 Well, hey y'all and welcome to Monet cafe. I'm artist Susan Jenkins. I guess my southern side is coming out today And we are going to be painting these beautiful red flowers. They were in the sunshine. They were so pretty and what is this? This is wax pastels. I'm going to be using as an underpainting They are so fun and there is a lot in this one video. Guess what these are Dun dun dun the most expensive pastels in the world. Well, I think they are anyway They're pretty darn expensive. So you're gonna learn a lot. Please like this video subscribe to this channel and Hit that bell icon to be notified of future videos. So you don't miss a thing Also, too, I would love it if you would support me on my patreon page It keeps these free videos coming for only five dollars a month that go to people all over the world who are so appreciative And if you become a patron you get extra goodies. The reference image is a photo that I took when my husband and I were on a Little trip. I just loved the light and the beautiful red flowers I shared it on my Instagram page and everybody gave a thumbs up that I should definitely paint this as a painting And here's our little trip. We went in our little teeny baby motor home We had our little dog Jackson in the back It was for a blues music festival in St. Pete Beach, Florida and we parked right by the ocean So it looked like we were on a houseboat, but no it's just our motor home Oh, and we found this amazing restaurant called the getaway and sorry for the vertical footage here I was filming it for Instagram and look at those shadows. Oh my goodness from the palm trees I was tempted to paint that but this is where I got the reference photo of the beautiful red flowers And it just felt like a day out of paradise the weather was awesome And it was just one of those perfect days You just want to make sure you cherish and now that I have you all probably wishing you could go to the beach We're gonna switch gears and start painting. The surface. I'll be using is Fisher 400 sanded pastel paper. This is a professional pastel paper. Yes, it literally feels like sandpaper But that's what allows you to get the layering with soft pastel in that brilliant color And it's an 11 by 14 inch sheet and I get mine from pro art panels comm They have a section where you can go to their paper They also have panels, but I get the paper sheets and I usually get packs of 10 You can scroll down and find different sizes and different quantities I typically get the packs of 10 of the 11 by 14 and I'm gonna get some 16 by 20 size too. I want to go a little bit bigger So it's a really great buy you can literally wash the stuff off if you're not happy with your painting So now this is a little piece of you art paper. It's almost just like Fisher paper, but it Fisher paper doesn't curl up I love that In Florida's humidity sometimes that happens. What am I doing here? Well, I'm using these neocolor wax pastels Yeah, it's kind of weird. How do wax pastels work with liquid? but they do and They are available on Amazon and other art supply retailers and you can get them in quantities of 10 15 or 30 I'm working with the 30 set and what I'm doing now is giving you a demonstration of the magic that happens when you Apply liquid to them. I'm using golden airbrush medium Well, actually my products not golden, but it's airbrush medium I have another tutorial well where I show why I love this if you use water or alcohol You can use alcohol. It doesn't come out quite as vibrant for some reason as this airbrush medium I really love it and it's pretty affordable. So here. I'm showing how it Just turns into paint when you add liquid to it again You can just use water, but look at that teal color. Oh my goodness And I don't think I had ever used this on the Fisher paper I had used it on you art before but I thought oh, let's have some fun and they actually blend well together You can mix colors And I'm gonna show you a little bit of that while I'm doing the under under painting So it's a lot of fun and I think you're gonna like it And now I'm just going to tape my paper down and a lot of people ask how I tape my paper I put a piece on the back half way up and then a piece on the front So it half of it is attached to the backing board or my it's actually foam core board I'm using now. I'm speeding the sketch section up and I'm using a really light pencil here I thought pencil would be better than charcoal here I don't want the charcoal to smudge when I go to add the water. Now. Here's a trick I do sometimes I'll fold my reference image in half both ways vertically and horizontally and I'll make little halfway marks on my paper and then I have a nice Almost like a little grid, but I don't ever do a grid like where I mark it on my paper But it's a good frame of reference you can kind of see what quadrant things are in and Basically what I like to do with my sketch is to have it loose and free And of course there are some things you want to have accurate with something like this subject matter You want to get that vase accurate and but the flowers are a little bit subjective I want to have them painterly though and not too patterned now I cropped my reference image if you're a patron of mine you will get my reference image and I cropped it in a way To where the shadow Could be a bit more of a focal point. I really loved the light that was filtering through that shadow underneath the vase So I'm just kind of getting