 Welcome to Monet Café and to my patrons. I'm artist Susan Jenkins and I'm calling this tutorial Lifting Dreams because I feel that's what we do in our Monet Café art group on Facebook and on my Patreon page. By the way, there's lots of real time in this and this video is offered to both my patrons and this channel and I want to give credit for this beautiful reference photo to a dear soul who's become a friend named Linda who's part of the Monet Café family and a patron of mine. This is a beautiful photo from her property. Wow, just gorgeous. Now once again, I'm making this video available to both my patrons and here on the Monet Café YouTube channel. But I give my patrons a little something extra. We have a lot of fun. That's how you can become a patron at that link above for only $5 a month. We do things like Wednesday, I have Artistic Storytime where I feature a book. Thursday, I have throwback Thursday with some treasures from the archives. On Fridays, we have PE class which is patron education and we even have homework. I have homework assignments so we have a lot of fun but I'll always still bring free videos here in Monet Café. Here are my pastel selections and I am maybe not necessarily going to use all of these. I just wanted to get me some values and colors in here so I wouldn't have to search so much. So I've got some darker blues for the upper sky. Gradually getting lighter in the blue family and getting a little warmer. These would be considered warm blues or cool greens as the sky goes down. Then for those clouds, believe it or not, I'm going to have some darker colors for those darkest clouds that I'll tone down. So I've got me some good darks for the land. I may add something after that. I've got me some nice neutrals. Believe it or not, these will be in the clouds even though the photo looks primarily pink and purple. Of course we work our way down to those beautiful pinks and gold and some of these will be in the upper clouds too. I put this one here because that's questionable but I really liked that color and even though we don't see a red this dark in the sky, I see that as a nice punchy color. That's how I'm going to start and here is the acrylic ink that I'm going to tone the UART paper with. This one is called Floresa Pink. I think I've used this in another video kind of recently. You do have to shake these because they do settle. So I thought a nice pink vibrant background would be nice for this painting. Alright, here we go. This is an acrylic ink by Daylor Rowney and I really like these acrylic inks. I did recently learn, I'll make sure this is accurate, that it's not like watercolor. It's permanent, okay? Once it gets down, it's down. So it's really great to use as an underpainting and when you use acrylic inks or watercolor, the advantage to those versus just toning it with a pink pastel and then doing an alcohol wash is this takes up literally no tooth of the surface. So you're not like already taking away from those layers. But if you have a harder pastel like I have, this is probably too dark, but I have like some pink new pastels. You could literally just go over it lightly and then get some alcohol with a brush or water. I would say don't apply the water too heavy-handed like I did in my last video. It caused my UART paper to curl. So but what I'm going to do, you can do that with a pastel and I've done that many times. But what I'm going to do is go ahead and use this acrylic ink to tone this, this vibrant pink which should electrify the painting and I want to keep a bit of that pink showing through. Okay, so let's go ahead and get started. Alright, so what I have here is my acrylic ink. I have a big brush because this is a big surface. I meant to describe this as I believe 12 by 15. I wanted to keep it large. It's not really a standard size but I kept it proportionate to this image and just so you know, if you want to know how to do that, what I did is I measured this. I'm probably going to turn this up right. But if you want to keep it proportionate to this, whatever you're drawing, I basically just measured what this was. You can take, I'm going to do it here. You could cut this out if you wanted, but this is the same size as this. You put it at the corner of your surface or your paper. You take a ruler or a straight edge of some sort. This one isn't long enough. Let me grab my ruler and you catty corner it from one side to another. This corner to this corner and it ends up, this one's pretty close. It ends up at the point here. Say this was a huge piece of paper. You would just make a mark where this ended up shoot and then you would know what size to make that. Okay, so that's a quick little diagonal trick that you can do. All right, so I've got my brush, which is large because the paper is large. I've got my acrylic ink and I've got a paper towel, a couple of them just to kind of clean the brush off. And I've got two dishes. One of them is just to put the ink in. And the other one is a dish of water because sometimes I don't like it full strength. But I want to be a little careful with the water because I don't want to be your paper to buckle. All right, so let's go ahead and put some of this acrylic ink in here. Again, shake this because it does settle at the bottom. I've got some of these here. These, this looks like it's yellow. It's not. This is probably antelope brown. No, it's some sort of a green. It is, sorry, can't see. Oh, it is. It's antelope brown, which really, to me, it looks more green than brown and what I call that. But you see, that's why you have to shake them. All right, let's put this fluorescent paint and our