 Welcome to Monet Café! I'm artist Susan Jenkins and in today's pastel painting tutorial I'll teach you how to paint dramatic backlighting. I'll take you through the sketching process, blending techniques, we'll talk about sky holes, and we'll also cover how to add luminous color for brilliant backlighting effects. I hope you'll take a quick moment to like this video, comment, I love to hear from you, and subscribe to this channel. Also I would love it if you'd consider becoming a patron of mine on my Patreon page. It's only $5 a month, you get behind-the-scenes content, extra instruction, and it's just lots of fun. So come join the family and here we go! Hello friends and followers in Monet Café and first-time visitors. I'm artist Susan Jenkins. I'm bringing you a tutorial that was really fun to paint. Today we'll be learning about backlighting. That literally just means light that is behind your subject. And I'll be teaching about that as I create this painting of some trees on a hill. And this month is still the focus of autumn colors. So they'll have some beautiful golden colored leaves in the scene. So I hope you have a lot of fun. We're gonna learn about lots more too. So welcome to the studio, the messy studio right now, and let's get started. Let's first talk about the products. And by the way I will have this video conveniently divided into chapters so you can find different sections with ease. I'm working on a board. I like to take my painting surface and tape it to a piece of foam core board. I just use some black artist tape to tape down the edges. Also I've had a few of you ask about this black board I have underneath when I paint. This is a board I made and I have a video on it. It's a DIY painting board. It's washable. It's great. I'll have a clickable link for you to find that. The surface I'm working on is one that I love. It's a sanded pastel surface called Color Fix by Art Spectrum. It comes in these neat packs, a cool pack and warm pack. I'll be working on a color I think it's the one called Fresh Gray. It is a water-friendly surface even though I won't be using any water mediums in this particular demonstration. And like I said they have a warm pack as well. And you can buy these in individual sheets too. I love a toned surface and this is the reference image. It's from Unsplash.com. I thought it was gorgeous. I will have a clickable link in the description of the video. And I also like to print it out. I find that I kind of refer to both of them. One from my iPad and one from a printout. And I thought I'd zoom back a little bit. Those are some of the pastels I've chosen to start with. And this is kind of my setup. Sometimes you guys ask how I do this. I have a ring light that I turn down and put my camera in another little holder to be able to get it a little closer to my painting surface. And lighting is so important for good painting but also for filming since I film almost everything I paint to be able to share with you guys. So I have a combination of warm and cool lights in my studio. And now it's time to paint. As I said I started with some pastels and I do end up adding a few more to this collection. And if you are a patron of mine, one of the extra perks you get as a patron is I give you my color notes. You'll get the post as a patron of the same video sometimes with extra footage. But you'll also get extra goodies as well. Now this is the sketch portion. I'm just using a light colored charcoal pencil. I will be speeding up portions of this video. I think the painting took, wow, maybe close to two hours. So I'm just speeding it up a bit in sections like the sketching section and slightly during the video. I think you should be able to follow along just fine. And you know there always is a pause button. Also just so you know YouTube does have a little slow-mo feature. If you want to slow things down a little on my video or anybody's videos, it's a little gear icon at the bottom right of the window near where the subtitles are. Click the gear icon then go to speed settings and you can slow it down. Now you might want to put the volume down because I will sound drunk while I'm talking. It's really kind of funny. But again you can slow down any video. And with my sketch I'm basically trying to get the gesture of the trees and the general large forms as to where these groupings of leaves are. I'm not trying to draw branches or, well, I slightly. Just a little bit of the shape or the gesture of the branch but I'm definitely not trying to sketch out leaves. And I'm getting a little bit of where the background hills are. They're either hills or trees back there. And in general just the large shapes. And it gives me a little bit of a road map before I get started on the underpainting. The image did have some rocks cascading into that area from the lower right up towards the trees. So I just suggested a few of those. And that's pretty much it. And now I'm going to get started with what's called an underpainting. I'm beginning with a prismacolor new pastel. You can see the color number is 305-P. And it's called spruce blue. Now sadly they don't have this color anymore. I don't know why they discontinued the spruce blue color. I love it because it's a great dark to kind of get started. And often when you're working on sanded pastel surfaces or any kind of pastel painting you often like to begin with harder pastels. These prismacolor new pastels spelt in you, not any W pastels, are great for beginning layers because they don't take up so much tooth of the paper. And sadly what I was going to say is they don't have this color anymore. But Dakota pastels does have Dakota pastels dot com. I'll try to put a link for this in the description of the video. They do have some alternate replacements of other pastels that are a little bit similar to