but not with this Sennelier Le Cart Pastel card. And as you can see I'm just using a charcoal pencil. It's kind of like a medium value charcoal pencil to sketch in really suggestions as to where these flowers are. I don't have to hold hard and fast to this as I start painting but it's a good idea to go ahead and get in your general flower gestural quality I like to call it. I always think of flowers as having personality. And again I'm talking about considering the light. Really this lesson is a little bit more on light and shadow. I'm going to talk about how to give that sense of light and how to not overdo it in your painting. I've had a tendency to do that. But again I'm getting the gestural quality or the personalities of these flowers and how they're reaching and how they're turning. And that actually too is that's part of another lesson I did on the art of randomness. You don't want them all to be exactly the same. So I give a little variety as I work and I'll try to talk about that as well. And keep in mind these are just shapes. I love to talk about the concept of painting large to small. I think that was the focus of my last lesson. But we are painting shapes and actually it's okay if those shapes aren't in a strategic mold for the flower just yet. I think it adds to the painterly style and everybody's talking about wanting to get that impressionistic style. And I think this is one of the keys to that is to suggest things, keep it very loose early on. It's okay if you've painted outside the lines a bit. Because too much fine tuning early on is what causes your painting to look static or rigid. And so we're giving that really soft and moody beginning to the painting. And again it's okay if some of my shapes aren't exactly right. I give them more definition is the word I'm looking for as I work. And all I did here was use a medium value pink. I believe that was either a Jack Richardson, the lighter value there or a Rembrandt that I used. And then a darker value for the actual centers or the top parts of those flowers. Now let's talk a little bit now like I said with this video on light and shadow. Look at the reference photo up there. You see how those flowers in the bottom left corner? Look how dark they are. So sometimes we have a tendency and also the one that I'm working on now. Look at that flower. Look at the left side of that flower. It's really more in shadow. So I'm using this purple to go ahead and block in and get an idea of where my shadow is. Again, this lesson, consider the light. And speaking of that, where is the light source? Well, you can usually get an idea of that by looking, look at the tops of those flowers. You see the light is on top shining down and a little bit over to the right because most of the shadows under the flowers are on the left. So the light source is upper right. And we want to keep that in mind with the other all of the really the whole painting as we're working is that the lighter things are going to typically be on the right side rather than the left side. Now I noticed, too, a lot of these cone flowers, like the one I just did. And I did go ahead and put in darker because if you've watched a lot of my videos, we need a base. We need something for contrast. So a lot of times you put down a value that is darker at first than what it's going to be when it's finished. The final, of course, is going to be those brilliant pinks that were again, where the light is there being reflected by the sun. But I still have to get something dark down to lay the light on top of. Otherwise, it's just kind of flat. If I just laid the lightest value on top of that kind of beige Sennelier-Lecarte, it wouldn't have any vibrancy. It wouldn't have any way to contrast against anything. So that's why we put the dark down first. Now, that's again what I'm doing right here. I am again, I just made them suggestive before. Now I'm going in and getting more of some dark values in. And if you notice on those coneflowers, the darkest part of that, the centers of them is down right where that that round ball shape kind of sits down into the petals. That's the darkest part. So I'm just going ahead and getting it in there and then I'll round off the tops of them with a little bit of a lighter value. And in this case, the sun, I love how it just illuminated the tops of those, the centers of the flowers with almost like a fiery red. Now, OK, before I get too detailed, this is a lesson to myself and everyone else is don't get so caught up on any one thing with detail before you work the overall painting. I happen to love working the overall painting before I get too fussy. That's another tip into keeping a painterly style. There's something about if you just like if I started working real specifically on one of those coneflowers there and just got it super detailed, I can pretty much guarantee you the rest of my painting is going to look tight. I don't know what it is, but you've just got to keep working big and general and overall soft and impressionistic to finally getting into the details. I think one thing too is when we start working on details too early, we have a tendency to make everything detailed. And that's a huge lesson in keeping a painterly style. Just art in general is we don't want everything detailed because all of a sudden your painting loses its focus. I mean, what do we focus on? We want to preserve and reserve the areas to be detailed that are of the most interest and gradually make things more subtle in the rest of the painting so that or you don't have to make them less subtle. You just literally have to give them less detail. Don't give them a lot of focus or attention and they will by nature become more subdued and lost in the painting rather becoming the main focus. So I am adding now some of these darks. Notice how I'm just kind of blending it over some of the flowers down below and working it around some in a way. And we need that