little container here. Now, last time I used some acrylic ink, I think it was a turquoisey blue. And I only needed like two drops, but the paper, it was like an eight by 10. So I want to make sure I have enough, but I don't want to overdo it because these things can get expensive. So I've got about four drops in there. And now I'm going to get started with this. All right, I'm going to dip my brush in some water. I know I'm going to dilute this acrylic ink a little bit. So let me get a little more water. Let's see what this looks like. Oh, my brush was a little dirty. Oh, yeah, it had something in it. I'm glad I checked that. So some of that is probably note to self. Make sure your brush is clean before you start painting. All right, I think I'm good now. Yeah, okay. All right, so now let's get in here. Let's kind of see what this looks like. It's pretty wet. Ooh, look at that. Oh, that's so nice. I love it. Little water, little ink, and let's go to it. Yeah, that's beautiful. Man, that is so pretty. Look at that. Add a little more water actually to the ink. That's how I'm doing it. Yeah, that's lovely. And drips are fine. Okay, so embrace the energy. Isn't that peaceful? You know, I've been trying to work it out to where I can talk and play music sometimes when I'm painting, but YouTube is so funny about music being add a little more acrylic to it. It's a little water down. I have too much water. YouTube is funny about copyright music. So sometimes if I play something in the background that is not copyright free, I will get a strike against me on YouTube. So what I've done is I've got my computer hooked up now to my Alexa and it is hopefully the station that I have a supposed to be copyright free music. So maybe I can actually paint and you can listen to those scratchy sounds on the surface of the pastel paper and it's curling up a little bit, but I think I can blow it dry with a blow dryer and it will be good. And then you can watch me paint and I can listen to music at the same time and I don't have to put music on top of it and then delete the sound, you know? And sometimes of course, I have my husband comes in and he gets loud. So, you know, that's just life. You guys know about that, right? Okay, so there we go and it's a nice pretty pink. I might even want it a little more vibrant. I don't know. Maybe I shouldn't have put the water in it. Let's try it a little brighter since I'm at it. All right, so here we are with the paper dry. There was a little bit of buckling, not bad, so I just kind of lifted the tape, readjusted it. All right, what I have here is a medium charcoal pencil. You can use whatever because we're, you know, putting pastel on top of this. I thought I would use this because you can see this better than if I use something a little lighter. Hopefully, you can see. So, what I'm doing now is I'm looking at the big shapes. I don't have to get all of these clouds in exactly, but if I get some of the big shapes in here and you don't have to draw them exactly like you see in the reference image, but this photo happens to be already gorgeous. I mean, it's just like the Lord put the clouds there just in all the perfect spots. So, what I'm doing here is I'm just kind of looking. I'm just going to sketch a bit and I'm looking at measurements of where things are because this is proportionate. I know with my photo, I can kind of look at my halfway points and I lost some of my lines and get an idea of where things are halfway on here. And that's kind of how I roll when I draw to look at things. So, I'm just going to sketch a bit. Okay, we've got some nice energy going on. I love it when skies, you feel like you're standing in the painting and the sky is going over you and that's the perspective you definitely get with seeing the clouds so small in the distance and just gradually radiating towards you. So, and also to notice I started working more with more geometric strokes and one of the things I like about this painting is all those interesting negative spaces. Not that when I paint it, they'll stay that sharp, some might, but the negative shapes are as beautiful in this as the positive ones. It's just an interesting play of shapes happening here. All right, so let me show you the pastels that I've selected for this. Okay, as we do often in pastel painting, we usually get our darks in first and I'm actually going to start at the top even though these aren't my darkest darks, definitely darkest darks are down here, but I'm first going to get in these negative shapes with the clouds and if you look at the reference photo, you'll see that I share often that in skies it's usually darker at the top and lighter at the bottom and in this case it's definitely so because we've got our sun setting down here and now another thing that usually happens with skies, it's usually cooler in temperature at the top and gradually works down to warmer colors at the bottom. So, that's why I've chosen some cooler blues for the upper heavens. Okay, gradually getting a little lighter as they go down, but they also start to get a little warmer in color temperature. I think I need to grab one that's kind of in between those two and then they just keep getting lighter and cooler as they go down and then eventually of course this is even lighter than here, maybe in like this family and then it's going to get to these gorgeous oranges and yellows in there. So, here we go. Alright, this is kind of the blue I was looking for here. It's in between a warm blue and a cool blue. You might can see that a little better. You see how extreme those are? This has got more purple in it. It's almost like a