a few more in I try not to get everything every flower This is just kind of a little guide for me to get started now I'm testing some of the colors that I want to use for the flowers and Then I'll get to painting using the acrylic medium to blend them actually on the surface now This is a kneaded eraser KNDED if it looks like a little piece of putty and I'm just knocking down the pencil marks a little bit I didn't want them to be quite so dark. So now I'm speeding this up But not so quickly that you can't watch the video because again I have more to talk in this video about than just these wax pastels and this painting I'm going to give you guys a little really interesting demonstration of what I think are the most Expensive pastels in the world as far as a new set, you know, there might be these, you know Some of Monet's pastels if somebody ever saved them that would be expensive antique sets, but these as a new set I'll leave a little teaser here. You'll get to hear what they are and see a little demonstration Of how they compare to other brands like are they really worth all that extra money? So that should be fun. So stay tuned. But as you can see, I'm scumbling in some of the color of the wax pastel And I am just painting on top of them so far. I'm going to do a different technique in a minute With the airbrush medium and again, you can use water. It works fine with water now I did a little bit of experimenting. I did somewhere. I I marked some of the color on a piece of watercolor paper That was a scratch piece of paper from another lesson. I did we made colored caterpillars and But I marked the actual pastel on the watercolor paper and used it like a little paint palette and it worked great Now what I found this was awesome for was when you want those really loose Elements that aren't necessarily your focal point, you know, you want I chose the focal point to be some of those flowers in the Front kind of like right above the top of the vase and also those shadows with the light coming through So therefore some of these other flowers that are you know in other places like along the edges They don't need to grab too much attention And I'm talking about this a lot in my my patreon group We just had a I do a critique session for my patrons and some of their paintings And I can't tell you how many times my suggestion Just some constructive feedback has to do with focal point And so you want to really identify what is the thing in your painting that stood out to you Or that you just think is beautiful and you want to make that the star of the show and have other elements That are just like supporting characters And there are different ways you can do that and I have a video I think it's called five focal point strategies or something like that And I learned a lot in putting that video together Just about how you can really hone in on your focal point and use artistic principles to Reduce the attention other items get in your painting So now I'm just using the brush still painting in different places in some areas I'm giving it more intensity, which is where I want my focal point a little more Color intensity now, I know a lot of this is going to get covered up with pastel But I love doing under paintings. I find they're just that impressionistic loose beginning That really will give you that painterly feel Oh, and I meant to share that you could just use watercolor for this You don't have to buy the wax pastels. You could actually even just do this whole painting in soft pastel There are so many options available and I'm always saying don't go out and spend money I know sometimes we get a little bit like oh, I got to try that new product. Maybe it'll make my painting better So, you know, it's usually not the medium that's going to make your art better It's just you practicing and it is a good idea to practice with what you have now I did love using this teal color. It got a little particle on there or something. I was trying to scratch out Um, it this is one of those colors that watch the magic happen when I add the acrylic I'm not acrylic the airbrush medium to it I knew the pot was in shadow, but it was still this pretty teal color And I wanted to I snuck in a little bit of that lighter color at the top Where the sunlight was shining through onto the pot. I keep saying base onto the pot That was another little focal area Where the light was filtering through so I kind of combined a few colors Okay, let's add this airbrush medium and just look at that beautiful color and also notice how beautifully the fissure 400 paper receives Water and and really any medium I've used all kinds of different mediums for under paintings with This surface and it just works great. I also have another video where I shared how so many surfaces UART Fissure pastel matte They all can be washed off literally if you have a pastel painting you're not happy with I recommend to get a stiff bristle brush. Take the painting outside Just so you're not breathing all that dust and use the brush to mark off all or brush off all of that pastel As much as you can then you can put it in the sink and literally wash it off And start all over again once it's dry. So now I'm using this little lavender color And I'm blocking in the beautiful shapes of the shadows There was kind of like a coolness to the shadows in the foreground And of course, there are some darker shadow elements right underneath the pot Where some of the flowers and