darker. We know that values get darker as they're in the foreground and also in deep grasses. So I'm trying to give that again. We got to get our darks in before we add the lights. If I just added light blades of grass there, they're going to have nothing to contrast against. So we've got to get our darker values in. I'm even doing a little bit here with this kind of medium value cooler green working all around the flowers. And again, this is giving more of that painterly feel as I'm just scumbling colors. And if you don't know what the word scumbling is, it's it's almost it's almost a little bit being messy and just a little gentle touch of blending and mixing and keeping a random pattern to things. Now, I know I do want to keep a little bit of that lighter suggestion. Notice this painting doesn't have a sky showing. It has like grasses in the background. And but I still wanted to lighten them up. I wanted the flowers to have a lighter contrast behind them. And also, I know I'm going to be adding a bee later. And I just wanted to have a little bit of a different differentiation between the background where the lights hitting it more. And also that is exactly what happens with values as things recede into the distance. They get lighter and cooler in value. Oh, sorry for my hair. Sometimes my crazy hair that, you know, when your hair starts to get older and especially when you start getting a little gray in it, it sticks out like wires. I've got to learn to tame that back and I haven't a ponytail, but I need to put a band around it sometimes. But again, colors get cooler and lighter in value as they're in the distance. So we have the power as artists, even if a photograph doesn't show it that well represented, we can force that with the power of illusion. By making our background a little lighter in value and a little cooler in color. Now it's where I'm going in. I didn't want to get my real bright, brilliant pinks on there yet. I really like this new pastel. It's almost kind of a mauve pink. And so I'm going in and kind of redefining some of my flower shapes. Again, I'm not getting too specific here. I am just working on them in a very general way. And I'm looking at my reference photo. I've had a tendency in the past to accidentally again, this is back my one of my last lessons on the art of random. We have a tendency to kind of do patterns and do things all the same. So I try to resist the urge now to have my flowers all exactly the same or facing the same direction. And even though in the photo, a lot of them, they are in general reaching towards the light. Again, the focus of this video, considering the light, I think all of our plant life and nature seems to reach towards the sun. And so they are having that general expression of reaching up, but they do have still some little subtle varieties. All right, now let me talk. And that's what I want to keep is some of those differences with the flowers. I want to talk now about why am I adding this purple a little bit darker in value down on in these flowers because I'm not sticking to the reference photo exactly, by the way, as you can probably tell, because I want to remember that there are some things in shadow. We want to consider the light and consider the shadow since the light is on the upper right hand side. I'm making things in general a little bit more shadowy, a little darker in value on the left side and also down in these flowers that I'm going to bury a little bit. They're not quite as buried by other things in the reference photo, but that's what I'm picturing in my mind is that I want those. First of all, I don't want them to steal the show from those three main flowers that I kind of have in the top. So I'm pushing them back and down a little bit as I work with darker values. And now I'm just kind of carving out the shape of these. I like how the the cones or the tops of them are almost almost rectangular shaped. You know, you could get away with doing these rectangular rather than making them a more more spherical like I'm doing. But I'm really just kind of making a little arch kind of over the top. Again, I don't want to get those brightest values yet. I'm going to reserve that. And I actually really kind of like the colors that I've got going on here. Sometimes I keep working a little too long. This particular painting was a bit therapeutic for me. I had been probably hadn't painted in a day and I was really missing it. And my other business is a bookkeeping business and it's tax time now. So I've been having to use the other side of my brain, which I actually kind of kind of like. I like numbers and math and stuff like that. But I needed my creative time again. So I just put up. That's why I put up this little piece of Sinelli La Carte. I knew I didn't have time. It was a little later at night. And I just wanted to express myself creatively. And I may have suggested to that in talking about painting small and a busy life, it's again, I share that a lot when I do videos on small painting. A tip is to I took some of the Sinelli La Carte pastel card and I cut it up into these artist trading card sizes. Now, these here are the one you're seeing here is a little bit bigger than artist trading card size because I gave it a little border. But sometimes I don't mess with preserving the border. I just go ahead and start painting. So cut up a lot of these. That way, when you have that limited time, you can just grab one of these little pieces and just go to work. Not waste your creative juices on trying to cut up paper. All right, now here is where I'm just gently representing that light that's hitting the tops of these centers of the flowers from the upper right. Notice how I just kept it a little bit more to the top right. Now, I decreased the intensity. I think I realized those bottom flowers, that right there was a little too light because I'm going to keep them buried in the grasses. So I need a value that's a