 Welcome to Monet Café. Visitors, subscribers, newcomers, and friends, I'm artist Susan Jenkins. I hope you love today's lesson where I will be painting on Black Canson drawing paper. Yes, it can be done. Oh, and if you haven't subscribed, I hope you will. I'd love to have you as part of the Monet Café family. I was really happy with the result I achieved using a new strategy with Black Drawing Paper. Now, I have used this Black Canson drawing paper to paint on before, usually with harder pastels. But this time, I tried a new approach that you will learn about soon. And because so many of you have asked about the music that I use, particularly in a video I did of an alcohol wash with some beautiful blue flowers, this is the same song. It's from the YouTube Audio Library. I don't have to worry about copyright issues. It's called Frolick by E. Jammy Jams. The reference image is one of my own. I will be providing this image to my patrons from my Patreon page. And this was from a trip, I believe, to North Carolina in our conversion van, Mini Motorhome. My son and daughter-in-law love the tiny living so much, they got their own conversion van. And it is such a blessing to go on trips with them. Now, we may live tiny in the van, but we certainly don't eat tiny. It's amazing the meals we can create in the baby kitchen. Oh, and Jackson loves to travel too and sometimes meet new friends. And those are a few of the reasons I like traveling, but also because I can capture some great reference images. It is my goal to take my show on the road, so to speak, and my patrons are helping me to do that. As I said before, I use this Canson black drawing paper pad often. I actually can just do some little paintings in it, which are fun, especially like I said, the harder new pastels or Rembrandt's. But I can actually use some of the softer pastels on this too. I use this for lessons. This was a lesson on all the different strokes and markmaking you can do with pastels. But I also use it for storing pastels, especially when I'm not at home like I am now. It's a great way to store your pastel work and protect it between sheets of glassine or tracing paper. And here is a sneak peek to an upcoming painting tutorial. Can you tell I am missing Tampa? We're in the middle of a winter storm here in Mississippi. All right, here we go. I love using a pre-cut mat, a standard size. This is for a 5x7 image, but the outer perimeter is conveniently 8x10. So one mat serves for two different sizes. Now the magic ingredient for this lesson is Liquitex Clear Liquid Gesso. So this clear gesso is often, I use it a lot in my videos, I use it when I do an underpainting on watercolor paper, and then I put the gesso on top so I can apply pastel. And the reason it works for pastel painting is because it has a slight grit to it, almost like a little bit of sand in it. So while the black paper served okay for painting with harder pastels, it really didn't get a lot of layering because the paper doesn't have any tooth or any grit. Like we talk about a lot with pastel painting. Now normally I would put the gesso in a little dish, but I was kind of being lazy here and just putting it directly on the brush. But I want you to notice my strokes as I'm applying the gesso. I'm actually painting in the same direction as the elements in the reference image, which gives a nice textural feel and a feeling of energy. Now it will warp a bit. I just kind of rolled it a little bit while it was drying, and the final painting ended up being very flat. These are my initial pastels. You'll see me grab other colors as I work, but most of these are from the Paris collection. It's a 120 half stick set. I really like it. I do have it listed in my Amazon shop where whether you buy it from there or not, you can conveniently find it in the link in my description of this video. I will be keeping this first part of the lesson in real time and only speed it up a little bit at the end. So I wanted to let you guys know that working on a dark surface is interesting because it's already dark. How do you get in your dark values? I'm actually using a purple here. It looks different on the paper than it does in my hand. Now you can see it a little better. You can kind of see where I painted with the gesso a little bit of a tree line, and I really did like creating it this way. It sort of gave me a guide as to where things were, which was interesting. What I'm doing now is I'm using what I have learned about color temperature. Now right now, doesn't that blue look incredibly bright? It's because it's on the black surface, but as I add other elements, it will gradually not look so stark. So it's like I always say color and value is determined or perceived by what's around it. So right now, all it has is that black surrounding. So as I add other colors and values, that perception will change. It's really quite fascinating. Now why am I using these blues and purples? In the reference photo, I often say reference images lie, and I shouldn't say they lie, but they capture everything based on the camera's automatic settings. So unless you purposely change some of the settings, specifically the aperture, it's going to try to focus everything, and it often doesn't represent things well for