periwinkle blue. This has more yellow in it and so in between the two, if I can hold these without dropping them, you see this one's definitely a little more blue, but not quite as green as this one. So, that's a good color for coming down. Alright, so let's establish how dark should this dark be in the upper heavens. Well, it's a little darker than you think, but we can often kind of tone it down too when we add other layers on top. This is probably a Jack Richardson and I like them a lot. I like them. I got the half-stick set and I really do like these. They go on nice and smoothly. This is just your initial first layer and you don't have to worry about blending so much at this stage. This is all just the beginnings of the painting and it's actually very good to keep it quite loose and painterly. I'm squinting my eyes. I'm looking at where these shapes are. That's actually a little lighter back in there, but we can lighten that up and then I'm gradually going to start transitioning to this other color. Already, actually, I'm having to do that. Hopefully, I got my drawing pretty accurate, but they're clouds, you know? It's not like you have an eye. You have to match up. In here, this level is where it's starting to lighten up, but you don't want a line there, so I'm bringing it down a little bit more than I see, so that I can add that other warmer blue on top of that. Alright, there's that one. I do have a big selection down here that I didn't want to have to get up and go look some more, so I'm going to try to keep them separated, the ones that I've already used. Alright, here is that other blue. I've got two of them here. This one's got more blue, this has more green, and of course it's getting lighter, but I think I'm going to do this one first. Oh yeah, that's nice. This one's getting a little bit small in my hands, so I might have to get another one of this color. That's one thing that I find challenging is just between all the painting time and YouTube, you know, it's often hard to keep up with all the other management things in the art business, and I'm doing the same thing with this one. I'm going to bring it down a little bit further than there was a little bit of this lighter blue up in here, it's like it was peeking through up there. Bring it down a little bit further before I lighten it up to create a nice blending of value and color. All I'm doing right now is looking at the shapes, and you may want to take more time to be a little bit more specific about your drawing so that you can feel confident about where those shapes are and not have to kind of readjust them later. Alright, I'm coming down pretty far here. I got to talking. Okay, let me get the next. This is the one that has a little bit of a little bit more warmth to it. It's still a little dark, but I like this color. I might just vibrate a little bit of that up in there. Not too much. Isn't that gorgeous? I mean already, look at those colors. Okay, so now I need to get a little bit. This one might be too light. Yeah, let me get something that's not quite, I do, I am going to use this one, but I'm going to see about getting one that's kind of not quite that light just yet. Maybe like just a little bit of this one, let's see here. It's adding a little bit more warmth right in here, and I like that. I'm trying to not to be too heavy handed here, and it's okay if those pieces of paper are showing through at this stage. Alright, now we're getting into this pretty sky color. Lovely. And that's the beauty of pastels. I was just reading in my Patreon group. We have a story time that I just started where we are, or I am, reading, picking a pastel book to feature, and then I am, and the one that we're working on now is by an artist, Jackie Simmons. Oh my gosh, I love her work. It's so beautiful. And she was describing in the beginning of this book that how the beauty of pastels and just the way she described the vibrancy of the color. Oh my gosh, it was just poetic. Now this is getting a little too light up in here. I mean, I might just glaze it. I'm going super lightly right here, but it's definitely peeking through right there. And there's a little bit of some of this going on in here that's part of the clouds kind of breaking up, but not a lot. Okay, let me look at these negative shapes here. This is lighter than you think up in here. I don't know, it's like somehow the sun's rays are just kind of creeping up there a little bit. Alright, move back up. Isn't that a neat negative shape? I don't know, maybe I get a little weird. Okay, so we've definitely got more of this. I'm doing the same thing with this one now. I'm bringing it down just a little further in here, and then I'll lighten this one up even more. I want to make sure I keep it clear where the sky is. Yeah, these are the clouds, so that's the positive shapes and these are the negative shapes. Now I'm getting a little too dark down in here now, so I'm going to have to lighten this up. And we've got this here. I look at things sometimes I remember. This is like a hole in one cloud, and this is kind of where it started peeking through. And then underneath this cloud, I'm going to re-establish that. Here's the hole. Here's this cloud. It's coming down here. Oh, here's this little cloud here. Here we go. The positive and the negative starts to blend together, and then this cloud kind of ends right up in here. Yeah, there we go. That's what I didn't have was like the bottom of this cloud here. Okay, so now that's where this starts to, this is sky right here. Again, this one I'm going to lighten it up, but I'm just going to get a little bit right there to