little more dull. I think I even yet that gives a sense of the light, but it's not quite as bright and intense as those brilliant reds that were on top. I think I even darken them up a little bit more as I'm working. Yeah, see, I knew they were going to be too bright. They were going to get too much attention. We need some things to be less noticeable. You know, I love, you know, I know I lose subscribers sometimes and I've noticed even on my Instagram page, I lose followers. When I talk about the things of the Lord, but sorry, I can't help it. I was going to say it's kind of like in in the Bible, there is talk of all of the parts of the body's body working together as a whole to create this beautiful creation made in the image of God. And the whole body is a wonderful piece of art. However, not every part of the body gets the glory or gets the attention, you know, such as you could have the little toe saying, I want to be the hair that gets all this notice that, you know, if somebody's got gorgeous hair or you could have something saying, I want to be the eye. But meanwhile, every part is equally as important because it works for the whole beautiful resulting image and magnificence at the end. And that's how a piece of art is. We have other things that are more subtle, like these flowers that are not going to give as much of attention. But guess what they're doing as much as the star of the show flowers in their subtlety, in their humility, I should say, to bow down and say, I don't have to be the star of the show. And often I think that's where the most beauty is overall is when we can be more humble. OK, here I go, getting philosophical again. But anyway, why not bring that into your art? Art is expressive. Art is not just mathematical. It is expressive and full of beauty and spontaneity. And it is deeper than just marks on a piece of paper or paint on a canvas. So I hope, you know, I hope in Monet Café. And I think that's probably been some of the success of the Monet Café YouTube channel here. One, it's free, which is awesome. And and again, I'm bringing this one free, even though I'm giving a little more to my patrons in some videos. I told you guys I'm never going to forget to still I still give free content here, but sometimes I don't give all of the real time footage like I'm doing in this video. But this is because I love you guys here in Monet Café. But anyway, I think that's been some of the success of the channel is that it's not just about here's your supply list. Make this mark, do this color. It is an experience and also to with the Monet Café art group on Facebook. Wow, it's like the concept of Monet Café. It's not just me. It's as a matter of fact, I am one of these flowers bowing down and being in more in the background. That art group on Facebook is full of the most beautiful people, encouraging, helping, growing, almost 10,000 members in that group right now. And still just as beautiful and intimate and caring as it was when there was a hundred members. So if you want to learn more and you need another free resource, ask to join the Monet Café art group in Facebook. So I used to worry about it getting so large and I thought, oh, it's going to lose some of its specialness, but it hasn't at all. We have painting contests. We have a monthly theme each month. And we have different levels that can win prizes. And it's just so loving and caring and considerate of the beginner. So don't worry if you're just totally beginning in pastels. You are very welcome in that group. Now, again, I mentioned my Patreon group. There's two reasons for that. One one is that someone suggested I start a Patreon group because they quite a few people did actually. And it just blessed my heart so much because making these. I've been making these free videos on Monet Café for over five years. Literally, I sound like the postman now through the rain, through the sleet, through the hurricane that destroyed my home due to the flooding, through cancer, through my mother's cancer. So through all these things, I have it's been my therapy, too. I don't want to sound totally selfless, but I've been bringing these free tutorials. I think over I think maybe over 200 free videos here on the Monet Café channel. And so these people were so nice to say, hey, we'd like to give back. And so I set my Patreon level at five dollars a month. And a lot of people just support me because it helps to keep these videos coming. And it's kind of like just a beautiful support to help these keep coming all over the world, like I said. And the second reason is that now I've had the Patreon page for less than only about six months, I think. And it's really growing and it's so beautiful. But I've learned now, too, that I do love giving back to those people who are supporting the channel. And there is special content. There are some giveaways of some of my original artwork. And I give a little bit more into the science of art in that group. I have another video I'm working on putting together on the Fibonacci sequence. If you haven't heard of that in the Golden Ratio, it's fascinating. So forgive me while I talk through this, but I figure, hey, I got you guys, captive audience here and my husband's not here. So I've kind of enjoyed talking to you guys. But anyway, so there's a there's a little bit more content that's a little deeper and it's a it's more intimate, obviously, because there's less people and there are some people in my Patreon group that aren't even on Facebook. So it's really a neat way to communicate with you guys that aren't on Facebook or aren't in the Facebook group. And I also, you know, some of you guys message me and I can answer your questions more specifically. It's gotten in the Facebook group, the main one, the Facebook Art Group, Monet Cafe Art Group, with so many members, I literally cannot attend to every single painting. Or, you know, sometimes people will tag me and ask a question and