this. Again I don't know why they did away with the spruce blue. I fortunately bought about five or six of them a little while ago. So I have a little bit for now. But I might have to check out some of those other pastels too. Now notice I'm turning it now on the side. I'm just getting an idea of some of this tree line in the back. I'm really just focusing on big shapes. I'm getting in. I'm squinting my eyes a lot and I'm looking at where some of the darks are. Now we know that foreground on the lower right is very dark and that's one of the points of this lesson is we're talking about backlighting. The sun is behind those trees and so that hill that's coming up on our side of the hill is going to be very dark because it's not getting much light. So the hill is in shadow along with most of the tree groupings of leaves and the trunks of the tree. But we do have some of that light peeking through again what's called backlighting that towards the later stages of this painting you'll see me giving the pop of that lighting that's kind of peeking through where some of those spaces are. Now I'm working with my lightest light. Again this is the underpainting and this stage is called blocking in. I'm blocking in the big shapes and I'm working with first my darker value and then my lighter value. And now I'm going to add in some of these masses of leaves. I don't think of them as individual leaves. I think of them as groupings and shapes and I'm again turning. This is all of these have been the Prismacolor New Pastels. Another good thing about Prismacolor New Pastels is one they're great for initial stages like I said and two they're pretty affordable. If you want to get started with some pastels it's kind of a neat way to start. They don't quite have the color vibrancy of some of the softer pastels but I don't think you'll ever regret purchasing them because they really are multifunctional. Now you can see I'm using some warmer colors here. Leaning more towards pinks and burgundies. Why would I do that? I mean look at the leaves they're green right? Well the reason is because I'm putting down an underpainting of complementary color. These are going to be colors on the opposite on the color wheel of the colors that I'll end up with like the yellows and the greens. So they make a nice underneath color for an underpainting. Now what is that I'm holding? It's called pipe foam insulation and many pastel artists use this that you can buy at any hardware store. It's literally the stuff you insulate pipes with in cold climate so they don't freeze and it's a great little blending tool. So you can purchase some and just cut off a little piece. I like to wipe mine off. You can literally wash these off but I usually just wipe them off. I start working with my lightest light areas to blend, gradually working to my darker areas. And why am I blending this? Well can you see how it's starting to fill in all those little spaces? It's not as textural looking anymore and it's looking nice and soft and it's covering the majority of the surface with the general values that I need and a nice complementary color laid down to begin painting. And I've really got a nice way to start right now. I kind of can see where things are. I've got my values somewhat established and now it's time to start the pastel painting. As you can see the underpainting is fairly soft and muted so now it's time to establish my darks in the painting. And can you easily see? I think you can easily see. The darkest darks in this painting are going to be those tree trunks and some of the shadow on the side of the hill, our the viewer side of the hill. Now I like to make real gestural marks with some of the branches. I know a lot of them are going to be covered up by the masses of leaves and I like to kind of skip my pastel along. I have my pressure varied. When I'm going out and making those branches I like to kind of twist and turn it, press hard, lift up, press hard, lift up so you get a nice really gestural more believable branches. And they're going to have to get re-established again as I add pastels but this is just a general starting point. I also like to try to remember as I'm painting that not every branch is just branching out flat. In other words on a two-dimensional plane some of them are reaching the other way going towards the background. So it's often good to kind of consider these things when you're making some of your strokes and some of your branches. They may be moving away from you. And of course I'm also going, oh by the way this is a, it's pretty dark, it looks black, right? It's what's called the eggplant color and the brand is Terry Ludwig Pastels. These are wonderful pastels. So many artists love the dark eggplant color. I know some of you, some of my patrons, I've got to remember to try to answer someone who had asked me a question about what is a good replacement for eggplant because some of you live in, I think it was Australia, the person who was asking the question where she couldn't get it for some reason. Or perhaps the shipping was just outrageous. So I've got to go through some of my pastels and do some research on maybe some alternatives to the eggplant color. I mean many brands have various darks but this one is a really good one. So as you can see I'm getting in some little dark areas that'll be the shadow side of some of these rocks. And I already have the forethought at this point that I want to suggest these rocks. I don't want them to get too much attention. Just a nice subtle lead-in to the painting. And now I'm finding colors I want to use for some of these background trees. Now you can see in the reference image they had a whole lot of autumn color back there. You can see a lot of the the oranges and the yellows. And why would I be putting down something that's a cooler color