 Welcome to Monet Café, artistic friends and visitors. I'm artist Susan Jenkins. I think you'll really enjoy today's lesson and art is definitely better with friends. Please click that subscribe button if you'd like to have more of these videos coming your way. Well I was really shocked and very happy to find out that you could use the common surface of a brown paper bag to create a pastel painting. Now I'm using my own creation of clear liquid gesso and marble dust. I have another video with the recipe but don't worry about that. You can use just plain clear liquid gesso for this. It works almost just as well. I'm using my primarily my Unison 120 half-stick set. It's such a great set for me to create a painting because it has so many options and choices all arranged so beautifully. I'm using a reference photo from pmp-art.com. I will provide a clickable link to this reference photo in the description of this video. For the sketch I'm using just a piece of willow or also called vine charcoal and a cup of coffee is always nice. It is Monet Café after all. I like to use these little mats to get my dimensions of my painting. The outside border of this 5 by 7 mat is conveniently 8 by 10 so I just mark my section off and then I'm ready to go. I'll talk a little bit more about this recipe that I've come up with. I like to keep it in this little repurposed container because I can shake it up to mix it but I really just apply it with a brush and like I said it is clear liquid gesso which also works fine by itself but I added to it. I had heard that you could add marble dust. I ordered the marble dust on dickblick.com. It's not expensive at all and I find it gives a little bit more texture to it so it's just two to one two parts liquid gesso one part marble dust and after applied I usually am impatient. I want to start painting so I just blow it dry and it's ready to go. I can really feel the texture but let me also share. You don't even have to apply this. I've used the brown paper bag actually just brown paper. I do a lot of lessons on plain brown paper without any additional product. This just gives you a little bit more layering. Here's a quick little clip of one of my patreon lessons. If you're not familiar with what patreon is or what my patreon page is I'll talk about that a little bit more in a minute but as you can see here I was just using the brown paper. No additional product applied and it worked great. Now keep in mind this doesn't necessarily mean this is an acid-free product or what's called archival so I use it mostly to teach or to practice or just to play. Now I'm just trying to get a real gestural sketch in. These poppies were so dainty and luminous. I just wanted to really keep that so you may notice as I'm working here when I get to the pastel part I'm keeping an incredibly light touch and that's very important when you're working on any surface I think no matter what it is but especially an unsanded surface you don't want to lose your layering ability and also when you overlay or you create more of a muddiness with your pastels they will lose that beautiful aspect that they have inherently a vivid color which I think is so beautifully unique to pastels and once again I'm not showing the reference photo here I will have a clickable link in the about section of the video because it's on pmp-art.com. I also wanted to let you know to stay tuned to the end of the video I'm going to show you every single selection of soft pastel you're going to see them as I paint I try to make it really user-friendly for you guys to see the colors I'm choosing here lately but at the end I'm going to demonstrate making the marks and I will also have a clickable link to a photo you can click and see all of the pastels that I use so be sure to look in the description section of this video if you'd like to check that out. I'd also like you to take notice of the gestural delicate quality I'm trying to give these poppies I'm keeping a real light touch with my strokes and just trying to keep I always think of music when I'm painting and a lyrical feel music and art just seem to go together so beautifully anyway have you ever seen on YouTube there's a musician named Tim Janus and he has these amazing videos of nature combined with his music and it just feels like all of creation is in a dance and on that note no pun intended I am going to play the rest of this video to music using a classical song I love Canon in D major because I really like this tutorial to be more of an experience and very enjoyable and peaceful but also pay attention I will have some instructions in the video in text written at the bottom so enjoy this learn a lot try it yourself there's always creative waves we can use pastels even if you don't have a lot of supplies so relax enjoy comment like this video and if you haven't already I would love it if you'd become a patron to support this channel it does keep videos coming to people all over the world who are limited often in their ability to receive instructions so I really appreciate my patrons and my patrons get a little extra instruction to we have a lot of fun all right so now really be quiet and let you guys enjoy the music and the painting experience well I hope this has been a blessing for you so far and let me know if you like this editing method with the music and the written instructions of course I'm always still going to be talking to you guys but here is the final painting once again on brown paper you can use my recipe or not and here is the sped up version don't worry I'm going to show it to you slow again of all of the pastels the TL is the Terry Ludwig eggplant the rest of these are unison soft pastels and the 120 half stick set and the rectangular longer ones at the bottom are the new pastel made by Prismacolor they're a little bit harder than the other pastels so here you can see them I'll have a clickable link for the picture of the pastels and a link to the reference photo you guys y'all are awesome thanks for being here with me come back become a patron if you like subscribe and happy painting