I'll try to pay attention to that, but it's gotten kind of big for me to do that. So my Patreon group is a way that I can give a little bit more intimate content and interaction with some of you guys. I also have, when you become a patron of mine, I have a Facebook group just for my patrons, and that's Susan Jenkins Patreon Group. You can't join that one unless you are one of my patrons. And again, it's just five dollars a month. You're welcome to keep doing the free Monet Cafe videos. Again, I'll bring free ones just bring free ones all the time, but I'll bring more in depth ones like this one every so often and always some sort of free video here. But so you can you can hang out here as long as you want. And if you do become a patron, it's really easy and you also can cancel at any time. There's no like period you have to sign up for or whatever. So anyway, it's a great group. And it's helping me. Some of my goals, by the way, is to we're finally, my husband and I, it sounds crazy that after two years after the flooding of our home, and I mean total flooding of our home, if you saw the pictures, it's crazy. It two years sounds like, oh, you should really have your lives back in order after that. But it's it's still I'm not going to give you the long version of that. It's still a little crazy and we're still not in our final home. But some of my goals are I have a dream of having my Monag Cafe larger studio on a piece of property where we are going to there's a home already on that property. We're not living in it now that we want to expand and make that our final home. And I want to build a Monag Cafe studio out there. I'd like to have it large enough to where I could have some master classes and have like maybe 10 students or so every so often where we can come out and just have a whole Monag Cafe experience, have some lunch and art time and learning and and a really great time. That's one of my goals. Another of my goals is to take the show on the road, so to speak. My husband and I, we do have a travel trailer and and this little small motor home, he actually uses it for his business. And so we love traveling and so I would love and I have learned so much with my video filming and everything. I'm very compact with it all and I've gotten to where I can do it. Pretty much anywhere. So I could literally have on the road, on location, painting, plein air, video, tutorials and take you guys with me on artistic adventures. Let me know in the comments. What do you think of that? I think that just sounds great. And maybe I could come to your town. How about that and maybe arrange some little get-togethers? That's one thing I've wanted to do, too, is have you guys maybe have some meetups. I know we have to be so careful in this Internet world of who we meet and all that kind of stuff. But within our group, it's pretty safe that if some of you guys are like, hey, who's in the, you know, Northern California area or, you know, Central North Carolina area, whatever, that would like to meet up for some coffee and art. I mean, that's the whole concept of Monet Cafe. So anyway, that sounds cool. All right, I've blabbered on enough here. Now, do you see how I have gradually been adding the lighter values? I still want to keep those cool shadowy colors, even though they're a little lighter. See that little periwinkle blue that I'm adding there? That is representing the shadowy parts of these flowers that I'm going to add to some of them, the brighter pinks. But they still have a little bit of shadow underneath certain areas. So I've got to keep mindfulness of that. All the petals are not pink. I think that's probably one of the signs very quickly of artwork looking more amateur is when we have, like, if it's a field of pink flowers, they're all just pink. Again, this focus is consider the light. Consider, which in turn means consider the shadows. Where are the shadows? And so we've got to make sure we've got reserved or limited or precise applications of where the light is. Now, this is a little bit brighter pink. You see that? Still not my brightest pink I'm going to add. But I'm adding it with precision to areas where the light is. I'm looking at the sun's coming kind of from the top right. Some of it is kind of going over a little bit to the very top left hand side of some of the flowers. So I'm just trying to think about where is that light source? And if you focus on that while you paint, I'm telling you, it's really going to make such a difference in your art. Again, I noticed that's too light for those petals that are buried. They're still getting a little bit of light. Again, I didn't keep this painting exactly like the reference image, but I'm using it as a guide. But see, that's a darker value in some of those that are down a little deeper than the ones that I had up top. It's funny how when you look at it, it looks kind of like it's the same value. You know, if you just kind of try to focus on the painting overall. But I know for a fact it's a darker value. If I had added that really light down to those flowers below, they're going to start to make the painting look flat. That's another thing that adding variances in your values does for your painting. It gives depth to your painting. Everything looks like it's pasted on top. If you were just to take all of these flowers and make them like the same value pink or even just two values, it would look very flat. None of the flowers would have any depth or three dimensional perspective or depth into the painting. Now I'm reinforcing the darks here. Again, it was looking a little flat. I had lost some of my darks. So I'm just kind of, again, working in and around and amongst the petals. I'm being fairly precise, but not overly precise because that's going to make the painting look very fixed and more like photorealism, which is not what I want to capture. All right, so I have really jabbered on enough here and I've enjoyed it. I