 Welcome to Monet Cafe Studio. I'm artist Susan Jenkins, and I love bringing you guys along with me on new painting adventures. Have you ever tried creating two paintings at the same time? Well, that's what I did, and I realized I can share with you so many advantages to painting in this way. And I think if you try this method of painting, you'll be pleasantly surprised by the loose and painterly results. Even beginner artists will love this lesson, for I'll be going over so many of the principles for pastel painting that should work for artists of every level. All right, are you ready to get started? Let's begin this pastel painting adventure. So let me just talk about the products that I'm going to be using for this pastel painting tutorial. I love the surface. It's called pastel matte. I've used it often, but I've never used this green pad before. This was actually gifted to me by a beautiful artist friend, and this has some beautiful greens in it, a blue and even a white. And I'm using this foresty green color. It's a large pad, but I have marked off an area to be 11 by 14 for each painting. I'm going to start with some pastel sets. I get a question all the time is, do you keep your sets as sets, do you incorporate them into a larger workshop palette of pastels? Well, I've been painting with pastels for years, so I do have my workshop palette of everything arranged by color and value, and I love that. I love to paint that way. But now when I get some new sets that I like, I like to kind of keep them to themselves because sometimes I like to just pull them out and paint from them and then add pastels as I go. So the two sets that I'm going to be working with, the first one I'll share with you is a Jack Richardson landscape set. I believe it's 40. Yeah, it's 40 of their hand rolled pastels. The quality is awesome. I love Jack Richardson pastels. I also love the fact that they are the perfect size. This is their full stick of the hand rolled pastels and some pastel sticks are large and I have to break them. Of course, they also sell pastels, many brands in half sticks. So these are already the perfect size. So I love that. I also selected this set because I liked how it had some nice neutrals in the set as well. And as much as I love color, I also know that neutrals are very powerful in a painting. They are what will make your colorful items or subject matter just shine and sparkle. The other set that I pulled out is this sweet little unison half stick set. It's called the unison starter half stick set. It's 30 half sticks. This is what I mean by half sticks. Their full six stick is obviously double this size. And I really liked some of the colors in the set. There were some nice cool greens and a vibrant turquoise. I love that too. Some pretty warm yellows here too as well. I also pulled some yellows that I just have some extra yellows. I find that a lot of pastel sets come with a lot of yellows and oranges. And I find that I don't paint a lot with yellow and oranges. So I'm glad our theme this month is called Hello Hot Stuff. We're working on the warm side of the color wheel. So I hope you love these paintings of these fields of yellow flowers cascading over a meadow into the sunlight. I am speeding up the sketching portion. It's a very simplified sketch. Basically some tree shapes, a horizon line, and a few little gestural marks for the grasses in the meadow. And I have superimposed the final paintings on the right side where you can see them as I paint. And if you happen to see my recent tutorial just before this one, you know that I have been experimenting with A.I. technology and creating my own reference photography, which is what I did in this case. I created two really stunning photographs of some yellow flowers in a field. And if you're a patron of mine on my Patreon page, you will get access to those images as well. Now the remainder of this is sped up only slightly for my patrons on my Patreon page. The Monet Cafe version of this tutorial will have lots of instruction. Don't worry, but I will speed up, especially some of the middle to end portions of this. Alright, what am I doing right now? I am using one of the pastels from the Jack Richardson set. I love this little medium value, kind of neutral blue. When I say neutral, I mean it's not a blue that's just, you know, going to jump out at you. It's just a little more subdued. And it's the perfect middle value I thought to get started. Often I start with my darks first, but lately I have been embracing getting in some middle values to begin with and then getting in a few of my darks and lights. That way I've got a nice range of all of the values that will be in the painting. And with these middle values, I know that I can make them darker by layering. So I like to just go ahead and fill in anything that would be a middle to a dark value. I'll layer my dark on top of this middle value as I work. So these are just really basic gestural marks just to give my idea of some of the values within this meadow. And you can see in the reference images that, or the actual paintings that I have superimposed here that this field has some hills and valleys. So I'm getting my blue pastel that I'm working with here in the areas of where I see those shadowy areas, like where the hill would be rolling or in the foreground. Notice too that I'm making very gestural marks. I felt like the second one that I'm working on here, the one to the right, it had some sweeping motion to it. And I really wanted to capture that even as early on as the underpainting stages. Now, if you're a beginner, can you see how simple that was already so far? This is pretty simple tree shapes. Often I think we overthink things and overwork them. So just get in basic shapes. At this point, we're not doing leaves and branches. All right, now I have a darker pastel. This is kind of a darker blue. And this is what I meant by I can layer my dark value over my middle