 Welcome my artistic friends and visitors to Monet Cafe. I'm bringing you a lesson today that I've wanted to do for a while on how we can make energy in our paintings and create movement in our art. You know, we can have a great photograph. This is a photo that I took myself from Crystal River, Florida. What a beautiful place. But we're not necessarily copying a photograph. We don't want to copy it. We want to interpret it. And you know, it takes a lot of practice and learning a whole lot about good art. And there are some basic rules. You know, we got to get composition right and some of the core things I talk about in my videos. But once you start to get those things established, you can start to invent and or reinvent your photograph and interpret it in a way that is more painterly. So that's my goal today is to kind of show you how I create that movement energy and impressionistic feel within a painting. These are some neocolor water soluble wax pastels. I'm not even sure why they're called pastels because they're really kind of like crayons. But don't use regular crayons. Please don't do that. These are really neat little painting tools that I break them often and I kind of use the sides. But all I'm doing here is I'm working on a prepared surface that I've already made. If you're curious to what that orange board is there, I do have some videos. I'll try to put a link in here so you can see how to do these. I like it. I love that orange glow underneath my work and I like just a complementary color. It's great underneath landscape paintings. Now all I'm doing here is using the wax pastels to block in the basic composition. I'm not getting any detail here. I'm literally just looking at the reference photo. It already has a great composition as is. So I didn't have to change a lot in this one. But I'm getting in the values. You can't see right here. It doesn't look very dark right now. But with these wax pastels you add water or alcohol to them and literally paint them. So you'll see in a minute how they'll darken up. But again, I'm just using the side. I love to break them in half and just kind of sketch out the basic composition. So I have this right now in real time. I know a lot of you guys like that. I will have to speed it up soon though because this video would take forever if I didn't speed it up some. So you'll watch me now. I'm going to speed this up a little bit and you'll see me. I'm just getting in the values, getting in specifically all the darks. Notice those clouds. They have a lot of dark colors underneath them or values underneath them. So just blocking that all in. Now I've just sped this up two times at speed. I wanted to mention that sometimes, you know, I might have people watching my videos and think, I don't have that product. I need that orange board. I need those wax pastels. But no, you don't. These concepts work the same with different tools that you have or whatever mediums you might have. You might just have a regular piece of sanded paper. You might. You can practice this stuff with regular drawing paper. The same things about value and a lot of the things I'm going to talk about work the same across different materials that you might have. So don't get frustrated. Don't feel like you have to go out and buy all these things that I'm showing you. You can use. You might have new pastels, hard pastels. You could use those with this. You could do it on watercolor paper. I have some videos where I talk about how you can make your own pastel surfaces on watercolor paper. So use what you have. But mostly just practice and have fun. Don't get too serious about everything. Get serious enough to care. But don't get so serious that you beat yourself up if something doesn't come out just right. Like I said in my last video, it takes a lot of paintings before you really feel like, wow, I'm an artist. But you can have a gift, a natural given gift. And usually I find people, if they have a gift, it's usually because they love it. They love art. But the rules can be learned. You just don't know them all yet. So you can learn them if you have a passionate spirit about learning these things. And you just really love it and want to do it. So so use whatever tools you have and keep practicing and just enjoy and love this journey that we're on because it's fun. And the great thing is we can do it together. Now what you just saw there was rubbing alcohol. I use it. I use it instead of water. You can use water too, because it dries faster. I've just got a really cheap, very kind of coarse bristly brush here. Again, this doesn't come out as bright as it would. I typically use this on a white or a lighter surface. So because the surface is orange, you know, it doesn't show up as much. But it gives the same idea. Again, I'm blocking in big shapes. You always want to work big, down to small. You never want to start focusing on little details right now. That's going to make your painting very tight. And again, the focus of this is to create energy and movement in our painting. And you're not going to have that movement if you're focused on the little teeny weeny little details and all the little bumps in the cloud and the little ripples in the water. Now I've seen art that I love that does have everything so detailed like that. But typically even those photorealism artists, they still start out with big shapes and work down to the smaller shapes. But again, I focus a lot on a painterly, loose style. I just like that look. Again, our name Monet cafe. I loved how Monet had his impressionistic style. So that's kind of my, my heart is there. And I think a lot of you guys relate. So now you can see kind of how they're brightening up with that alcohol that I'm putting on. And I am even though I look like I'm being pretty messy here, I'm still focusing on keeping the values where they need to be. But when you see like when I painted that sky in this water, notice how I'm making big strokes. And some I go across and then some I, I try to go more in the movement of how the water is. I do that more later with the pastels. But again, see how they're just brightening up like that. And it's really kind of fun. You know, it starts with that