some of the leaves were casting their shadow down onto the ground I wanted to add a little bit of a darker blue. This this is more of a almost like a Ultramarine blue or cobalt blue. Maybe I wanted to add a little bit of that in where the shadows were darker And give a little color interest as well And I was already liking these colors just with the the wax pastels And by the way, the wax pastels are just fun to play with I like just goofing off with them getting a little watercolor sketchbook. They work great on watercolor paper Now this is a large, uh, Chinese brush that I got I wanted to use a larger brush to get in these bigger shapes and uh, I love this cool color For the cast shadows and just for that, um, beautiful Like I said, the play between the cool colors and the warm colors of the sunlight peeking through So you see this is really a lot of fun and it's relaxing to me I love this phase and this part of a painting and here you can see where I'm painting that lovely lavender color And I'm just loosely working in around the flowers And also notice that I'm using directional strokes I'm pulling the brush in the ways that I feel like the elements would be moving I felt like those shadows were really coming forward Into, um, the perspective of the viewer. So that's why I pull my strokes forward I do the same thing when I apply pastels now part of the brush came off One of the little teeny bristles of the brush But it's not to worry when it dries it just, um, comes right off Now I am purposely blending some of the edges of the flowers now I'm just pulling some of that paint that I laid down on the watercolor paper And um and wetting my brush a little bit more with the Airbrush medium and you see how it's softening those edges And the reason that I want to do that is once again has to do with focal point Now my patrons if you're a patron of mine You're going to get a copy of my color notes for both the wax pastels and the pastels And on that note the pastels I'll be using I selected I pre-selected quite a few I didn't use all of these and I added a couple of more now Don't worry. You're going to see those real expensive pastels at the end of this I wanted to get down Before trying those pastels. I wanted to get down some layers Because here's the benefit of the really soft pastels They will work great as final layers once you've gotten down a few layers of pastels I'm using a little blending tool right there. It's literally just a packing peanut that you get with your packages. It works great And uh, but once you get down quite a few layers If you use harder pastels or medium to hard pastels Sometimes you can't get that vibrancy still So with these expensive pastels, I'll be trying later. I wanted to give them a really A tough test where I had already gotten down a lot of color and see how they actually layer as final layers on top And uh, I think you're going to like to see that so now I am just working very loosely Notice my leaf shapes. They're they're kind of just directional shapes And I say this often Try to Take it out of your mind that I'm painting All of these individual flowers and all of these individual leaves it could get Overwhelming and it also can get Tedious you get burnout on it and your painting loses that spontaneous fresh and painterly feel So you can see here. I'm using this combination of greens just working in little shapes I'll refine them later, but I'm getting in my values in an overall way I like to work the whole painting get color down everywhere Before I start getting specific about any one area And also too you can see this Filming method that I'm doing right now Is what I did with my last painting Um, the lab wasn't my last one I don't think but it was a painting of a lavender field and I ask you guys for your comments on what you thought of this Method or this way that I'm filming. I literally have my pastel surface lying flat It's not my preferred method. I do like to put it on an easel And because the pastel dust kind of drops off nicely But when I have my painting on an easel and I film I always have to put my camera off to the side one side or the other And not only is the angle a little different for you guys, but it's a little awkward I don't like to complain, but it's it's more awkward for me to paint I'm always kind of working around the camera And I found it was kind of hurting my shoulder and my back a little bit over the years that I've been doing this And I thought why don't I try my my studio light that I use by the way if you're interested in any of the tools that I use While I'm painting you'll see me use my little tape dispenser certain tapes This light that I'm using is a ring light. I have all of that in my amazon shop under studio tools I believe my amazon shop is literally for your convenience of finding things Often amazon has a great price on these things so you can buy it right through my amazon shop But it's to be able to really just look at some of the things that I'm using and learn Now let me talk about this. So let me know again if you like this format I do think the light is better. You can see better. You can see my palette I like putting it down on the black foam core board. You know, it makes a nice contrast So give me some more feedback and let me know if you like this a lot of you did before All right, so what I'm doing now one of the main focal points to me Was the light filtering through not only on the ground, but also on this