painting. In my last video, I taught about color temperature, how it behaves in nature, but we can exaggerate these things to give a more interesting colorful and painterly end result to our paintings. Also notice how I'm working very loosely over the entire area. I advise always not to get bogged down into any one area, because what's going to happen is you may end up with your painting not being consistent with value and color, unless you try to get the majority of the large shapes, colors, and values down first. I find for me, it's the best way to paint. I have seen artists who quite wonderfully work from a teeny area and detail it all and work out. I typically find those paintings aren't as painterly though, and I know a lot of you guys, I mean the name of the channel is Monet Café, right? So we are typically trying to get a bit more of a painterly and impressionistic style, at least I am anyway. Now once again, notice the big shapes. I decided to make the sky rather than in the reference photo where the bands of the clouds are kind of going like a horizontal band to almost a bit up to the left. I decided to make it reaching up. I wanted to make a little, I decided in the little grasses down below. I want to make a little patch of some little sweet little flowers, and I love to create paintings where it looks like creation is praising the Lord, and often I will exaggerate things or create a sense of motion to lift the eye up or to give some sort of energy and just drama to the final painting. So again, you can see with my sky, I'm making the lighter areas reaching up more rather than going across, and I'm working on big shapes. And I am just gradually, lightly adding, I know I want to add, you see at the bottom on the reference photo the pink colors that I'm sort of adding right here. I did want to accentuate that, but when we have colors and a sunset down below, usually those same colors are going to reflect up underneath the clouds. And the reference photo didn't show that as much, but that's why I am purposely creating that same color reaching up into the the clouds that are above. It'll create some color harmony and definitely some interest. I want to talk a little bit about working on papers or surfaces prepared with liquid gesso like I have done here. I have gotten quite a few comments from artists, maybe you, where you've tried it and it felt a little coarse or a little too gritty. Some of you have said you've even sanded it down a bit and but then it didn't have enough tooth. So I know there might be some frustration with this, but what I have found typically is that initially it does look rather textured and not smooth. Look at the sky here, but I also have found the longer that I've been an artist, that actually a lot of pastel papers behave this way to a degree, but this perhaps a little bit more, that this is really just the loose beginning. The longer you work on things, the more layers that you add, the more they kind of start to blend themselves. So embrace that textural feel at the beginning. If you're going to try this, I always recommend, especially if you're trying something new, do a small study. Coat some paper, some black drawing paper, some matte board. You can tone it or tint it and then put some clear gesso on it and then just play around with a few studies. Now I do end up blending the sky a bit that I'll talk about a little bit in a minute. Right here I'm adding some of those lighter little marks on top of those grasses and it could feel a little weird, like I said, working on black paper because things are backwards or opposite as to when you're working on a lighter surface, but if you focus on the large shapes and the values and not get too carried away in any particular area, it will eventually feel like it's coming together. I really like here how I've created those negative shapes within the, you see how the sky is meeting the tree line. Look at those interesting shapes there. So I've just kind of carved the trees out with the sky. That's what negative painting is. It's working on the negative side of an object rather than the actual object itself. So now I'm adding some of the trees in front of the purples and the blues that I added. Now let me tell you my strategy here with the trees. I'm getting back to the fact that in the reference photo they're very dark. I'm going to keep them dark down at the base, but the top parts I wanted to accentuate distance and how do we perceive or achieve distance in a painting? It's those cooler colors. Like I said, the video right before this one is on color temperature. This particular pastel had one of those little edges. Sennelier pastels just so you know they're wonderful, but they're never rolled very smoothly. So when you first start using them, they might have those little tails on them that you might have to kind of sand down a little bit. But again, my strategy is to create distance. So I use the cooler blues and purples to create almost another level of trees in the back and it's going to give depth to my painting. Now I'm using some very neutral kind of not bright yellowy greens here because this tree that's in the foreground to the right is in shadow. And the only thing that's going to have those yellowy warmer greens