 Hello artists and welcome to Monet Cafe. I am happy to bring you today the number eight painting in a series of nine tiny paintings and I'm calling this one Periwinkle Beauties. Now all of the lessons are self-contained so you can learn without seeing the previous ones. Oh and please subscribe if you haven't. We'd love for you to be part of Monet Cafe, all of the family here. So let's get started painting this little two and a half by two and a half inch painting. All of the paintings, all of the nine were done on one piece of pastel matte. Now you can use alternative surfaces if you have them. I also make lots of homemade pastel surfaces as well so use what you have. And I'm doing an under painting with watercolor. I'm using the Arteza 36 watercolor set. I'll have a link to this set in the description of this video. Now I'm getting my reference photos for all of these paintings from PMP-art.com and it's a great resource for reference images. This is the image. I'm not sharing it while I paint but I want to give credit to the photographer here and you can find this at PMP.com and I'll have a link to this in the description as well. PMP is a free site. Okay so you do have to sign up but you can have access to all of these. Now I always get a little sketch in with these paintings. I don't often sketch. Sometimes I just start painting but with these little ones with some of the flower intricacies I thought it would be a good idea. Now I'm just putting water down in between the flowers. This pastel matte surface I'm using is water-friendly. Thank goodness and it's already ready to apply pastels. It's got a little sort of a gritty surface that holds the pastels. Now what kind of under painting am I gonna do with this little one? I've done different strategies on every painting. I think if you go and watch all when they're finally done it'll be nine paintings. Each painting has some lesson in itself that they're not all exactly the same in other words. So sometimes I'll do a local color under painting. Sometimes I'll do a complimentary color under painting. That's what this one is. There are well there's a lot of blues in the flowers. I'm going to talk about that periwinkle color but there's also a lot of greens in the grasses. A complement to blue and green what's opposite on the color wheel is red and often when you use a color's complement and you put it down underneath the final color it gives a nice little interaction between the colors and makes it much more vibrant and interesting. So you can see I'm just kind of dabbing in some of these reds and I'm only by the way speeding. So just the sketch part that you saw and this bit of watercolor painting that was more of the watercolor wash. So I've got my complimentary color in around the flowers. I'm going to dab in a little bit of some orange just for interest to give it a little bit of a golden color and to me it's really so fun with watercolor how you just let the water and the color just play. When you don't get too stiff or serious that's just one of the beautiful qualities about watercolor is how you can get these just really fun accidents sometimes and also you can pretty easily create an impressionistic painterly effect. Now the flowers you can't see the whole thing are red violet or periwinkle bluish so I'm looking opposite on the color wheel and I'm in the family of yellow and yellow greens and I thought okay let's go ahead and make these flowers more of a greenish or greenish yellow. Now I'm going to make my own green by using this yellow kind of a lemony yellow and a cyan blue. Often I don't like the the pre-made greens in a set and I find the greens that you mix yourself are much more interesting. So there's my lemony yellow and here's my little bit of a cyan blue and they make a kind of a cooler green. It's kind of neat. If you add more yellow it's going to make it warmer. I did add a little bit of that other like an Indian yellow right there to it to get it a little more green. So here we go with these green flowers that I'll eventually turn into that pretty periwinkle blue color and I had a video I think it's about two or three videos back now where I actually did a green underpainting. You know people ask questions about underpainting all the time and one of my favorite underpainting techniques is similar to this one a complementary underpainting where you use the complement to a color or complement to the main colors in your painting. You lay that down or you do a little value study with a warm tone. But often we wouldn't choose green as an underpainting and the reason is because you're as a complementary underpainting anyway because your field is usually green and a landscape painting. There's so many trees and so usually we pick these warmer tones but I actually did in this video use green as the underpainting the main underpainting. I use different values of greens. I actually use those weird greens you get in sets sometimes that look really artificial and I gave my reasoning as to why I chose green and the painting works so you might want to check that video out. Okay, I'm reinforcing a little bit of this in here and another question I get all the time is why do you do an underpainting if you just cover it all up with pastel and I try not to cover it all up with pastel because the underpainting does it with not a pretty color right there. I had a little bit more blue than yellow in that one. The underpainting really does give a neat effect if you let bits of it peek through. It just makes the color so much more interesting rather than just working on a white surface so try not to overwork your painting when you have an underpainting. I'm preaching to myself too here. All right now I'm actually going to let you watch me pick out some colors. I got this neat set of Mount Vision purples. I'm going to be using some of those you'll see. This is a neat little shelf I got. I've shared in my last few videos we're watching my mother-in-law we're caring for. We brought her home to live with us because she has terminal cancer and this is a shelf that came from her house and it made the perfect pastel shelf and I'm going to think of her every time I use it. So if you could use some open shelving in your studio or your little workspace wherever it is