pot So I'm making some little notes with lighter values as to where some of those areas are The pot also had some neat little ridges in it. I don't want to overdo it or make this so detailed and specific That all the attention goes to that, but I just want to hint at it Now I got my pot shaped a little too wide there, but you don't have to worry about these things Especially initial phases because look what I'm doing now You can come in and just make an edge to shape the pot to reshape the pot You can do so much by creating edges and I like to talk about that With respect to keeping a painterly style rather than me taking a pastel and drawing a line around that pot I've created an edge meaning I I use big shapes and blocks of color to give the illusion of a line But it's really just a division of value. You've got a light value on one side of the pot You've got a dark value on the other I never drew a line And I have one of my patreon lessons on that line versus edge And that's really a way to create a painterly style There's also something called lost edges where your edges aren't so hard. They're kind of soft That makes a painterly style as well. Okay, you see some of that light in the photo that's filtering through Now this is a photo that I cropped in photoshop and I enhanced it a bit with a filter I believe it's called the cutout filter and it really makes some nice graphic type of A look to it and it also made the highlights looked a little bit more warm and I wanted to enhance that So that's why I'm using some of those yellows and sunlight is warm I gradually do some of the shadows that are Or the highlights within the shadows that are down below the pot. They're not going to be quite as bright Because they're surrounded by other shadows. So keep in mind your shadow light and your highlight Highlight colors will change based on where they are So under the pot is obviously going to be one of my darkest values Because it's that shadow area that's the furthest away from where the sun is and the pot is kind of casting a shadow down So that's why I use some of those darker values, but I gradually lighten them up as they're moving Away from the pot They're just not going to be quite as dark. So that's why I went to some of these gray colors This is kind of a neutral. It looks like a gray here, but it's kind of a lavender gray And see too that I'm not pressing hard. Remember keep a light touch We have a tendency as beginning artists to want to press hard and cover up all that Spaces of the paper don't do it because that's what really keeps it painterly and loose Even add a little bit more dark underneath the pot. It looks a little extreme right now, but I'm going to soften it later These are things you gain confidence in the more you paint early as an artist I would have felt I had to fix that whole little dark area at the pot And now I know no just get that value in leave it work the whole Then you come back later to either soften or define those areas now another focal element Were these flowers that long branch that was reaching, you know, I love when something in a landscape photo Has something random. I mean, I think that's part of the beauty of nature It's especially like fields of flowers and things. They're not all patterned like soldiers You usually have one rogue black sheep of the family kind of a Stem or a flower reaching up and I just think that gives it beauty I've used this analogy before but in music There's something called dissonance and it's a note That just goes off somewhere on its own And it always sounds a little off But oh those are some of my favorite notes in a song in classical music. So Remember even if it's not in the reference image you can add those things too But this particular branch the one that I was referring to before was one of those It decided just to go down and out a little bit and maybe reach towards Some other area and I just thought that was really neat and made for a neat composition But I I'm purposely going to keep that branch a little bit more Settle it's going to be kind of in between. It's not going to be deep focal point But it's not going to be as subdued as some of these flowers. I'm working on now I'm just giving them value right now. I'm getting the values right later I'm going to even just soften those up a bit. So that long branch is going to be kind of in between It's going to be a lead in focal point, but not the focal point again My goal my thought on this was the light Maybe some of those flowers kind of right in the middle above the pot The little reflections on the pot and definitely the light filtering through the shadow Now I would have had a tendency when I was first Painting or even first photographing To just center this pot as I was taking the photo put it in the center of the frame and center it We have a tendency early on as photographers or artists to do that But there is something called the rule of thirds when it comes to composition and I have some I believe some compositional I do some compositional videos on the channel as well By the way, if you want to find anything on Monet cafe You can just go to youtube in general and go to the search bar on youtube type in Monet cafe And just a general thing composition or Monet cafe Focal point and it'll usually pop it up and you can find it too by going to my channel the Monet cafe actual channel And I have playlists at the top. There are some tabs That's where I group items or