are the tips of the leaves that are on the outer edge on the left hand edge there. Kind of comparing some warmer tones here to work into the tree. Maybe I'm thinking about doing some sky holes, but then I was like, nah, I'm not quite ready for that. And I decided to add a little bit of this warmth a little down deeper into the negative painting of the tree lines. And as I work on the sky bit here, let me talk about that tree line actually some more and where those warmer tones are. I know that I'm going to create that particular area as the brightest part. Look in the reference photo at the the far distant tree line. You see that little bit of pink that's kind of silhouetting or going around that distant tree. That's what I'm going to punch up with color. I wanted to keep it a lighter value, but we have a tendency sometimes to go too light with sunset type of scenes like this. So I encourage you, and what I've learned, is to resist the urge to go light, like the the lightest value yellow you can find or the lightest value pink, and instead go brighter, brighter with color intensity. It doesn't necessarily have to be a paled out value. Also too, when you're carving in sky holes behind areas like that where the tree is reaching up and you see some of the pink, eventually you'll see me working on that area again, try to use a value that's a little bit darker than the value that's reaching up above it. I'll try to talk about that more once I'm actually working on that area again. So you can see I'm just gradually working in some sky colors. I am using the reference photo as a guide, but not as a strict guide. Again, I am trying to give my own interpretation of this. I actually have, I was now looking back, I covered that wide up. I had just said about working brighter and not necessarily lighter, so I wasn't quite sure about some of the the lighter values I add there, and again in a minute you'll see me. I do blend the sky, and you'll see what blending tool that I use that I forget to mention sometimes it works really good. So there's a little cliffhanger. All right, now I am working again some of these distant trees, breaking out my artistic license to make them appear further away by the simple strategy and technique of color temperature. Once again, the video right before this one on color temperature will tell you all about how that works. You can see now how I'm still working in some of the blues and purples, and notice that everything is still so very suggestive. I haven't drawn any leaves or painted any leaves in this, so keep your strokes loose and suggestive. Now here is my example of the sky and the colors I was mentioning. Kind of glad I mentioned it before because now you can pay attention. Notice how this pink is brighter, not necessarily a light pink. It's kind of a light to middle value pink, but notice how that just made that pop in the distance. This orange, notice how it's a brighter color, not necessarily a light value orange, and this is one of the focal point strategies that I've learned. That's another video you might like. It's five ways to create a focal point. That was one of my favorite videos to make because I learned so much making it, but I have learned that color intensity can serve as focal point. If it's the most intense color in an area of a painting, your eye is going to be drawn to that, and surely in this painting you could see, even in this loose stage, how your eye is definitely drawn to those brighter colors. Now I'm just gently working them into the clouds, once again for color harmony, to just make the painting feel more consistent, but I'm not overdoing it. Super light, light touch. Now do you notice that the sky, especially where I've worked on it in the area down above those trees, you notice how it's filling in a bit. It's not quite as chunky as it was before, so the more you just gradually layer and keep a light touch, the better you're going to or the happier you're going to be with your painting. Now I'm going to add a little paint to some of those little tops of the grasses and now I'm going to work a little bit on this bigger tray. There again is that Sennelier pastel that had the little tail to it. It wasn't smooth on the end, so I'm kind of trying to work it down, turning it around, trying to get a smooth area. I'm going to start adding some of the lighter values to the outside tips of those tree branches and leaves. Again I haven't painted a single leaf, just shapes. It's amazing what the brain will put together without a lot of information and if you want to know what creates that painterly effect, that's usually it. Not giving the viewer so much information that they don't need. We just need a little bit of information. Now the places you do want to give more information or more detail will be your focal areas. Once again about focal point and the bright colors drawing your eye in. Detail is another one of the focal point strategies. Your eye will go to detail versus non-detail. So reserve your detailed areas for where you want the focal point. Now do you see this little kind of, I love these interesting greens. It's a cool green, sort of right before you get to turquoise. So it was a nice green to add to those little tips of the grasses in the