it works out really great. I really like this. Another question I get a lot is why do you keep your pastels in sets or do you mix them in as a whole palette like a workshop palette and I do both. Of course when you're starting you don't have many pastels you don't have many choices so as soon as you start to acquire a lot I do recommend that you put them in a set. This is a little mini one right here you see how I have all my colors by value and color and it's so neat it's a it's a smaller version of my workshop studio and it kind of happens by accident because I put all my pastels when I've worked on a painting back in this little set first eventually I moved them all back to the workshop set but I am I know I'm talking like crazy right now I feel like I want to teach you guys a lot in this one little lesson. Those are Diane Townsend pastels by the way I love her sets of green they're big old chunky pastels but they're so fun and these greens are so interesting but I've been keeping a lot of my pastels in their sets lately and just using them on this open shelf and then just putting them back. I've been enjoying that lately. Alright so I am just jabbering on now those are some warmer greens I'm getting and I'm going to talk a little bit about how to create this. I always loved these little flowers I've seen these a while flowers so many times they look lavender to look at them but they actually if you just painted these lavenders and purples I feel like they would just look rather flat so a lot of times with flowers that are blue or bluish-purple you've got to do a mix of blues and purples to get that dynamic color or to get that really interesting color. I don't have some of my blues added here that I'll add later but this is the general idea to start and I'll talk a little bit about these colors as I lay them down. Now once again I said the pastel matte surface is awesome it's already ready to apply pastel. What would happen if I did a watercolor painting underpainting on watercolor paper and I went to do the same thing with pastels? Well the pastels wouldn't layer it they eventually just get very flat and you end up just making mud they don't layer well as well as they do on a sanded surface and I've been saying lately that pastel matte surface is really interesting it doesn't feel as sanded like sandpaper like some of the artist sandpapers do but it still holds a lot of layering there's a little texture to it but it's a great surface for pastel painting and watercolor painting so I've really been enjoying it and all of these paintings like I mentioned were done on one sheet of pastel matte. Don't ask me how I got the idea to paint all these teeny little paintings on this one well I do know I was when we had just gotten my mother-in-law back and I think I just needed to zone out and do some things for art therapy myself and I thought some little happy spring paintings would be nice so what I'm doing here is just working in some dark values I know there are some deep roots this angle of this photograph is kind of looking above looking down into the flowers we're not seeing any sky or anything this is a little bit of a lighter value the first one it appears black but it wasn't I think it was a dark dark blue now this one is kind of a dark purple but a neutral purple it doesn't have a lot of punch to it and you notice how I have people asking all the time about pastel matte saying I can't get it to to smooth out you know I often at the beginning stages when I use pastel matte do a blending I don't blend at the end of my painting like never but some of the beginning stages I will and now you're gonna see me do it with my little new favorite blending tool which is a chamois cloth you know that you dry your cars with I got a huge section of it at the dollar store for dollar and I cut little corners of it off and I actually can reuse them I washed them and I can reuse them now this is one of those delicious Diane Townsend greens notice that it's a muted dull earthy green and it's a little bit of a cooler green and I thought that would be neat for some of those shadowy cool grasses now I'm gonna reinforce some of the dark areas and I'm just if you pull up the reference photo from the link that I provide and you follow along you'll see that the areas that I'm darkening are if you squint at the reference image you can see where the darkest areas are and I often recommend trying or maybe doing it often is painting in low light what that does it's it's kind of equivalent to equivalent to squinting because what squinting does is it reduces the light that's coming in your eyes when you reduce light you reduce color and so color is not getting in the way when you're squinting or when you dim the lights and you work so if you dim the lights when you're working you're able to choose values that are more accurate often and you're able to see values more accurately so those two kind of go hand in hand okay one more shot of blending here and see that the paper has that little orangey pinkish tone underneath it even though I've already applied some of the pastel now the centers of these flowers were interesting they're like a bright yellow we pretty yellowy color a warm yellow and you know if you've watched many of my videos I talk a lot about if we don't want colors to look flat or boring we need to put something underneath it to rest upon to give it some drama or some contrast some color contrast going on and so I'm adding this really pretty orangey red isn't that gorgeous I believe I know this is a Sennelier pastel you can tell it because Sennelier pastels they're round and they always have this little tail on them and I think it's because they're machine rolled versus hand rolled Mount vision pastels are hand rolled I went to the factory I know because I met the owner and I have a video on this channel of how pastels are made and it was so interesting but Sennelier pastels I think they're cut with a machine and it often when it lifts up I'm guessing this is how it works it maybe pulls up on the pastel that's a little wet still and you're left with this little tail and so sometimes you have to sand it down or sometimes I use it to point paint with like I just did so now you can see I'm adding this gorgeous golden color this