dreamy look right now. And that's one of the things I like about the wax pastels. But again, just at this point, basics, basics, big shapes and values. And notice how I'm, I'm not staying, not like coloring in the lines, so to speak. I'm, I'm letting the clouds kind of blend and, and some of the energy from the wax pastels and the movement just drip and run all over the place. So I hope that makes sense. It does in my brain anyway. So now I'm just blowing it dry and feeling it to make sure it's all the way dry. And then I can start applying the pastels. Now this is a similar concept to what I just did. I'm working still with big shapes and with value. Now right now that you notice that in between those two clouds up top, it might look like, why is she adding that purplish blue? You get energy and, and impact and beauty. I think when you combine multiple colors, it would be very flat if I just tried to find that exact color blue and paint on my painting, that color blue that I see. Your colors are going to vibrate and just be more alive. Again, about creating that energy, they definitely will create more energy when you layer multiple colors. So in pastels, you typically layer your darks first with your lights on top, unlike watercolor, which is opposite. And so that's why I'm focusing on getting some of these darker pastels in right now. And you know, some of you guys might be able to relate to me. You have to paint a long time before you start building some confidence. I think we all lack confidence sometimes unless you're just one of those outstanding fantastic artists that's been painting forever. But my, my little lack of confidence used to always come in when I would start doing this and painting loosely and I'd back up and I'd go, this just looks like a mess. Have any of you guys ever done that? My husband used to make fun of me because he's like, you say that every single time. But that's my point here is it does kind of look like a mess because if I was to have it look fixed and already looking like trees and stuff now, I would lose that energy and that painterly feel. So it is going to look a little bit like a mess at first, but a mess within the rules. Okay. I still have to get my composition right and my motion right. Notice how I'm making my lines move like the water down below that I just did. I'm not just doing it flat, straight across with all of the lines. I'm moving them in kind of the direction how the water's flowing, but I'm being very free with it and not so fixed. Again, you can't see all the colors I'm choosing right now, but I'm picking colors that may be obviously they're not the same that's in the scene. They may be a little exploratory, but you can always play around with color as long as you get your value right. You have to get your value right or the painting is not going to look professional. So stay within the value, correct values, but experiment with color. There's still rules to color too. I don't mean to say you just no holds bars barred, but you can get a little bit more fun with color than you can changing values or getting too creative with values. Now you may have noticed the bumpy surface. That's because I created my own board and it's on a piece of matte board. I think I actually used the bumpy side, but once I get my general layer of pastels down, I'm using this piece of pipe foam insulation. Nothing real fancy. You buy it at a hardware store. You don't have to go to an art supply store or anything. So you might be able to catch a glimpse of it. I just cut off a little piece of pipe foam insulation and I use it to blend. I don't do a lot of blending, but sometimes at the beginning stages like this, it's good to kind of soften it up, especially if you're wanting to get that look of distance like the sky. You want it to look like it's further away. Some things I do leave bumpy or texture. That's a better word. I leave with more texture, but in this case some of the stuff I wanted to soften it up a little bit. Now here I go again putting down more value. So you see you got to be patient. You can't get too anxious to get everything just sew right away or you'll lose that painterly style. So it does take a lot of layering, a lot of work, a lot of practice, but before you know it, if you keep just working, you're going to have a lot that you don't like and then finally you're going to start to say, hey, this is starting to look like something. I know some of you guys can relate because I've watched your work on our Facebook group, Monet Cafe Artwork and I've seen some of you that literally just started experimenting with pastels and then before you know it, with a lot of practice, I've watched you guys just improve so much. It's so fun for me. I feel like a mama artist watching you guys. Now I'm using that bright blue back there. Cooler colors like blues and cool greens, they recede, they push back. That would not have worked if I put a red mountain back there, okay? So things tend to cool out in the distance. Now I put down a little bit of a darker color than it's going to be eventually. I actually end up darkening that up. That's going to be kind of like the sky. Yeah, there I darken it up now, but it's going to, those mountains in the background, I'm actually going to lighten them up a little bit, but you want to always put your darker down first. Again, creating interest in your colors. You don't want just a flat color, so I do enhance that color a little bit later. Oh, I missed a little filming there, so the clouds just popped in. They're a little dark shadows, like they're holding rain. So again, I'm just going to paint a little bit here. I love talking to you guys, but sometimes maybe you just want to watch the painting. So I'm going to play the music, let you watch a little bit, and pop back in when I have a comment or two. I wanted to comment right here that some people might think this is an unusual color for the sky, but notice that really pale neutral green that I used. See how that created energy in the painting and interest, and again, as long as the value's right. It looked like that was the right value for those distant clouds. You see those clouds that are real far away in between, like