foreground reaching up. And I just decided to tone down some of those background trees, light them up. It's a lighter value, so I'm using that in my favor. Often you can use a lighter value, even if it's not the exact color, once you've got a few layers down, just to soften things like I'm doing here. But that little patch of grass in the foreground, you see now how it's starting to stand out. One of the reasons is because I'm keeping that black of the paper around it. It has some contrast, which is a third element of focal point strategy. Is contrast the difference between lights and darks? And because there's a decent contrast there, it's going to be more of a focal point than some other areas. So that's what I want to be more of the focal point. The little flowers leading your eye up to those distant trees and then the bright glow of the sunset behind it. Then the eye will continue to explore, hopefully, throughout the painting. Find some fun little places to visit and enjoy. And the reference image was pretty dark, especially with that tree on the right hand side. And I was playing around with trying to lighten it up a bit, but I think I got some of the areas a little bit too light. So I'll play around with that a little bit more later. But it's starting to take shape. It's still very chunky. And this is again where I like to encourage you to resist the urge to get caught up or overwhelmed by any particular area that's not working out. I have learned over the years that when something's not working out, move on. Come back to it later because you will just get bogged down in that one area, get frustrated, and your frustration will affect the rest of your painting. So I wasn't super excited about some of those strokes I made with the leaves in that tree, but I'm like, you know what, let me just, let me go somewhere else. And so now what I'm doing, I'm kind of negatively painting some of those teal colors in the tree. I don't have the where they are just right, but it's kind of like a little color note for me to remember that I want to add some of those teals. And that's a perfect example again about color value getting a little bit darker when you carve them in as what's called sky holes, which are the little spaces in between the tree branches that you see. And that also is what's called negative painting. Rather than drawing all the branches or the leaves around the holes, you do the whole mass of the tree, and then do like I'm doing here, carve into the spaces negatively. I'm going to zoom in in just a second on this little area that I'm working on so that you can kind of see it a little more clearly. And once again, it's negative painting, kind of carving in. And sky holes are a bit interesting and challenging. And I love to see artists who have just mastered it so well that they get everything right on the first stroke. I don't always do that, but I think I'm getting better. And you know, that's just, we just have to be happy that we're getting better and not always compare ourselves to everyone else. All right, now you can see where I have carved in a little bit of negative spacing there with some of the pinks and the the orangey colors behind the trees. And now I'm using this more of a deeper turquoise color to do some negative painting. We'll first add some of that color to the tree tops there, and then negatively paint the color in some areas in the little spaces where those trees might be peeking through. Also here, I know that down in the shadowy areas of this tree, the larger tree on the right, there's going to be some cooler tones, so I'm adding that as well. And at this point I have the majority of the black part of the paper painted on with bits of it peeking through, which I actually kind of like. I really do enjoy working on dark surfaces, but like I said with playing around with the clear gesso, it's probably a good idea to do some smaller studies if you decide to work on a dark surface. Now they do have dark sanded surfaces as well. I know that UART makes a paper UART dark, and also I believe Cinellié, LaCarte Pastelcard has some dark surfaces. I know they have a really nice kind of midnight blue color, and so you can play around with papers that are already sanded and have a dark tone to them. But if you want to play around on regular paper, like this Canson paper, you can do so with pastels alone, like you saw in the beginning of this video, where I just used some harder pastels, such as the Prismacolor New Pastels, or Rembrandt's are a little bit of a harder pastel. And then you can throw in some softies too. I add some soft pastels on unsanded paper, but as a rule of thumb, it's typically best if you if you have to choose an order to paint in, it's better to use your harder pastels first and gradually get to your softest softies at the end. And the reason for this is that once you get a few layers down, you can't get harder pastels to sometimes even show up. It's like they almost slide across the surface. But the real buttery softies, like the Senneliers I'm using here, or Unison, Mount Vision, Mount Vision is kind of a nice in-between pastel. But the softest ones usually show up quite nicely at the end and they have their brilliant color. Now I often don't work in that