like this and a little bit darker? And the reason is I want that or those trees that are the main focal point to get the attention. I will add, I think I do add a little bit of the autumn foliage to some of the background trees later. But I didn't want them stealing the show or pulling the viewer's eye right out of the painting. Warm colors, our eyes tend to go to that. I also know that in color theory that temperatures cool off in the distance. That's why mountains and distant trees look blue or purple. Now that's a perfect little segue into why would I be using this purple? Well I saw in the image between the trees as the sun is like back there between those two trees somewhere or maybe even further to the right. And it was really making a lot of light down in between those trees. And it was almost a bluish color. And I liked that. So and I also know that purple bluish purples would make a beautiful compliment to some of these golden colors in the leaves. And the leaves are kind of a golden with some greens in them. So you'll see me adding some of those colors into the leaves and in the earth in the foreground. And now why am I adding some of this blue? It's the same kind of bluish color I used in some of the distant trees or mountains or whatever those are. Well that's because I want to have some color harmony in the painting. And I also know that the shadow side of the hill will cool off. I always say you cool off in the shade and so do colors. And now I added some more of these little pink tones. I'm sneaking in. I'm doing a little bit of a negative painting here. Sneaking in some lighter value of kind of a peachy color back there. I end up layering later some golden color like a golden greenish color to the background field. It's very light. You can see if you squint your eyes. Where is the lightest light? Well it's in some of those backlit leaves of the trees. And it's in that field that's kind of surrounding that one more middle tree. And I think that's one of the things that drew me to this composition is a composition that's a strong composition for painting. Or you can just create this effect yourself. It's one that has contrast in the focal point area. Contrast just means the values of light and darks next to each other. And you can see in this image the highest contrast is that it's not quite middle tree but that one tree where the trunk is and that field. There's so much contrast there and it makes for a perfect focal point. And another reason it's good is it's not right in the middle. It's kind of going up both those trees more towards an upper third of the painting which makes a strong focal point. And now you can see I've grabbed another one of the... I used a lot of Terry Ludwig pastels in this painting which is one of my favorite brands. I have a lot of favorites though. And this is kind of just a pretty magenta. I'm again establishing some of the dark values. And I know as a beginning artist I probably would have gone very quickly towards some of those yellows, the bright yellows, and the bright greens. Now back to the focus of this lesson which is backlighting. And with backlighting we know we're gonna have little areas that have highlights. But if you don't get your darker values in first like I'm doing now, those highlights of color and value are not gonna pop. Again back to contrast. We have value contrast and color contrast. And we're getting in some values now so that later we'll have light leaves that contrast next to those masses of the shadowy leaves. And now I'm just doing something that I call like my color notes. I see that it's really beautiful. There's some light coming through the tree on the right and it's coming and filtering through and casting down upon some of the rocks. Another thing I loved about this composition. And I just scumbled some of that in there to remind me. And it just really is so neat to see that filtered light. And I love backlit images to paint. So this seemed like a perfect way to not only talk about autumn color, that's the theme this month in Monet Café, but also focus on backlighting and some strategies for painting images that have backlighting. I add a little more of these little rocks. This is back to that magenta color into the foreground and suggested some of them further away. Now I'm using this. It's kind of a gray blue color and I'm just negatively painting. I'm kind of carving out some of the shapes between the branches. That's what negative painting is. We're not painting the positive branch or leaf or whatever. We're carving the spaces in between and it really gives a painterly look to things. And I hope you'll notice that it takes me a while to actually get to some of those colors that you see. What's called local color in the painting. Local color just means the color that you see in the image. Whether you're looking at it in a photo or looking at it in life. And what I've been doing is establishing a base to rest those local colors and values upon. Now I'm finally starting to add some warmth. And I typically work as do most pastelist pastel artist dark values to light values because pastels are an opaque medium. We can layer light over dark not like watercolor. So I like to get in my darker values first for some contrast that that will contrast with the lighter values that are the final icing on the cake colors and values. So now I'm finally adding a little bit of warmth. If I squint my eyes and look at the trees, squinting your eyes helps you to see values better. Sounds weird. You're actually just reducing the amount of light coming in your eyes and you can just really break down where the darks and lights are. But squinting your eyes also helps you see color a little bit better. I can more identify more easily identify that there were some kind of darker rusty colors in those