value. Now things that are closer to us typically have a darker value. I mean, keep that, you know, in reference to what the element is. But usually if you've got deep grasses in the foreground, those grasses are going to look darker than grasses in the middle ground or further away. And if you have trees closer to you, those trees are going to be darker in value than trees that are in the middle or further away. Like, value gradually gets lighter in the distance. And a perfect example of this is mountains. It's something called aerial perspective. When you have air literally between you and the distance, the more air that there is, it acts as a filter. And it's going to take away not only the value, make things lighter, it's going to take away warm colors. So you have cooler values in the distance. And again, like mountains, they start to look blue and purple, right? You know they're green with trees. So that's just two artistic principles if you're a beginner to keep in mind. Values are darker in the foreground, lighter as they recede. Colors are usually warmer in the foreground and cool off as they recede into the distance. And there you already have two very easy artistic principles. If you're a patron of mine, I will include a graphic that I've made that easily represents those two rules I just described. And if you're wondering, what's a patron? It's a way you can support this channel and get all the extra goodies. I'm always talking about on my Patreon page. So check it out. Also, now's a great time. If you're liking this video, if you wouldn't mind clicking the like button. Also, I love to hear from you. Leave me a comment. And by all means, please subscribe to this channel. Now I'm working on my lighter value. Recall I got my middle value in first that medium blue, then my darker values. And now I'm just getting in some of the lightest values. Now here's another thing to keep in mind with landscape paintings. Typically, your lightest values are going to be in the sky, believe it or not, even for night scenes. The sky will be lighter than other values in the scene. I did notice in the AI image that I say I created it, you create them verbally. I shared a lot about my technique for doing that in my last video that was a Patreon version of it. So my patrons got a lot of the techniques of how I do this. And I was so pleased everybody embraced it. And so many of my patrons are already creating their own reference images in that way. It's fascinating. Now I'm using a little bit of a lighter value and it's a bit of a lavender. Very soft, pretty lavender. I think this one is also from the Jack Richardson set. Oh, wonderfully, I ended up not using many other pastels other than these two sets. Of course, that little tray of yellows that you saw me pull out. So I did have some additional yellows, but I'd say I pulled less than 10 other pastel colors. So it's kind of neat to see that you can really do a lot with just some minimal soft pastel supplies. I have many videos here on Monet Cafe where I create paintings with just one small set. Actually that little starter set of unison pastels that I held up at the beginning of this tutorial is one of them. So now I've got in my lightest value and at these stages I'm not super concerned that the color is perfect. I want the value to be right and that pinkish lavender seemed to work well. Now I'm working some more of this turquoise just down into some of the cloud shapes. And again, I'm not concerned about getting, there are some in the reference image that I created with AI. There are clouds in the distance, but I'm not so concerned, especially at this stage, about getting them in perfectly. I'm creating basically just some general shapes, colors and values. And if you like an impressionistic style, which you probably know I do if you've been to my channel much, this is the best way to work. Don't even think right now about anything having a large amount of detail. We're just barely suggesting things with value. I say value first because it's primary. Getting that value right is more important than getting the color right. What you've seen so far was real time and I'm just speeding it up a bit here. So the whole painting or two paintings took me a couple of hours. So I don't want you to have to sit through two hours worth. And I really think when I speed it up slightly like this, you can get a lot of information. And so I'm filling in. This is called a blocking in stage where my first goal is to block in the entire surface with value and color that represents my image very loosely. And I want you to notice too that I am going to talk about the advantages of painting in this switching off technique. You'll notice that I go from one to the other. I'm not going to paint one whole painting and then move on to the next one. When I use a color on one, like on the left side here, I'll see if I see that color on the other side. And sometimes I'll actually, not a lot, but sometimes in this I'll actually use my right hand instead of my left hand. You see how now I just took that same kind of peachy color. There was a lot of like sunset glow in this painting. So therefore this peach worked really nicely. And let me go ahead and talk about what I consider advantage number one to painting double like this or companion pieces if you want to call them. It really helps to develop a loose and painterly style. Even though I tend to paint loose anyway, I found this technique really gave me that final result that I'm often looking for. It's just a painting that feels almost like a dream. It's just things are very suggestive and surreal in a way. I think the reason for this is because I'm continually moving from one painting to the other. For example, when I have this green in my hand, I'm going to see where I can use it in the other painting. And thus I believe it keeps my strokes more loose and prohibits me from getting too detailed in any one area. Now