hope you have, too. I hope you haven't minded some of my my deep meanderings. And so I will add a little music, but I'm going to keep the rest of this real time until I add the bees. And I think the bees are coming up soon. So I'm probably going to be talking to you guys in a minute. All right, here we go. More painting. Now that I've added the stems and I've got everything pretty much in, I'm going to go ahead and work on the bees. And by the way, I probably worked a little longer on this little painting than I normally would. But again, it was just kind of my little artistic release. And I was really enjoying it. But anyway, so it's time to add a little buzzy here. And I really liked the gestural quality of the bee. He's kind of like just curved and headed right towards that flower. This one looks more like a bumble bee than a honey bee, but it doesn't matter. These bees are so small that you're really just suggesting them. And just as we typically work with other parts of pastel painting, it's the same with bees. We want to get the dark in first. I've got a darker pastel that I'm just basically making just a couple of little marks, like two or three little marks. I'm kind of trying to make little black marks there, kind of curving it the way the bee was shaped. And I am going to try to zoom in here again or more with my editing capabilities, but it might be a little bit pixelated after I get these black shapes. And I want to add another little bee right there kind of coming down towards one of the bottom flowers. So I made him a little bit bigger. OK, now let me zoom in a little bit here. So maybe you can see this a little bit better. All right, so sorry for that huge pastel. I'm showing you the color. It's kind of similar of one of the deeper orangey colors in the flower and my head's in the way in a minute. It clears up, but I'm doing a little curve shape over his back with that. You'll be able to see when I add the next color. OK, you see how I just kind of covered up part of the black, the kind of the middle part with that orangey color. Now I actually walk around the side so my head won't be in the way while I do this and I'm taking a little bit lighter orange. Now the past you see how teeny that bee is. I'm putting a just I'm going to talk because you can't see it. I'm putting a little lighter over the orange. Now you see how it created that depth perspective or layering. You've got the black of the bee. You've got the the orangey color and then you've got the little more yellowy gold color on top. Now I'm going to add the little wings. Again, this is suggestive. I mean, in real life, when a bee is flying, you don't see the details of a bee. You just see kind of the energy, the gesture and the suggestion. Now it focused on my head. I was trying actually here to make a wing that had a little bit of a darker base to it, but that particular pastel wasn't working. So typically you just add a little lighter color pastel for the wing. Here I tried it again with a little purple. And this bee's wings were actually darker in the photo than I'm going to make them. But now I've got my little light and again, you can't even see it. But I'm just his wings were kind of going forward in front of him. So I'm just making a little mark, boom, kind of energetically. Boom, I think I make two of them like my sound effects. And it kind of just gives that feeling that that bee is moving forward to the flower and that's all there is to it. So I'm now going to do the same thing for the other bee. But I'm going to zoom back out for that one. You see how it's a little bit larger? It's that black blob down low. Now I'm getting a little bit darker value orange for this one. Then I did the top one because he's more in the shadow. And the other one was in the light, which is why he has a little bit more brilliant orange color. And you see that that's not as gold or as yellow as the bee that I did in the sunlight. This bee's a little more buried down, a little bit more in shadow, not totally. So the same concept. I've really just got three values. I've got a dark, orangey color and a golden color. And I just gave him a couple of wings. And so that's really all there is to it. And you can even do a more suggestive than this. If you want to add even some tinier bees. Now I had lost a little bit of the black. So that's one of the hardest things about this is working so teeny. But another suggestion on that when working small, we learn to feel where the pastels are. If you've been painting a while, you know exactly what I'm talking about. They're so big and chunky. Sometimes you literally can't see behind the pastel where the mark's going. So you feel your way. You make a little teeny mark. You kind of feel where it is and you learn these subtleties and get better at it the more that you paint. I'm pretty much wrapping it up at this point. I'm getting a little bit more. This is a little bit of the negative painting that I actually talked about in another previous video, where you're kind of carving in between things. I'm wanting to put a little bit of those cooler greens, kind of like some of those grasses down there getting a little bit of the sun. And then at the end, I also wanted to add some brighter petals, like some or not petals, some leaves or leaves kind of sticking out and catching a little bit of that sun. I don't want to overdo it. I just want to suggest a little bit of that to give a little bit more interest. And then I do add a little bit of taller grasses to kind of bury some of those flowers in the front. So that's pretty much it for my cone flower and sweet little bee painting. And again, consider the light, not just in art, but in life and know that you are valuable, whether you are the star of the show flower or the one supporting actor flower in the background. Happy painting, guys. And if you'd like to become a patron, there's a clickable link right here at the end of this video.