leaves. And then there were also some little bit of darker earthy greens in those trees. So I'm just laying my pastel on the side and suggesting those kind of where I see them. I'm not worried about painting leaves. I'm just painting shapes and I'm keeping a nice gentle touch. We are not trying to press hard at this point and actually that would be a negative thing for your painting because you're going to fill up the tooth and you won't be able to add those final bright colors that again are going to be the pop of color. So and this sanded surface just so you know the color fix by Art Spectrum is a nice sanded surface. I find that the different colors have a little bit of a different amount of grit and this gray blue had a decent amount of grit or texture to it. And it is that sanded surface, that grit that actually allows for multiple layers of pastels. You can work on unsanded surfaces. I do. I just did a Patreon video where I worked on a Kanson Métants unsanded surface. It's a lot less expensive than sanded papers and you can get really good results. I find that if you're a beginner artist sometimes you get a little frustrated until you get some things worked out with learning some painting techniques and sometimes the sanded surfaces are more forgiving but you can certainly get some unsanded paper and give it a try and it's great for studies and for practice and even final pieces too. So that's just a little education on some of the different pastel surfaces. I know I get a different variety of levels of artists that watch my videos. I love to cater to the beginner and I feel like I'm often trying to just give information just in case there's beginners watching and trying to figure out how to do this. And that's how Monet Café started. It was me not having YouTube videos to follow so many years ago and having to figure all this out on my own. And I just love being able to provide that information to hungry artists. By the way, if you are a patron of mine watching now, I am so darn proud of you guys. I have loved looking at your work through our Homework album where you submit your homework and in our private Facebook group. And I have watched some of you blossom as artists just so beautifully. And you know the way I look at this, I will talk about this painting process in a second, but I love to just share like this too. One of the things that I love about being a teacher, I equate it to as how I homeschooled my oldest son. And the goal is I love teaching by the way, and you probably noticed that. And the goal is not for the student to get to your level. Just as with my children, I want them to learn what I know and more and just to go way beyond the teacher. And so that's how I feel about you guys. And I've seen that happen. I've seen some of you just really take off and become amazing pastel artists. So anyway, just a little, you know, proud mama moment for my patrons. You guys are doing great. And now I'm adding a little bit of those undertones of that pretty orangey rusty colored orange that again, if I squint my eyes, I can see it. I've got to be careful though to resist the urge to go too light too soon. Once again, those masses of leaves are mostly dark, middle to dark value. I would say middle with a hint of dark. They're definitely lighter than the the shadowy side of the hill. And they're obviously lighter than the tree trunks, but they're quite a bit darker than the field in the background and even the background trees. So just continuing to make sure I don't lose that feeling of what will be the final result of backlighting and those pretty little highlights of color and light peeking through the branches. I actually think I got in this phase here, I got those lower branches, the tree that's almost in the middle, the most lower to the left branches. I think I got them a little light with that orange and I think I do go back and reestablish some dark so that those lighter, final yellowy green colors will show up. I make a little mark of that rusty kind of a color down in the foreground there to remind me that there is some light that just kind of filtered through and a little bit of that clay or leaves which is down there. It might have been a little bit too light. And now I'm going to move on to getting some of the lighter values in that distant field. I felt like it had a hint of green, but it's really pretty light back there, especially again when it gets really far away. So I'm just using, I don't even know what this pastel is, it's a little kind of yellowy green and I'm just kind of carving it into the spaces. Notice that that little pink undertone that I put down is still has an influence. It's kind of showing through and these kind of warm colors are great to lay down before grasses. I love how artist Karen Margulis puts it. I think she originated this this comment, but she says put down the dirt before putting down the grass and that makes perfect sense because you think of it that way. That's how it works in life. You put down the warm color, the dirt color and then glaze the grassy greens on top. Now this is a pretty light green right here. Again, it got a little bit of a light highlight at that top edge of that field and far away, sorry my head keeps getting, look at my crazy hair, keeps getting my camera out of view. It's focusing on me, but I don't think I end up doing that too much and I just snuck in a little bit of that again kind of negative painting in between some of those tree trunks and now I'm trying not to use that light too close to the foreground because you notice it's not as light in the foreground, but I just kind of connect it a little bit with some light layering marks bringing some of those lighter grasses forward, but not too many. You might also be able to see that in my foreground, I still don't have all of