is a unison pastel and I think unisons are probably hand rolled because they it doesn't ever seem to have those little imperfections on the edges but back to the Sennelier pastels I absolutely love them I don't care if they've got the little tails on them or not they're awesome pastels I love unisons too this is a Terry Ludwig it's malformed because this was when I had my husband and I were in between places to live and we were our house flooded in 2017 and we moved a few times and trying to get things together but I was painting outside and had my pastels sitting out I had to paint I didn't have a studio or anywhere to paint and the wind blew my easel over and broke a whole bunch of new Terry Ludwig pastels so that's why some of my Terry Ludwigs have little I look like little I don't know slivers or kind of awkward looking I'm gonna remember to not to put my pastels on the opposite side of my left hand because you guys keep seeing my arm reaching over now I got a little bit of that kind of little more of a lemony yellow I'm just kind of playing with color here but you see how I added a little more dark to the center of that flower it's like down in the depths of it and it's going to give the the center a little bit more of a three dimensional feel when you've got multiple colors playing like this and okay here we are at the Mount Vision pastels and I'm comparing another it was a Terry Ludwig a little chunky piece like I said that broke with the Mount Vision now look at this Mount Vision pastel do you see how smooth the edges are not like the Sennelier pastel I realized I think I thought that one was too light sometimes you got to play around a little bit now this little set of five purples I really really like I even I haven't even had a chance I usually take the labels off and I cut them and Mount Vision pastels are really a great pastel they're not too hard and they're not too soft and you get a lot for your money I know pastels the good ones are expensive but at least this one is larger I actually in the video I just made about painting a dragonfly I actually took a set of iridescent pastels the Mount Vision ones and I cut them into thirds in like this long Mount Vision pastel you see I took the label off and I use a cigar cutter you know cigars around and I don't cut cigars but I don't even know how I acquired this cigar cutter but they work great for cutting these and I cut them into little thirds and they're really the perfect size they're almost the size of a unison half pastel half stick now let me talk a little bit about these colors I called these periwinkle beauties because I absolutely love the color I don't know why I'm so drawn to it that's in between purple and blue I actually I sing play guitar and write music and I thought that's such a beautiful name for a song I've sung title and I've actually been playing around with writing a song that's called in between purple and blue and it's just a color that I love I love in between colors that you're like oh that's really so unusual and so I find that I'm really drawn to a lot of flowers that are that color and I've done quite a few of them in some videos recently I actually just did one that I haven't uploaded yet and you'll notice that I laid the purple down the flowers on first glance these flowers that you just said oh they're lavender but if I just did lavender or these purples all say I just used all the Mount Vision purples they're kind of different values of purples they I don't think they'd have that look that's a little bit more true to this flower and some of the other flowers that I've been creating so what I do is I lay down some purple you can either start with blue or start with purple I guess depending on the flower but you you layer the colors varying purples and blues and in this case with these flowers I'm getting the darker value purple down I'm just using this to make strokes and you see these are teeny paintings so it can be a little tedious to make these little strokes but I think that was part of the therapy of this you just really had to zone out and just relax and paint and so I'm doing them in directional ways and I'm considering the fact that these types of flowers are going to have multiple layers of petals you're going to have like maybe three layers of petals some really in the backside of the flower the middle flower and the top part of the petals so notice how I just did three values I put the darkest purple down first then I put the middle value purple and now I'm doing some of these lighter value purples as highlights on the top often too you want to consider where the Sun is coming from I think in this one the Sun was kind of just right overhead but sometimes if you're doing a different angle in your painting not every petal will have a highlight and your painting will look a little bit artificial or amateurish if you put highlights everywhere when that's not where the light source is it'll look much more believable if you paint the highlights where they really would be considering where the Sun would be so playing around a little more purple here and then eventually oh I'm gonna do more of these flowers eventually you're gonna see me add some blue to it I if I just left these flowers lavender like this I just don't think they'd be that interesting so that's what I think makes that pretty periwinkle color it's kind of in between purple and blue I just love that color and so and you see now how the flowers are pretty much going to color up most of the green underpainting but but it didn't matter it was kind of a fun color to add anyway and now I'm gonna start adding some of this blue I believe this is also a Mount Vision pastel and I'm just sneaking it in in some little places and it will definitely create some color interest and I think make the flower more true to what it is it it does have bits of blue it's not a lot but somehow I see it when I look at the flower I think too we can train ourselves to see color when I was first starting the YouTube channel I remember one of the questions I got all the time was how do you exaggerate the color of what you don't see in the photograph and my answer then and now is that I do see those colors in the photograph I know that sounds weird but I think I don't know if