videos of certain elements together And you find a whole lot. It's just a wealth of information Now I thought I'd go ahead and put in some value I am not definitely not going to get in all of that detail behind this pot. There were there was a fence There were people sitting on benches. There were trees So I just got in some of the values I later decide to soften that and I'll share with you a technique I used to do that now. I'm scumbling in if you notice Well now I move the photo but kind of in the crook of my arm there in the photo There is some light filtering to the right side of the painting in the photo and it's in the distance So I don't want that to have any sharp edges It's just soft just a little bit of difference between Shadow and light back there now. Here's where I'm using my packing peanut to blend this in And I didn't even like it blended. I thought it was too different than the rest of the photo I usually don't blend a whole lot But it it didn't make me happy. So what did I do? Well, you're not supposed to blow on your painting But I did it because it's laying flat I took it outside and I got a brush that was kind of stiff and I brushed some of it off just to soften it up You really have so much flexibility with pastel painting I remember when I first started painting I was afraid to take the first mark on a very expensive piece of paper like this And I thought oh gosh, it's going to be so unforgiving. What if I make a mistake? And now I've learned You know, like I shared you can wash this stuff off and you know, really I guess this particular sheet of fisher 400. I don't know. It's probably three dollars and 50 cents less than four dollars, you know And sometimes I do cut these up and make smaller Painting surfaces as well But anyway, don't be afraid Just have fun. You can practice on less expensive surfaces I have lots of videos on how you can save money by making your own pastel surfaces DIY pastel surfaces with watercolor paper and a product called clear gesso So if you're brand new at this and you don't have the pocket book to handle some of these products, trust me I didn't either. That's why I had to discover all these methods that I share and And truthfully, you know, I hate using that word because truthfully means I wasn't telling the truth before But really from the bottom of my heart I like to share that a lot of the products that I have not all of them I work out something with the manufacturer Or the retailer to get The product complimentary so I can do a product review video So now I'm able to try some of these products and things that I You know, really couldn't afford especially not before So I'm I'm right there with you if you have a challenge with some of those things And now I have basically finished using these pastels once again I didn't use all of these I grabbed some didn't use them others I used if you're a patron of mine, you will get my color notes And now it's time to check out and test what I'm calling the most expensive pastels in the world They certainly are as far as what I have experienced and seen these are called Actually Henry Roche. Am I saying that right for someone who's in France? It's la maison du pastel and I'm going to tell you a little bit more about the history and what I got is the Halfstick sets they do have these half stick sets And they are in sets of 12. This one is called the vivid colors I thought if I'm going to check these out, I'm going to get really vivid colors There is some information inside telling more about the company which I'm going to tell you in a minute But I have to say I didn't come up with this idea. I wouldn't have bought these pastels I'm going to tell you that they're really great. Okay, but I wouldn't have forked out this money If it wasn't for one of my patrons Chrissy, thank you so much Chrissy. She said, you know, she had learned about these pastels and she was just curious Are they that great that they're so much more expensive than other sets of pastels? So I decided to give it a try and she was so sweet. She said, look, I'm so curious I'm willing to pay half for this little set. Now this little set was Over a hundred and twenty dollars. Is it twelve one two yet for twelve pastels? And so I definitely at this point in my life. I wouldn't have spent that money on these pastels So I told Chrissy, I said, you know what? I don't want you to pay half and not even have the product So I said find a painting in my Etsy shop of equivalent value and then we'll call it square So I bought the pastels. She bought an Etsy painting and an original painting And then I was ready to experiment and I didn't want to contact the company To get a complimentary product because I thought what if they're not as great as the price So I wanted to give an honest review And now before I apply them to the actual painting I am going to share with you a little bit about where to find them I couldn't find them in like dickblick.com or other places But I did find them at fineartstore.com And I noticed they have a lot of soft pastel products And if you go to the soft pastel section, you can look at individual sticks or sets So if you go to sets and it's in there under Henry Roche or Roche somebody correct me on that But I thought let me take a look at this site while I'm here and kind of compare prices With sites like dickblick or actually dakota pastels has a lot of pastel products So I thought I'd click on these little samplers These