my original underpainting covered up. It's really loose and I really like to keep it that way. I'm going to give a little bit more detail, like I said, suggest some more of those rocks and some of the pretty greens that are in there, but if I give too much detail in that foreground, the viewer's eye is going to get stuck there. Our eyes and minds go naturally to detail and I don't want that to happen. I want a nice easy flow up into this painting so the viewer has just an easy pathway to get in and view some of the colors and the beauty of the scene. And now I'm developing a little bit more of these darks and I find that that happens throughout a painting, especially one like this that has a sanded surface with lots of layering, is sometimes you lose your darks and you've got to go back and reestablish them periodically throughout the whole process. And pretty soon you're going to see me start to use some purple. It's like I was saying before about the blues that I was using on the shadowy side of the hill. It's a shadow. It's it's in shadow, I should say. And so even though in the reference image we're seeing greens and darks and grays and browns and rusty colors, it's going to feel more painterly and just have more creative color if I use my artistic license to follow what happens in physics in the laws of physics with nature. And that does happen. Colors typically will cool off a bit and so I can break out some purple and give this painting not only some color interest but some complementary color. Once again these leaves are greens and yellowy colors and a beautiful complement for yellow is purples. So that's going to be another little strategy. Here's a beautiful purple. It's it's a Terry Ludwig pastel. You can usually tell they're pastels because they're rectangular and large. Terry Ludwig doesn't make half sets, half-stick sets by the way. And sometimes you'll see mine they look like little short squares because often I will break my pastels. So I added some purple on the backside of the tree. I added some purple on the backside of some of those rocks and now I'm sneaking in a little purple in the background. The distant trees and just again on some of the shadowy sides of this hill where the light isn't getting to. Can you see how that purple just gave interest to this painting? Now I'm going to add a little music just for a section here. You'll see me work for a while but I'm going to come back when I use some fixative, some spray fixative to spray onto a strategic part of this painting just to get a little bit more layering. I get the question all the time how do you protect your artwork at the end? Do you spray your painting? And I never spray my pastel paintings with any spray fixative at the end because it darkens the final piece and I don't want that to happen. But there are times while I'm painting during the painting process that I might either purposely want to darken an area or I need a little bit of extra texture, a little bit of layering and that's what a spray fixative does at least the one that I use. So you'll see me come back in just a few minutes where I will show you. I don't take you outside with me to spray the fixative but you'll see how it did darken the area but it gave me an extra ability to layer some more color on. So I'll be back, don't go away. Here's the stage where I wanted to spray a little bit of this workable fixative. It's made by Blair Berry Low Odor spray fix and I used it to spray a little bit of the foreground, that shadowy side of the hill and some of the leaves. You can probably see how it not only makes the color darker but it also kind of mutes the color a little bit which is okay in this case because I'm coming back and adding my punchy colors afterwards but that's why you don't want to or at least I believe you don't want to use a spray fixative on a final painting. I've never been happy any time I've tried it so that's just my advice. And now I'm coming in and adding some of those greens. Again why I added the fixative was because I could tell I could feel the colors are starting rather to lay down as a fresh color they're starting to blend with the colors that are already down and it creates neutral colors and sometimes you want that. I often like when my sky I can add a few colors they start to blend themselves and kind of neutralize but there are sometimes when I want my color to go on fresh and not mix with the colors that are already on the surface. And I'm adding more of these little greens that are sprinkled through the foreground hill and in some of the leaves of the trees. And now here we go we're going to start adding some color. I could see some pretty oranges peeking through. I didn't want them to be too light. I'm trying to be a little careful as to where I place them. I'm specifically looking at the areas where the light is really shining through those branches and that's the places where you're going to see the brightest color. It doesn't necessarily have to be a super light value but brighter color. That's what happens with light. Light will of course lighten values but it can make colors appear brighter and if you put them in the shadow or the shade they're going to look darker in color. So it's not rocket science. It's pretty much common sense if we start to really look at the earth and examine how things work. There's really fortunately some really simple rules that once you know those, man you can really start to paint. It's awesome. And now I'm trying to find some kind of golden colors that aren't too light. These are going to be those kind of dark yellowy colors I see on the backsides of the more the branches that are more masses and on the shadow side. I don't want that to be too light. By the way, if you ever have a hard time finding a dark yellow, well the reason is yellow, a dark