kind of harmonize it. It's pretty much it for this color. Okay, now we're going to lighten it up even more, and here's a lighter value of that one. This is where the tree line starts, and it's going to get even warmer, and a little bit more neutral in color back there. So, and it is lighter in here, so I'm going to add some of that in here. Clouds are so fun. I mean, if you get the general movement and expression of them, then you can just play. All right, now, this is that mass of clouds coming. This is where that beautiful red, golden color is going to be underneath the clouds, and I've got that golden sweeping through there. Oh, thank you, Linda, for such a lovely photo. I'm going to come in here and get some of my little marks where these are. When I start adding a little bit more of the positive shapes, it's going to kind of really help to establish things. All right, there's that. Now, I am going to go ahead and get me that neutral. Let me see if I have one right here. That's one color I did not get. It's neutral, meaning it's more grayed down, and I'm looking for one that's more of a, this is probably too dark of a value right here, but this is more neutral. So, let's see how this behaves. It's too dark, but it's grayer for sure. So, let me find neutral and grayer. This one is, I mean lighter than that one. I've got a nice set down here. Doesn't have that color though. Here we go. Let's see about this one here. This might be, it's a little lighter than that other one, not much, but I'm going to go ahead and go with it, and then I'm going to lighten it up with another pastel on top of it, and then it gets even lighter in here. So, let me save this one. Trying to keep these to where I can show you at the end what I actually used. Did not use this one. Let me stick that one back over here. All right. So, let's see here. Let's get in this dark mass here before I start working on this, and I'm also then going to start working on the darkest parts of the clouds. All right. I found this copyright free music. I could play while I'm painting, but I don't love it. It's okay. I wish I could play what I listened to, but YouTube would get me for that. I'll leave this on for a minute. Plus, they play ads. Okay. So, squinting my eyes, looking, checking it out. Now it's time to get some of these darker values in, and I see this song is kind of nice. I see the trees down here, and they're just kind of round, hump, hump, hump, hump, and now see it gets funky. I just can't handle that. Turn it off. And I don't really want them to be just like a roller coaster, you know? So, I'm going to try to add a little bit more energy to them like it's reaching out. And my bottom of my page is right here, and it's a very, very low tree line. It's not much showing at all. I don't think I want it quite as low as it is in the photo, but this little one's kind of reaching up and saying, hey, look at me. Space here. And I know we have a tendency sometimes to equally space things, and I'm trying to resist that urge. I do like it when things on the edges are a little taller than dropping off the page. I still have a little bit of that going on, so I think I want to carve this down lower and break that up when I add the sky. I'll check that out. Okay, so we've got that dark value, and now let's go ahead and get in some of these values in here that are these lighter colors. I know I've got some nice, oh, I meant to put a card up, and like I've been doing, and show you guys the colors, but I've been holding them up, so I think you've been able to see them. So, let's get this up here. That's going to bug me that that is not straight. My husband tells me I have a level in my brain. He won't, he won't get his level out sometimes. He'll say, oh, that's for me. All right, this is a, actually a little, is this a Sennelier? Yeah, it's a Sennelier, and one thing I don't like about Sennelier is often they're not, they're round, but they're not real round. They have little things. Let me show you one on this. Isn't that a gorgeous color? Look at that sticking up. How are you supposed to lay that on the side? You literally have to, you know, scrub it down or use that to draw with. So that's, other than that, I love Sennelier, but they're super, super soft. So I'm just kind of checking that value, and it is kind of warmer and dark down here. So my board's wiggling. So I'm just squinting my eyes, and I'm looking at some of these kind of golden colors, kind of flitting through the sky. Light touch. Oh yeah, I was going to get the darker clouds in, but that's okay. I'll establish most of the sky colors. And then all of a sudden, you don't see as much of that golden over here. Isn't that gorgeous, that pink showing through? So that's a hint of that, and I do like that color a lot. Wow. And where some of these clouds will have the pinks on them, they will might, like up in here, might have a hint of this orange, like where the, it's because the sun's just filtering through these clouds and hitting certain spots. Okay, so there's the other one that I've used. Scoot them over here. I'm doing this for you guys. So at the end, I can show you exactly the pastels that I used. All right, is that it? I think that's it. All right, let me look up here. I feel like I need a little bit more of this in here. You know, I need to add that to my Patreon goals. You know, on Patreon, they have this thing where it says, when I hit so many patrons, I'm going to do something. I'm going to get me a decent easel that doesn't move around so much. This is just one of those little, I don't know what they call them, a field easel or something, plein air