are always great to get because you can compare different brands the samplers here. I decided to click on this Sampler that had one two three four five six one two three four five six seven sticks in it for 26 dollars And notice you've got a variety of all of the different or many different brands of pastels So I thought I would compare this fine art store.com with dakota pastels.com Again, I love dakota pastels. They're great people and here's one of their sampler sets Now it has a total of 12 And for $55. So it's pretty comparable But it's a good idea to uh check them out before you buy a whole set Now just to give you a frame of reference as to the cost of the henry roche pastels I clicked on these mount vision pastels. They have a nice set of 10 Now remember the henry roche 12 half stick set was about 120 dollars This is 39 dollars and these are full sticks. It's a nice set of green mount vision pastels are nice They're kind of not too hard and not too soft. So there's a little frame of reference Now let's go ahead and click on these henry roche Pastels I'm going to go to the half stick sets. That's what I bought and I bought the ones that are called the vivid colors I thought if I'm going to check them out. I want to have some of the really vivid colors to compare So this is the set that I bought and as you can see the price is 120 dollars. Of course Shipping you have to pay as well And in wondering why these pastels are so expensive I decided to read up on them and they have it right here on this particular page What is it that makes roche pastels so so special read on roche pastels were produced First in the 18th century france in a workshop that was then known as la maison du pastel During the 19th century this workshop dealt with all types of artist materials including pastels Around the year 1865 henry roche a chemical engineer Chemists biologists and artists started to produce his own pastels a student of pastor. He also worked blah blah blah I'm not going to read all this you guys can read it, but down at the bottom. It says that it was taken over Well, let me go before that Dr. Roche nearly lost the shop completely during world war one and the workshop was looted and occupied by the germans during world war two Dr. Roche managed to keep in contact with his artist during the war and started pastel production again in 1946 And above this he says he has challenges in world war one keeping the shop open So it's got a really neat story with the help of his wife and three daughters They kept it going it was later taken over by mrs. Roche after he died So check out that story. It's really interesting and it's got a neat history to it And I noticed that they actually oh aren't these reds beautiful And the colors are absolutely gorgeous, but I noticed that they actually had a full set available Let's click on the complete set and check out that price Are you ready? The complete set is 26,485 It's 1634 pastels and here's a view of the complete set I'm sure with some of the people who work or own the shop and oh look at those gorgeous purples So it is a pretty penny if you want to buy the whole set now, of course, there's also shipping Shipping they say is 1200 dollars. They say but they'll split the cost and only charge you 600 dollars for the shipping So that's definitely not in my budget at my current financial situation But it was super interesting to find out more about these pastels and now we got to check these out put them to the test But first I'm going to compare them with some other brands I'm just doing a test of applying some of the other pastels and I'm also going to do what I call a finger test Sometimes when I get nice brands of pastels, I'll just literally rub my finger across And see look at that look how much pastel came out. Well, I thought I would compare it with a terry Ludwig pastel I actually think the terry Ludwig had more color application on the finger test And now I'm going to compare a senelier pastel And I know some of these colors aren't exactly the same colors, but I did the best I could This is a dian Townsend and it too comes off really really nicely And this is a unison. Oh my goodness. I was just like wow I I'd never done this this way with all these different pastels And now I'm going to apply you saw me on the dakota pastel.com site. This is their brand of pastel It's called blue earth pastels and they're really nice. Look at that color. So all of these actually applied Quite nicely. They passed my finger test for the real soft pastels. Oh, this is one more. This is a great american also Very soft. I sometimes almost find it's too soft So those are what I would consider the softest softies now This is the good old rembrandt pastel and you see you don't get much application on your finger And the reason is there's more binder to pigment ratio. Same with these. This is I ran out of fingers This is a prismacolor new pastel. It's probably the hardest or one of the hardest in the soft pastel lineup This I didn't have a color of a red. So this is a jack richison hand rolled pastel I've recently fallen in love with these now. I didn't have a mount vision that was red But I had one of their iridescence. So this is a iridescent mount vision. So oh one more This is a shminka pastel also very soft I didn't think it was quite as soft as say the seneliers the unisons the terry ludwig And some of the others but also very very soft So there are many of my pastels that I've