yellow is brown. But I did find this nice golden color I really liked in the landscape set. It's the Jack Richardson hand rolled landscape set. See how it's kind of a nice neutral yellow and it's not too light. It's not one of my bright bright yellows and I found this was a nice color for some of those yellowy tones that were more in shadow. So again, the strategy as I often do is working darkest values and gradually getting to my lightest values. So I'm peeking and sneaking these in in little areas where I see the light filtering through. And also too, you're going to see me start doing what's called sky holes. It's again, it's just negative painting like I mentioned before, where I'm carving in the sky through the trees. I don't worry about getting all those little shapes of light when I'm painting the trees. Notice I painted it all in just masses of leaves with a light touch and then I go back in and carve in those sky holes with little little shapes. And it really is one of the tricks to having a painterly effect with this painting trees. And so these nice golden colors are working. If I squint my eyes, the general value of those clumps of leaves and masses in the tree branches is still dark enough. And I'm using, this is a strategy that I like to use in almost every painting which is echoing color. And I just had a lesson on my Patreon page about this, about how to echo color in throughout the landscape. So if I have golden colors in the tree I want to echo that somewhere else in the painting. Now this was easy to do because often if you have a tree like this a lot of the leaves will fall on the ground so you get a little bit of that golden color on the ground as well. But you can break out your artistic license and use colors throughout your painting. Now you see I added a little bit of that yellowy warm color to some of those distant trees that gave that little impact of there being some fall trees in the background but they don't feel close. Can you tell they feel further away? For one is because the color is not so intense. It's more neutral and it's just kind of muted and nice and easy. And now I'm also taking in some of these pretty greens. There were some really nice greens. So not only am I gradually getting lighter in value as I layer. Again working on the areas of that backlighting where you where it makes sense, where you see it. I'm also gradually getting brighter and more intense in color. So that's really how this whole painting is progressing. You'll see the brightest punchiest brilliant color towards the end. I really like this little teal color. I'm not even sure what that pastel was but again it's a cooler green and the grasses and the leaves and the things on the hill side the shadowy side of the hill will be a little bit cooler. I really liked how it was at this point. It's kind of soft and I keep playing with I think painting is like a dance. I feel like you know you're dancing with your partner of your painting and sometimes you're like oh let's try to move it this way and see what happens. So I keep playing a little bit with some of these purple colors. I love this color by the way. It's one of the colors that's my favorite. It's what I call in between purple and blue. I love in between colors that are kind of rare. I'm not sure what that pastel is. I've got to find out so I make sure I don't run out of that color but that is just such a beautiful color to me. Now I'm starting to use some of these lighter values to do the carving in the little negative sky whole shapes. Again with backlighting you're going to have that light coming through those branches and making little shapes. Okay I've switched to adding a little bit of a lighter highlight on those grasses. The reason I don't go too warm on that is because it's far away and color is not as warm in the distance. That's why it was a little bit more of a minty green. Okay so back to the sky holes. I decided to get a pastel that is not really light. Okay it's going to be cool. You can't see it my hands in the way. It's a pretty neutral kind of blue. It's not super light in value and the reason I'm using that and kind of see it here when I'm peeking it in rather than a really bright light blue light value blue is because when you get to the inner branches of things the leaves in the branches act like a filter much like a screen on your porch so it makes the light not as bright. That's what a screen is for is to kind of shade things a little bit, keep the bugs out and so when you get to your inner sky holes that you're painting those little parts of light through the masses of branches and leaves resist the urge to grab a white or a really light blue because it's not going to read as well and it's also going to draw the viewer's eye too much to those central lightest values you've mistakenly put in the inner branches. Now I'm adding in a little bit of the prettier oranges. I think that's what I have. No, I'm sorry. This is a lavender. I'm doing the same thing that I mentioned about keeping it a little bit darker in those inner branches. Isn't that a pretty color? So I'm sprinkling some of that pretty almost like a in-between another in-between color in between a magenta and a purple and ooh that just to me makes this painting sing not just the purple but a little bit of that magenta purple and it's just starting to really bring life to the color in this painting. So I'm sneaking it in to some of the inner portions of that tree as well and using echoing color again echoing it throughout the painting to give it color harmony and I think it just feels more easy on the eyes when you have that color working throughout the painting. And by the way I've had people ask well how do you know where to add that color? Well again I just use those general rules of color theory which is things