 Welcome, artistic friends and Monet Cafe. Today we're going to talk about how to simplify your subject matter. Often we see our reference images and we see so much detail. Today I'm going to talk about how we can reduce that to more simplified forms on the computer or just with your eyes. And the result will be, you know, usually just doing some quick studies like I did today. You can have a result that's really just more basic and freer. So let's get started talking about how we can do that. Now, in case you need to find some good reference material, we have a wonderful resource right in our very own Facebook group, Monet Cafe Art Group on Facebook. This is an image of the page on my computer. And I'm going to show you how to get to our member reference album. It's an album that we have in our group on Facebook where artists upload their own photography to give the ability for others to use for paintings. So it's really neat and we have I think probably close to 1500 photos in it right now. So here's what you do. You become a member of our group. You do have to answer a few questions like what's your favorite medium? How did you hear about us? Stuff like that. And once you're accepted in our group, you would simply go to the photos tab. Now it's a little different on your phone. I think in your phone it's in one of the little things that it's kind of across the top here. But you go to photos, then you go to albums right here. Hi Gracie. I love seeing our friends in our Facebook group. That's why the group is neat on Facebook because I get to see you guys. All right, now we have a whole lot of different albums in here, but it's going to be towards the end here. There's not that many. I shouldn't say a whole lot. It's right here. Okay, so there's a member reference album. I think I clicked like two three pages back and see we got 1455 photos in there. And if you click that and you just take a look at all of the amazing photos, my computer is a little slow here, because there are photos that are just all kinds of different landscapes, florals, animals. And what's neat is that we have, oh, look how cute that is. Oh my gosh, that make a cute painting. We have artists from all over the world. And when I say artist, I don't want some of you to be intimidated if you're a beginner. If you love to paint, you're an artist. Okay, so claim that title. So anyway, we get photography that we may not get in our own backyard, because I mean, we're in Australia, we're in Spain, we're in Japan. I mean, everywhere, England, I can't even begin to think about all the places we're in right now. But look at this. Oh my gosh, I have a little Boston terrier named Jackson. And this looks like he did as a puppy. That's so cute. Anyway, getting a little carried away here. There's just some gorgeous photography. So that's a neat way for you to get reference material. Also, I mentioned a lot, the Paint My Photo app. I believe it's pmp-art.com. And it's a site where people upload their photography. But this is our very own reference album. So I thought that would be neat. So anyway, now I'm going to talk a little bit about how do we select a photo and simplify it? Okay, let me, you know, I have the one that I'm doing for this particular painting that I'm doing. But let me just pick something here. This is really pretty. Let me pick this. And then, actually, I think I would like one with more distance. Hi, Angela. Let me go ahead and do that. What you would do here is I'm just going to click Options here. I'm going to download it to my computer. And then I'm going to put it in Photoshop and show you how I simplified this image. Okay, let's get started. Now let me show you what I did for this particular photograph that I used for this painting. Again, these are just going to be really more studies and exercises to loosen up and get better. And a lot of times we just get too tight and fussy. And this is just a great technique to really get that more impressionistic feel that we most of us really like. So I'm going to show you how I do this in Photoshop. Now I don't always put an image in Photoshop to do this, but Photoshop will show you what we're trying to accomplish by minimalizing the content of our photograph. You basically get the same idea by squinting your eyes. And that's the technique I typically use is I just squint my eyes or dim the light in a room. And you can really start to simplify the shapes in a photograph or reference image. And this happens to be a photograph from our member reference album in our Monet Café art group. And it's from Robert Hopkins. So if you notice, sometimes we have a tendency to, let me zoom in here. It's jumping a little bit. We have a tendency to see too much. Seeing all the grasses and the flowers and the trees and the branches. And our eyes are amazing. Thank you, Lord, for such an amazing optical device that beats any camera out there. But our eyes have this tendency to, when we look at something, like if I'm looking at these trees, to put it into focus, to start to see all the little teeny things here. But in art, we have the ability to make the viewer's eyes focus on what we want it to. Create a center of interest, for example. And the center of interest here is going to be just the movement of this water. And typically, things in the background, for example, if you stare at this area and don't look at the trees in the background, but stare at this area, you'll notice that while you're not looking at those trees, they're blurry. You can see them peripherally, but you can't focus on them as long as you're looking at this. So that's the illusion that we create in art is we try to minimize things that we don't want the eye to focus on as much. And squinting is a way to help you really reduce the image to those basic shapes and values. So that's what I'm going to be doing here. So here's what I do in Photoshop to kind of represent squinting. All right, I'm going to show you what the result is, and then I'll show you how to do it with one of photographs. So here's the actual photograph. Thank you, Robert, for that gorgeous photo. Okay, here is, let me get rid of this. Here is how I minimalized or reduced the image to just basic shapes and values in Photoshop. Now squinting is, like I said, kind of the same thing. And then again, here's the painting. This was just quick, rough, you know, whatever. But