in the middle of those trees. If you look back, there's kind of some softer clouds, not the ones that are formed so precisely. But anyway, that was a value that seemed to work, and a lot of times I like to share or repeat the same colors throughout my painting. It brings a harmony to it, so I use some of that pale neutral green in the clouds, as well as the clouds in the foreground, as well as the background. Now, I'm focusing on value with these clouds. Notice, you might not can notice, but I haven't used white, and I don't use white in this. I do use some lighter blues, and I think some lighter pinks. But value is dependent on what it is next to. In other words, that white is going to look white if it's next to something dark. So that's kind of like a little illusion that you're creating. But I'm making sure that some of my distant clouds, they're not going to have that same bold punch of white. Colors and values decrease in the background, and they cool out in the background. So these are all little things that you just learn the more you do. And it's kind of fun, because I have one of my videos where I think I call it the Magic Tricks of Art, and it really is. It's just a lot of rules you follow, and once you learn the rules and you practice, you can make them work in your favor to create beautiful paintings. So again, I'm getting a little bit fun with color here, but actually, now that color there actually is kind of local to the scene. Notice that the green that I'm adding there is very similar to the green that is on those those marshy grasses, okay? I'm using the more neutral ones out to the sides and those warmer lighter value greens more in the foreground grasses. I'm kind of creating an illusion there. These little punches of that reddish, orangy reddish color is just going to give interest. Again, make a little bit more energy to your painting, then if you just try to emulate or reproduce the colors that are actually there. I talked in one of my last videos too about training your eyes to see subtle colors. I sort of zone out when I'm painting. Some of you might be able to understand if you've been painting a while. I just start almost just like reacting and squinting a lot and just looking at the colors, and then before you know what it becomes just involuntary really, you know? And I'm looking forward to getting even better. I know I on this channel I come off as the teacher and everything which I'm again I love to focus on teaching the beginner, but I am always still the student myself. I'm always critiquing my work. I am not anywhere the artist that I want to be. I have my artist that I admire so much and I look at their work and and just love it just like you guys do it with other artists. So we're always just learning. I'm sorry for the film popping around a little bit. Now I just added a little bit of that blue. Remember how I said I was going to come back with another blue to give it more interest on top of those not mountains but trees in the background? And you see how that blue? Now I'm starting to get some energy there. Look how that just brought that painting to life. Now the strokes that I'm doing in the water that's going to create the movement. Again I almost feel like it's a dance as much as a painting. And I love when I have limited amount of time to work on a painting. I don't always love that but sometimes I do because it forces me to keep it loose and keep the energy in it. And that's what happened in this case. I only had an hour or two before I had to be somewhere and I was like I'm just going to put something up on the board and start working on it. My light keeps changing in my studio. If you notice the painting looks dull and then it looks bright. But anyway so now it's starting to take some shape. Okay we're starting to see that shoreline and it's starting to come into view. The clouds still they're going to get more smoothing. Not so chunky. Actually I do kind of keep it a little bit chunky because I liked it in this case. But the more pastels I put on it. Again I say a lot that I don't like to blend with my fingers or a lot with with at the end of a painting with that pipe foam insulation. But I actually will use a harder pastel. I'm doing it right now. That at the end the harder pastel itself will blend things. Okay it'll start to blend the chunkiness away from something. So um so all right I'm going to paint a little bit more now and I hope you're learning. I really do. I want you just to keep trying though. The greatest way to learn is to practice. Just get it out and do it. And like I always say don't start some big series piece. Get you something small get a small piece of paper. Find you a little maybe a marshy scene or something and just play around with it. Even if you just do a sketch. So we're always learning and growing. Now this is getting to the point of where I'm being purposeful and trying to finish things up but not overwork it. There's a point where sometimes we can get so nitpicky with something we end up just overworking it and we later go oh man I wish I'd have stopped back you know 10 minutes ago or whatever. But I am still getting a little creative with color. You see I'm adding some pinks under those clouds. I do soften that up later but I hope you understand the point of this lesson about creating energy and movement. If you notice if you look at the reference image on the right which is a lovely place. Oh my goodness an artist could recreate that just with the exact local color that you see there. But with my interpretive color and my loose strokes I have attempted to create an energetic painting and an impressionistic painting versus a realistic static painting. So again I hope you learned something from this. Keep practicing. Keep enjoying this beautiful journey of art. I'm so glad so many people have subscribed to this channel. If you haven't please do so. It's a fun place to be. I think a lot of us just like being together. And please join us on Monet Cafe Art Group on Facebook. If you'd like to get some instruction from lots of other great artists there's so much help on that channel. So anyway as always you guys happy painting blessings and come back often. Bye.