you can see I've been adding a pretty cool middle value green. I believe this one is from the Unison Hastings set. I know that a lot of grasses in the shadows are going to be a little bit cooler. They're not getting as much sunlight, so they're they've cooled off a little bit. And so I'm using this green on areas in the grasses where there might be a shadow side to the grasses. You'll probably notice thus far my colors have all been on the cool side of the color wheel. And I want a field that glows. So the cool colors were to get down my shadows and my darker values. And now I've got to add some warmth. I'm going to have a golden field with a sunset and I do want some warmth. So I'm using a darker it's kind of a almost like a brownish brick red dark color that I'm just sprinkling in layer. That's my new word. I say sprinkle all the time now layering in some of the foreground. I'm also getting an even darker pastel to establish some of my darkest values. Some of those deep roots in the grasses and some of the trees that are closest to the viewer. And keep in mind again beginner artists that the colors that you're putting down to begin with are a layer. We're not necessarily creating the final color that will be there, but we're learning to paint from the inside out. I call it where I'm getting my deepest values and colors in knowing that I'm going to layer on top much like it happens in nature. With those grasses, for example, there's some deep areas of the grasses that are going to be dark. But there are going to be some lighter areas on top. And thus here I am using a lighter warmer color getting some of my warm tones that are in some of these grasses and flowers established on areas that are more of the tops where the sunlight will be hitting. And again, you can see I'm taking the same colors and moving from one painting to another, which leads me to advantage number two. And that advantage is painting in this way causes you or maybe forces you to really examine what values and colors are actually there. For example, let's take value when I had put down that darkest color in the grasses. I immediately go to the second image and I examine and I can see, oh, that value is the same as the first one I just put down. So we're training our eyes to really hone in on those values and represent them more accurately. I hope that makes sense because I totally found that to be true with painting double in this way. And the same thing happens with color. Okay, that's advantage number three. I believe it fine tunes our eyes to notice those subtleties of color and more easily identify where they are in an image and how to find a pastel that will represent that well. To reiterate, I believe we're training our eye to correspond with what we really see in an image and therefore training our brain to recognize it. And in time, all of these things become second nature. They become habit. And I think sometimes when we focus on one painting, we can become too hyper focused on the details. And I know probably some of you have been there and you're just overworking it and your values don't seem right. And the more you work at it, the more frustrated you get. And I really love how creating two paintings like this kind of relieved some of that. I really felt like it kept my already pretty loose work even more loose and I enjoyed the process more therefore. You know, sometimes painting can get frustrating if you're getting over detailed. So okay, there's a fourth advantage. It's more fun. You're going to enjoy it more. And I always recommend creating an environment when you paint that is going to be conducive to peace and creativity. I love putting on soft music. I often love music without words. If you've heard of the cello artist Hauser, I just love listening to his cello music while I paint and he's so darn handsome. That's an extra perk. He actually reminds me a bit of my youngest son. Now let's get back to this. As you can see, I'm working with a green pastel now. It's still a bit darker, medium to darker value. And I'm scumbling this in areas where I know there are some grasses or stems, grasses, the support for the flowers. And this is a really pretty blue. I showed it because it's part of a Sennelier soft pastel set that if you get serious about soft pastel, so you start and you're like, okay, I'm really liking this. I would like to get a set that is a great value and also excellent pastels. I recommend the Sennelier set of 120 half sticks. It's one of the best bangs for your buck. And that's another Sennelier pastel right there that is going to really give you such a great selection of color and value. So I am using some of those cooler tones there for the trees because even in the image that I was working from, again, if you're a patron of mine, you're going to get copies of this AI image that I created in Adobe Firefly. But the trees had a greenish blue tone. And often I just look for these subtleties of color and I try to incorporate it throughout the painting as well. That's called color echoing. You could see how I added some of those same colors in the grasses. Now I'm just using that beginning blue to get down a value for some distant trees. And what am I doing now? I'm giving it a little bit of a lighter value to, I'm doing the same thing now on the right side, a little bit of a lighter value will push some of the trees back even further. I love creating distance in a painting. You see how that just really gave like the idea that something is further away. And this is really all about just suggesting things. And we never have to totally follow our reference image. We use it as a guide or a suggestion and let it take us to a place that we see in our minds. I know sometimes this is harder when you're first starting out. Goodness knows I could not do that when I was first starting painting. I had to hold very rigidly to the reference image. But the more you paint, the more your own artistic