easel. And it wobbles. And I don't really have any way to adhere it to the floor here. All right, let me back up. I'm talking. I better pay attention to what I'm doing. All right, now let's go ahead and get in some of the dark values of that. If I squint my eyes, those clouds are darker than you think. I mean, we have a tendency to think of clouds and all of a sudden our brain thinks they're light and they're not really light. I'm looking at this dark blue here. This is a softy. What is that? A Snellier as well? Okay, that's kind of nice. And what I'm doing is, I'm looking at the darkest parts of the clouds and I'm just kind of glazing in the direction of where those darks are. I am purposely trying myself to not overwork. I have an advantage of when you record yourself as much as I do and go back and make videos, you can see your work or your process. And you can tell where you should have stopped and sometimes should have stopped sooner. There's some dark in here, but it's not that dark. All I'm doing as I'm looking at the shapes of these darks, I'm really squinting my eyes. And we've got that in here. This really comes down in here. You might hear the TV in the other room in there. My son is home from college. It was so weird and so kind of sad for the college kids that didn't get a graduation. But you know what? He's such a great kid. He doesn't complain about anything. He's so cool. He's so motivated to do something. Work hard and do well. He is just such a godly young man. Oh my goodness. Talk about, thank you Jesus. I tell you what, I'm very blessed with that boy and all my boys. Isn't it neat how kids can all be different and all be special. That's how God sees us. There's that negative blue in here and kind of looking. They're kind of like puzzle pieces. This one right here kind of looks like it comes in like, I don't know what I think of like Italy and the boot. You start to see little shapes here and there. I saw these interesting little broken up places right here. This is where we've got a dark that just kind of comes on straight down like that. And we've got another one that's kind of reaching more that way. And then they gradually get tighter in here and it's because of perspective. They're further away. So we're seeing tighter balls of clouds if you want to think of them that way. Then we've got this guy here. And I know this looks dark right now. This is a dramatic sky and it was at either sunrise or sunset. I'm guessing sunset. I don't know why I'm guessing sunset, but I just feel like it is. I'm looking up here. There's more dark. This one's not quite as dark, but I'll tone it down. I'm going super light here. There's that little cloud right here. It's not this dark, but it's got a couple little dark spots of other little wispy clouds down here that I'll tone those down later. This comes up and kind of joins that mass up there. Eventually it starts to look like something. Not right away. Takes a while, but that's one of the most important things you can learn with painting is patience. Because if you're doing it right, it sort of all comes together at the end. All right, now let me get the net. Oh wait, let me look down here. Got this dark in here. Then there is, that's the big mass of dark. Then there's a break here where it's light underneath. And then there's another mass of dark kind of like going. I really want to capture that directional feel. It's getting there. And we do have some more darks down here, but I feel like putting them down here, I'd have to lighten them up too much. All right, so now let's go with our next value for the clouds. That's the darkest. And you know, I don't want to go with the typical local color that you see, even though most of this is kind of local color, meaning the color you see. But I do think I want to get a little fun with color. So I think I'm going to add some greens to the clouds. It will really give some interest to it and keep it from looking flat. And it'll just be more entertaining. How about that? So let's see here. I like that. It's a nice neutral color. And I think I'm going to stick with that. I don't know that. That's okay, Alexa. Alexa, do you like painting? Alexa, do you like painting? Yes, I do. My favorite of all is Mona Lisa, Leonardo da Vinci. Thanks for asking. You're welcome. Here's another fun thing. Try asking me to tell you a joke. Alexa, tell me a joke. What do you call a muddy chicken that crosses the road twice? A dirty double crosser. That really wasn't very good, Alexa. Try again. She doesn't know what that means. All right. So I'm looking, I'm going to work bottom up here. I know this has a lot of that beautiful pink and everything in it, but it's a little darker value. I've already got the paint down. So what I'm going to do, I see where the dark is, but I'm the next value up or underneath it. I'm working on this, which is a little lighter value. Okay. There's that. There's that right in here. Oh, I didn't finish my story. When I get enough patrons, I'm going to get one of those easels. I would like that. Okay. Now this one is more of what the local color would be, but it's too light. I still feel like I need something in between that and this. Let me look. Let me look. I do like that color though. A little darker. How about this here? This is a great American and I do like these. Okay. So let's just, this is what I'm doing. I'm taking actually and mixing it a bit with the dark that I already got down. Now come back and lighten these up more, but this is just about kind of getting in these shapes of these clouds. All right. This was confusing me here, but it's because I put the darks