kind of cool off in the distance and things get a little lighter in value in the distance so you just kind of you learn these things the more you do it and then the more you do it the more you start to explore and stretch the rules yourselves. So that's really the fun part about being an old artist like me you get more exploratory and creative I guess. I'm adding a little bit more of this kind of a neutral dark yellow if you want to call it that. I'm not painting leaves I'm just giving a few little shapes I'm using the reference image as a guide to see kind of where some of these leaf shapes are but I'm not using it as a total photo reproduction. This can be quite suggestive as long as you get them you know where they make sense again where the light is filtering through it wouldn't make sense if I if I take one of my final lightest yellows that I'll use at the end and put right in the middle of one of those dark clumps of leaves it just wouldn't happen because the light wouldn't be getting through there. Okay now it's time to start working on some of the lightest values and I like this I like where it is at this stage but I really feel like it's going to pop if I go in an ad where some of that light is filtering through I've got to be careful in this area where I'm adding light now if I go to light it's it's not going to read accurately. The light is kind of filtering through and coming over the hill but it's not as light as you think. All right time to add some light I'm zooming in here so you can see it a little more you can see in the reference image there's light coming through that right side of the tree there and I'm just adding this is the brightest yellow I've used so far and I'm strategically looking for little places where the light is filtering through it does creep through some of the the more of the masses but I don't want to put too much light in those inner parts of the tree like I mentioned before. I'm looking where there might be some of these little yellows on the ground again to create color harmony and echo color throughout the painting I think later I was regretting that I put that yellow back there but but yeah it's okay it looks all right and now I'm using some of that yellow to kind of look at where some of the bright areas are and they're not they're not in that many areas especially in this side of the tree there's really a lot more in that little hole area right there kind of where I'm working now that's where some of the brightest yellows are and they move up a little bit again just kind of sprinkled throughout little crevices in these branches and we're getting close to the final now I am going to be adding some more sky holes again the negative little shapes of light filtering through some of these trees one of the best ways I've found for me is to squint my eyes that's been a technique I've used throughout this painting it really is a great way it sounds so weird squint your eyes so you can see better but it really does help you to see things more clearly and not to get too hung up on the detail I may have been getting a little too hung up on some of these sky holes right here but I find that they are what's going to really carve out the little light areas I thus far my masses were almost too much of leaf groupings and the inner parts of those branches did have a little bit more of the light filtering through so I'm just making little marks again squint your eyes and try to see what those little shapes are usually they're just little shapes it might be shaped a bit like a triangle or like a little trapezoid and keep them very suggestive and if any of them come out to where they look a little too dark or harsh you can just kind of knock it off with your finger I went back to that purple you just saw me with before because it was in one of those more deep parts of the tree trunk and branches and I gradually get lighter in value as I go to the outer branches and now I'm going to zoom in and show you where I am at this stage you can see how it's still a little bit unfinished in the foreground I'm going to work on that I've been talking for 43 uh almost 44 minutes now so but I think I hope you got a lot of learning out of this and it really does help my channel a lot YouTube will share this video more often if you like it and if you comment on it of course share it I mean if you have anybody you want to share this video with just share the link but you can see here how I've gradually added more of the warm greens and finally a little bit more of those lighter greens and some of the warm greens on the tops of the rocks there it was like a moss growing on top of the rocks and then I didn't want to go too light but it's a little bit lighter value green where the light was kind of filtering through and hitting the tops of some of those rocks so this painting was really fun for me I enjoyed it I I often just like to turn on some praise and worship music or just beautiful instrumental music while I paint and often I do a voiceover because I did want to enjoy the painting process myself and and just paint without talking and now you can see I'm adding some of the final lightest highlights there aren't many of these because it was a backlit subject you just saw a little bit of those lightest lights and do you see now how it feels like the sun is shining behind this and it really adds that pop of light and color to this painting I really hope you learned a lot and if again you're a patron of mine you will be getting my color notes and perhaps some more goodies with this tutorial and again god bless you if you're a patron if you support this channel it helps me keep these free videos coming here's the final and god bless you all find me at all those places on this end screen and I pray you continue to enjoy the beauty of art happy painting