you guys have done it I did it with my patrons there's a color test that you can make I mean that you can take and it is who makes it is it pan pan tone colors all right so I mentioned it so I had to go find it it is by Pantone and I'll try to put the link in the description of this video what you do is you're given a range of colors in little bars like this it has two fixed colors on the opposite sides and you're to arrange the colors in a gradation from one to the next color and actually quite a few of my patrons got a score of zero which is a perfect score of this I'm just fiddling around with it right now but there's a bigger one that's actually a hundred colors and I remember I scored a hundred percent on that one so I think what happens is over the years we can train our eyes to see color better and actually see color in nature that we don't see at first glance maybe it's that we become students of color and of nature and our world so you can train yourself to see these things and also when the more you learn about value and color temperature also the more you'll be able to interpret photos correctly or more dynamically I should say we we can often veer from the photo artistically with color and have some fun exciting results okay so maybe you can see now how adding the blue with the lavender and like I said these are teeny weenie paintings so it's kind of hard to do in spots but it creates more color interest and that is really a lot of what I try to do when I paint is to not necessarily create what is so exactly like a photo or even what you see in real life but something that will be exciting and interesting I mean we're artists right we have that ability to create and and create or interpret you know with our own decisions that we make with color I think that's what's so fun it's pretty obvious with my channel I talk a lot about our creator and I am a true believer in the Lord Jesus Christ and I'm thankful a lot of you tolerate me when I talk about that but I think it just adds to the beauty of art and the joy of creation it's like a worship a praise and worship of our creator as we paint and we're just admiring his handiwork and he created us in his image and he's a creator so thus we can be creators now we never can create anything from scratch you know I heard a joke one time it was it was something like a scientist challenging God and saying we don't need you anymore we can we can create man we can clone people and God says something like okay well let's let's see what you got and he says why don't you do it the way I did it and the scientist says okay so he bends down and he grabs a handful of dirt and God says get your own dirt so that's what I meant by saying we're not creating anything new we're creating our own interpretations of the beauty that God has surrounded us with oh thank you Lord for color right what if we had a black and white world well you know I digress a little bit on my channel but I think truly I get so many wonderful comments and I think part of the joy of Monet cafe is the fun in it the freedom in it and I think a lot of you like the fact that I throw in my own little spicy comment sometimes but I do need to keep it at least about 90% art so let's get back to it all right so I am reinforcing some of the darks I think that was the Terry Ludwig eggplant color or maybe no this one is actually look how dark this color is and it's going to create some contrast I'm making these little pink flowers I really thought the combination of pink and purple in this image was really nice along with the pops of yellow in the centers alright so I've been talking for 23 minutes now I just jabber on don I so I'm gonna add you guys some music once again this has all been real time with the exception of the sketch and a little bit of the watercolor wash so if you're a patron of mine I am loving what you're doing with these lessons oh my goodness some of you have done a few of them and some of you are doing all of them so I know you're going to be excited to get this number eight painting and I cannot wait to see what you do when you submit it to our homework album and if you don't know what a patron is patrons are from my patreon page patreon is a neat page where people can support artists musicians all kinds of people who choose to have a patreon page and actually it was one of you guys in Monet cafe that recommended or inquired if I would start a patreon page and whoever you are I'm so glad you did because not only has it helped me financially to be a patron it's only five dollars a month and you can cancel it anytime but it has helped me financially to keep this channel going my husband and I both lost our jobs due to COVID and patreon was just a blessing from the Lord and and from your support that has helped you know us a lot and also it helps me to do the things I need to keep this channel current you know with computers and I need a new easel now because my easel shaky I'm always holding it so those little things but it also not only helps to keep Monet cafe going and me going but also I provide extra content for my patrons often in this video Monet cafe is getting the real time too because I don't want to ever forget you guys I gotta bring you content too but often my patrons get a little behind the scenes info they sometimes will get a video that you won't even see on Monet cafe but one of my favorite parts about my patreon page and my patrons is that I've created ways for my patrons to share their work or their whatever they're working on but also their their recreations from my lessons and that is one of my biggest joys I just feel like a proud mama and even though I'm telling you some of my patrons work there's some artist patrons of mine that are I like their work better than my work so we've got all levels of artists but some people just support the channel just to be sweet so anyway that's a little bit about that so when I'm talking about my patrons and them sharing that's what that means all righty now I am gonna add some music we're almost done here and I hope you're enjoying this I hope you enjoyed this tutorial isn't art just peaceful and if you're a patron of mine I can't wait to see what you do and I'm so happy you joined me here today on Monet cafe as always happy painting