order, like as a rigid rule. I sometimes just let color be my guide. And you can do that if you keep a light enough touch. If you have a heavy hand and you're putting down thick layers to begin with, you may get your paper overlayered very quickly. And what happens is colors get muddy and you reduce your ability to put down any other colors. So a light touch is the right touch. I can't remember what artist said that. But it's definitely best to keep a light touch. Now at this point in the painting, I wasn't sure if I was going to leave the sky very textural and you know a bit unfinished looking like this or if I was going to blend it. And I decided that it was getting too much attention. I am still playing around with it. I do want to add some of these yellows. You'll see before the painting is done I'm adding some of these buttery kind of an orange yellow. And again getting it like like that sunset that's happening behind the trees where we're not quite seeing the golden glow of the sun. But we know it's back there somewhere. And so it will be reflected up upon some of the lower clouds. And I think it was in my last video that I was saying we can use the rules of color and value. But we can also use our brains to think about what would really be happening. And sure enough we would have some of those yellowy, orangey colors highlighted up on top of the clouds. And here's where I decided to blend. And here is the mystery blending tool. It's just a paper towel. I've actually used paper towels in the past to blend with. Now you'll see a lot of the pastels kind of coming off. But that's okay. I am also turning the paper towel in certain areas because if you just keep using the same spot over the different colors it's going to get muddied. Now what's my goal here? My goal is to get it softer looking so it's not getting as much attention. It looks a little bit more like a sky. And also to reduce the black parts peeking through the sky. So I'm not going to see as much of the black in the sky now. Which was actually something I was happy I did. I think it looks more like a sky now, right? It did dull it out a bit. I do add some more color to the sky soon. Now this point is when I am speeding it up. You'll notice I'm getting a little bit more fun with colors starting to make things more defined. But did you notice that I was about what 20 something minutes into the video and I hadn't even really gotten super detailed about anything. I don't really get super detailed about a lot of things in this painting. But I had fun. So if you want that loose and impressionistic feel work the whole painting instead of getting bogged down in one area. Keep a light touch and don't be afraid of the yucky stages because that's kind of how it looks when you get started with a pastel painting. If you're doing it correctly and or with that impressionistic goal in mind. It's going to look a little unfinished before it finally starts coming together. You'll see that I've been adding some purples and some of the shadowy areas and now you notice that warmth you see that kind of burgundy. I'm using it to carve down into the trees. Remember the values get darker and I'm duplicating it throughout different areas of the painting to bring it together and have the painting feel harmonious. You see that little bit of that burgundy in the trees where the trunks are kind of and then down a little bit where the valley is where some of those other maybe grasses or bushes are and I really liked giving it that warmth because there's some warmth in the sky the pinks and the oranges and it would have felt too segmented if I had warmth in the sky and no warmth in the landscape. So now I'm going to add that lovely song I mentioned at the beginning of the video. You guys can enjoy and I am going to zoom in a bit more so you can see how I'm working a bit more on these sky holes for the trees. So I hope you enjoy. Watch to the end. Please comment, like, subscribe, and become part of this wonderful artistic family. I decided on the wildflowers because I thought they just created interest in a focal point and another element, this is another focal point element, I think it's called convergence or pointing where you're kind of pointing in a direction that you want the viewer to go to or admire and these flowers were reaching up towards that sky which will lead the viewer up to explore the heavens and so I wanted to keep them dainty and light and nothing too detailed so I played around with them, had some fun, decided on kind of pink blue and white flowers and if you're a patron of mine from my Patreon page and you decide to create from this tutorial I will have the reference image for you in your post and also I love it when you guys, my patrons, post your work in our homework album so I look forward to seeing your work patrons and I hope everyone watching on Monet Cafe learned something and just enjoyed the experience. It was definitely a healing experience for me as I am still currently in Mississippi caring for my mother-in-law with terminal cancer but we are bringing her back home to Tampa, Florida so I will be back in my studio soon. Here is the final painting which felt hopeful and was indeed healing so I hope you enjoyed and as always happy painting.