you see, I just have basic shapes. I don't have anything like that right there. Okay. And it's a great way to just, like I said, kind of loosen up and to get yourself focusing on the basics. Now I'm going to go ahead and pull in. Let me find that photo that I just uploaded from our group. And I believe it went to downloads. Okay, so now we have this beautiful photograph. And again, we could take the photograph happens to be really well done already, because notice how this is already blurry in the background. Okay, so this is actually already pretty good to work from. But let's try to reduce some of these, these too many details right here to get your basic painting in. And then you can just selectively choose what items you want to detail. It doesn't have to be everything. And I think I'm going to paint this photograph because it's really great. Thank you, Angela. She happens to use her camera in a way. And I don't want to give up, make this lesson about photography. But if you have a larger aperture opening in your camera, which is backwards, it happens to be the smaller number like a 5.6 is a larger whole opening in your camera, then say like a 21, which is a teeny one, the larger ones give that focus in the front, but blurred out in the background. So this was obviously a setting that did that. So let me show you what I do. I have a filter in Photoshop. I know I have my, I don't have my screen selected where you can see it. But up top here, it says filter. Okay. And if I just go to my filter gallery, I have one that I use, this is it right here. It's called palette knife. Now it's zoomed in a lot right now. So let me zoom it out. But you'll see what I mean about just really reducing the image to its basics. Okay, so that is really simplified. And I do think there's a lot of green going on here. The whole thing is green. So I would warm up these greens in the front and cool off the ones in the back, because we know warm colors come forward, cool colors recede, or not just warm and cool, stronger or bolder in color, and more neutral in color as you get to the background. But you can see how this kind of simplified it. Like I said, I kind of wanted to do one that had more, more distance and this, like I said, it was already a very good photograph to begin with. But that's the little technique that I use. You can do it with, you know, any photograph that you're working with. Let me see if I can find another one real quick. Get out of this. Oh, I already did it with that one. This was a great road photograph by Katie Lewis. And I already did the palette knife thing to it to reduce it to its basic shapes. Okay, so then you're not worried about getting off fussy with detail. Alright, so let's get into painting. You guys are probably tired of hearing about all this, but squinting your eyes basically works the same way to reduce it to the simple shapes. Alright, let's get started. Here's the palette of pastels I started out with. I want you to take note of the orange, the red and the yellow ones in there. The reason I did this is I wanted to do a complimentary underpainting. Now you don't have to do this. You could use colors that are local to the scene. But I thought with all of that green, the painting would be much more interesting with that complimentary underpainting peeking through. It's a great way if you watch some of my tutorials. Under paintings are just great to kind of loosen up and get your painting going. And it's kind of like a good foundation. But the complimentary ones are great when you have a lot of green. Now I'm using these colors just like I would a value study. In other words, the the darker browns are in the front there. And then the middle values are going to be kind of in the middle there of the painting. And the lighter values go more towards that distant field. And of course, the lightest value is the sky. Now, here's how I'm going to blend this. I'm just using regular alcohol, water, a brush and paper towels. And I put the alcohol in a little dish. And I just start working top to bottom. Now I'm going to lighten up the sky later. But I'm actually the paper towels and the water is so that I can clean my brush after I'm using after I'm brushing on those darker values, because those darker values will just run all over the painting and I don't want that. So you know, it's a it's a little technique you learn you get better. But that's why it's good to do these studies like this, because you're not so worried about it. Now I'm focusing on those darker ones are going to be around. There's like these vertical grasses growing around that that marshy area that's carving its way through the landscape there. So you know, this is a quick way to get a nice, loose, complimentary painting going up. Now I'm getting my blow dryer. I was impatient, didn't want to wait. Like I said, I only had a little bit of time to do this. Someone asked me how long this painting took. I don't remember. I don't know it wasn't I don't it wouldn't even it wasn't an hour I know that. But it was just a neat little opportunity I had before I had to go get ready for dinner. Had to go out to dinner. But but anyway, now my paper was curling up a little bit here. So I just wanted to tape it down. I've salvaged a lot of you art paper that warped when my home flooded and I have to iron it out literally. So sometimes it's still a little bit warped and creates some little bumps and things. Now I got some nice colors going in that sky. But I do lighten it up a bit later. I'm going pretty bold with this one. I'm just kind of having fun. And I did vary the tree line back there. As you can see, I I decided you'll see later I change it even more. I decided I don't like a barrier of things that just goes across like a fence and blocks the eye. So I end up creating some little channels in the trees where the eye can go back even further in the distance behind them. So I'm going to paint a little while but you'll see I'm just keeping things pretty simple, not getting too fussy. And I really just having fun. That's the point of this. Simplify, have fun and paint more often. That's a great way to get better. All right. Enjoy this for now about simplifying your subject and basically just paint more. Do studies. Don't take it so serious. Have some fun and most of all, happy, happy painting. Please subscribe and come back often. Bye guys.