expression will come out. You'll develop your own style. Here you can see I needed a few more darks in the reference or the image on the left. The reference image that I created with Adobe Firefly, the trees were larger. They were closer. So those trees are going to remain a little bit darker than eventually my trees on the right will be. Now I'm adding a little bit of this dark green. That's actually part of the, I think that's a green from the Jack Richardson set that I showed at the beginning of this tutorial. And as I mentioned, I primarily used the two sets that you saw at the beginning and some of the yellows. I had my little yellow tray. I think it was probably less than 10 extra pastels. I'm almost positive it was less than 10. So again, you can see I'm cooling off some of these trees. And what's happening with that is it's causing them to appear further away. Can you see that happening right before your eyes? When you add cooler tones, it pushes things back. Now there was some light highlighting on some of these trees. So I just scumble in some of that color on some of the even darker trees to suggest leaves. Now what I'm doing here is using a, I found out this works great with pastel matte, the surface. It's a chamois cloth. I bought a big old piece of it at the dollar store. I'm speeding it up because you know, it's kind of, you can figure it out. And I cut off little squares of it and I use it to blend with. You see how that just kind of softened everything? So now it's finally time to get to some of these yellows, right? You saw that in the beginning of this video, this is a field of glowing yellow flowers and sunlight. And all of that work to finally get to the yellows. And I had to lay this foundation. Think of it just like you would plant a garden. You don't all of a sudden see yellow flowers, right? You've got to have the earth and the dirt and the foundation and that is what your initial layers are. And then the flowers and then of course the grasses. And then the flowers are the sprinkle on the top and the icing on the cake, so to speak. Now my mark making for things in the distance is usually going to be a little more horizontal. Things kind of flatten out as they go into the distance. If you think of massive groups of flowers, they get closer together, they get shorter. You don't see like stems way far away. So that's why my strokes are more horizontal in the distant and the middle ground and the background and in the middle ground. Gradually your flowers will start to give a little, they'll get a little wider your bands and they will get a little taller. Well, that's kind of the same thing I'm saying. And they will start to eventually get really taller and in the foreground and you'll be able to see individual flowers. Now I noticed in the image I created that these yellow flowers seem to be cascading up a hill. So that's why you see my mark making moving upward. Also I'm purposely pressing a little bit harder in some areas. You see how it's giving the idea of little individual flowers. I don't want it everywhere, just a few and you'll see me develop that more as I paint. Now I lost a little bit of my shadowy area. When I first started the underpainting on this one, particularly in the right, it had this nice swooping feel with almost like a path, a trail underneath. So I don't want to lose that. That's what a lot of the underpainting is about is creating those shadows and valleys that will lead your viewer through your painting. I'm continuing with this yellow. And by the way, these are yellows that I hardly ever use. So that was just such a wonderful experiment for me. And I recommend you try that more often. If you've been painting with pastels for a while and you notice there's certain colors you just don't use, pull them out, maybe try painting double like this. Again, I found so many advantages to doing this and see what kind of magic you might create. So continuing to develop the yellow flowers and the rest of this is going to be that I always call it, it's like a dance. I love it when I get my original or my initial foundations in and then I can really start exploring and playing and enjoying the moment of painting. Okay, I've been talking about 24 minutes now. I hope you guys have hung in there for this long. And this will be the end of the commentary for the Monet Café version. If you're seeing this on the Monet Café YouTube channel, then you're going to see the rest of the painting, but there won't be any more commentary until I come back at the end. So don't go anywhere. But if you're a patron of mine on my Patreon page, you will continue to get commentary for not quite the entire lesson, but a lot more. And we're going to talk more about layering these flowers and some of my techniques. All right, enjoy this lovely music. And also, if you would, please go ahead and click that like button to this video. If you haven't already, it really does help YouTube to share this video more. And I mean it when I say leave me a comment. I'd like to know what you thought about this and, of course, subscribe. So enjoy this music and please watch to the end. That also really helps. I'll be back soon. And now it is time to sign these paintings. And here's another benefit. Benefit, what am I at? Number five, you have two paintings when you're done. Double the fun, right? And they make lovely companion pieces. By the way, I did put these in my Etsy shop if they're still available, both of these original. And I have them available as prints on my Fine Art America site. They do a fantastic job. I really like the canvas prints because you can hang them right on the wall without the need for framing. I also recommend get the matte finish if you get a canvas print. So I hope you learned a lot in this tutorial. And if you're a patron of mine, I am really looking forward to seeing your recreations in our homework album. As always, God bless everyone and happy painting.