applied On to the surface just to get an idea of how they apply And I will say that the red of the henry roche pastels Was probably one of the most brilliant reds i've ever seen Here's my little color notes that my patrons will get and i'm just going down all of the reds now Bam look at that henry roche red. Is that not gorgeous? I'm comparatively to all of the reds It's definitely the brightest And now to actually apply some of this to the painting This is that gorgeous red And i'm just scumbling in some of this bright red on areas where the sun was hitting some of the flowers And I think you can see it's really making those flowers stand out a little bit more as focal point because of the sunlight hitting upon them And I did it a little bit in some areas, but again, I'm trying to keep my focal point Not everywhere If it's everywhere, it's nowhere So you want to make sure you just pick certain strategic areas for that now I'm using some of that orange from the henry roche 12 piece set and oh my goodness. It just went on So easily now, I know you guys are just getting a visual experience This is one of the yellows or the yellow that's in that set But if you could hold it in your hand, you can feel it just goes on so smoothly And easily and they absolutely performed beautifully. I ended up now I'm actually just continuing to paint with some of my other pastels, but I ended up using the greens You notice in the set there were Three the greens that I used were that really lime green that middle green and then the dark green And I started using some of those Now i'm using the red again. See how bright that is now. Maybe you can see it is so so bright and beautiful And now for my conclusion of my opinion now i'm using that lime green Yes, they're amazing. I love them. They were so Just smooth in their application. The color was bright and gorgeous However, when it comes to the price the huge price discrepancy or difference variance With some of the other brands that are also incredibly soft I can't quite justify the price of these As far as recommending them for you to go out and spend this much money on these pastels once again Especially if you're in the states the shipping. I can't remember what the shipping was for this little set I don't think it was that bad But you can definitely use comparable brands that are also incredible I'd say out of my little finger test that I did Um what surprised me was the Because I'd never done this really this way before comparing many of them together with different brands The terry Ludwigs were just man. They just are so So smooth and the unisons Probably next with just how how much color came off on my finger. So a huge proportion or percentage of color versus binder in those And and and also many of the others too as well So there are so many pastels that are comparable That you know, again, I can't justify the price, but it was a great fun experiment Now if somebody gifted me the set The $26,000 set I would be jumping to the moon with excitement But I I certainly don't see that happening in my life or and definitely not me forking out that money for that So anyway, I loved the pastels. I do think they're fantastic But again, I won't belabor the point you have other options when it comes to beautiful vibrant color And but this was fun, right? And I hope you learned a lot from this and it was it was interesting too I love the history of things like the story of these pastels and god bless this company for hanging in there through so many trials And tribulations, uh, we can all relate to that We all have times in our life where we just have to persevere And usually there's a blessing on the other side as dolly parton says I did want to point out that I've put a few little flowers that have fallen to the ground Down in the areas of the highlight and notice that the ones that aren't in the highlight are a little darker And the ones that are in the highlight I gave them a little more pop of red because that's what would happen the sun is hitting those They're going to be brighter than the ones that have fallen into shadow And i'm doing negative painting here working my sunlight in and amongst the flowers now. I thought I'd run over here That's my senelier 120 half stick set you talk about a bargain for some outstanding pastels I did a product review on their 120 half stick set and On amazon. I think it's gone up since then it was 123 dollars for 120 half stick set That's like a dollar a half stick and um, that's just outstanding Comparably think about the henry roach set. It was 120 dollars for 12 pastels half sticks senelier It's called the paris collection the 120 half stick set was 120 something dollars for 120 pastels I think the set now is up to uh Like 140 dollars on amazon something like that now I wanted to bring that teal down into the shadow that happens a lot with color So I use the henry roach pastel just to scumble in because i'm working flat you see all the pastel dust just laying there I've got to take it out to brush to kind of tap it off outside And here is the final bright flowers in sunshine The original is available in my etsy shop if you recreate from this tutorial I would love you to tag me on instagram At susan jenkins artist and follow me and if you're a patron of mine, of course share in our homework album I love to see your work. I learned a lot in this video I hope you did too and I hope you have a blessed day and as always happy painting