in right in here and I knew they were darks. I mean, this is still the cloud shape, but I didn't put the darks in because it's just wasn't dark enough to add that. So I'm going to look at this color again and see. I still need something a little darker than that, but I'm going to work on these outer edges a little bit. A little cute cloud in here because he's a good point of reference. And when I look at the cloud, I'm squinting my eyes. There's not a whole lot of value difference between the cloud and the sky, but it is, it's brighter. So I want to kind of get it in so that I can again have a little frame of reference. It's got some dark kind of in here. It's like a little bit of a gray, dark color. And then these are those little gray clouds underneath there. Oh, I hear my instant pop going off. And it's got just these pretty pinks and some kind of golden colors to it. I don't want to get it too light too quickly, but again, I just want to sort of get it in because it helps me to see where the other things are. I am sorry if my shoulder's in the way. All right, that gives me an idea. And I love that pink showing through. Squinting, squinting, squinting. Still need something in between. I don't think I want to do maybe a little bit of that green in here. You know, I didn't want to get it up too high. Just to kind of establish where some of these other forms are. Well, I apologize that I missed a probably about 30 minutes worth of painting time. My son who just graduated sort of graduated with this whole pandemic thing. Nobody really has an official graduation, but we had a little get together last night. I did a lot of cooking and when I came back, I just needed to get back and paint some and I just didn't turn the camera on or anything. Kind of just wanted a moment to paint. So this is where I'm at right now and I'm squinting my eyes and I see the cloud shapes, but I feel I need some better differentiation between some things. I added, I do like these pinks going through this cloud, but I've lost some of my darks in here. And I could be at the point of overworking this if I fiddle with too much else, but I've just got to get some differentiation right now. It's definitely impressionistic, kind of fun, but I've got to get some order to things. So that's what I'll be working on right now. So I have some more definition going on with the clouds. What I think was in need of refinement before was the fact that the sky was still kind of chunky. And while I don't want to or didn't want to over blend, that smoothing out the sky a bit was one of the ways to make sense of the differentiation between sky and clouds. So that's why I came in and just kind of glazed over some of these sky holes and made them a bit more smooth to represent more of a flatness to the sky. So I'm getting close to finishing. I don't want to overwork this. Some areas I've already applied a decent amount of pastel, but I feel like I need to get some more sense of some of this going on in here. And also it's a really good idea to take your reference image and shrink it down to a thumbnail image or something just really small because you're able to see things more clearly. Value, shapes, color. Because when something is so large, your eye is looking all over the place. And when it's little, you can just see it very compactly, if that's a word. Anyway, I have my Monet Cafe shirt on. I do have shorts on. But anyway, okay, I'm going to get started and finish this up pretty soon, I think. I decided to add some of those almost fluorescent, warm, beautiful tones by using this set of Sennelier Pastels. This is the 40 assorted half-stick set. It's always a good idea to buy half-sticks. You see how beautiful that warm, orangey kind of peachy color is? Oh, and that vibrant pink. This set has some really nice bold colors. But half-sticks are great. You get twice for your money when you get half-sticks. And I kind of like the smaller size better. Also, so anyway, the softies are good. These are very soft and buttery. They're good towards the end when you've gotten a lot of layering on your painting. Because they adhere and they show up. The color is still fairly bold. Whereas if you try to use harder pastels like a Rembrandt, you'll notice they just don't go down very well. And the colors don't show up that great. So, you've probably heard it's a common rule of thumb to work, well, in value, you work dark to light. Typically, in pastel hardness to softness, you work hard to soft. Some people get so caught up in that they're like, I can't use a softie at the beginning. Just be careful with it and realize that the harder pastels don't take up as much tooth at the early stages. Whereas the softies do. But they do show up better towards the end. So that's why I'm using these. And these are just lovely, lovely pastel colors. I was pretty much wrapping it up at this point. And this was really a wonderful painting experience for me. I loved this photo. I love my friend who offered it that I've never met personally. Isn't that neat about these experiences online? And so, I hope you enjoyed that. Also, as of 2020, before Mother's Day, there is a coupon for our Monet Cafe bracelets to get 15% off. You just used the coupon code MONETCAFE before Mother's Day. By the way, we still have the two series. We have the Artist series with three styles, the Monet, the Degas, and the Van Gogh. And we have the New Earth Colors series. I love these because they have the stones that have the little lava rocks. You can put essential oils and smell so natural and beautiful all day. Find that link in the about section of this video. And happy painting.