 Hello, artistic friends. Welcome to Monet Café. I'm artist Susan Jenkins bringing you a painting tutorial in soft pastel. In this video, you're going to learn so much. I'm going to talk about my products. I'm going to share some new discoveries that I've made. And I'll also be sharing with you a wonderful way to create a vibrant underpainting that will make your painting and your pastels just pop with color. I hope you enjoyed this free version of this tutorial. And I would love it if you'd go ahead and like this video. If you haven't subscribed yet, I'd love that too. And comment. I'd love to hear what you have to say. And a big shout out to my beautiful patrons on my Patreon page who support this channel for $5 a month. My patrons will be getting the full real time lesson of this tutorial along with my color notes and many other goodies. So come join the Patreon family if you'd like to support this channel and get extra instruction. Hello, artist here in Monet Café and my patrons from my Patreon page. I am bringing you a lesson that is really a little different for me. And the theme of this month is different strokes. So we're trying various different new techniques with mark making and strokes. And I think this one should be a lot of fun and educational, like I said, for myself included. I have been inspired by some artists recently over the past few months that have some gorgeous mark making techniques very dramatic and colorful and dynamic. And I want to give that a try for a pastel painting that is really from a lovely reference image. I found this reference image from unsplash.com. It's of some beautiful mountains that are so colorful and I thought it would be so fun just to play with this color. I'll be working on a surface. It's a sanded pastel surface. For those of you in Monet Café who are not familiar with sanded surfaces, yes, it's sanded. It's like sandpaper at a hardware store. And this one is Fisher 400. It's one of my favorites because it's water friendly and it lays nice and flat. It doesn't curl up. There's another pastel paper called UART paper that sometimes will curl, especially in humid climates like where I'm from. So I love this surface. It's 14 by 11. I buy these from a company proartpanels.com. I'll have a link in the description of this video for this product. And now I'm going to show you some of my strategies for tackling this subject matter and hopefully creating a beautiful painting with some dramatic and dynamic mark making. Let's talk about some of these products and I will have links in the description of this video to all of the products I mentioned. This is a sheet of Fisher 400 sanded pastel paper. I'm also going to be using an Arteza gray marker. It's kind of a medium value and literally going to be sketching on my surface. I recently discovered this works great. Now the set of pastels I'm primarily using is the Sennelier set called the Paris Collection. It's currently on sale on Amazon for $110 at the making of this video. That's the lowest I've ever seen it. It's a great half stick set of pastels. Look at that vibrant color. And I highly recommend this set. Not only is it a great value, but they're great pastels. I also added a few blues and purples and I'm going to be using for the underpainting a combination I've never tried before. I'm using golden fluid acrylic. It's called the color is quinacridone nickel azo gold. That is such a large name for a color, but I love it because it's very luminous. It lets the color or the lightness of the paper show through and I decided I didn't want it just this golden color. I wanted to add a little pink vibrancy. So I'm going to be adding a little bit of this acrylic ink. This is Daylor Rowney. The color is magenta quinacridone magenta actually, and it really did give a neat little punch of pink to the color. And now I'm just going to get in a general rough sketch of these mountains using the marker, the Arteza marker. I also like Tombow markers. It's another brand that has a grayscale marker. Now when I say grayscale, it's a middle value. It's not really dark or not really light. And you can see how I'm sketching it in. Sometimes I'm holding up my image, just trying to get the marks of where things are. It was kind of like a quick little cheaters way of doing this that got some accuracy. And you may be wondering, how did you print out such a large reference image? Well, it's two sheets of eight and a half by 11 paper. I laid it out in Photoshop and split it up between two pieces of paper and taped it together. So that helped me to see it in the actual size of like a 14 inch by 11 inch paper. So now I've got my different levels of mountains. And another neat tip is to change your image to black and white. You can easily see the different values and how they gradually get lighter as they go into the distance. The foreground mountains are going to be darker and they just gradually get lighter and lighter as they recede finally almost into just white sky beyond. And now for the underpainting fun. I am using the Quinacridone Gold, Nicoleso Gold, Fluid Acrylic with the Daler Rowney Acrylic Ink. And just a little dish. I get this dish from Walmart, I think. I think it's the Pioneer Collection I find they're very handy to have in my studio. And I'm using a pretty large brush just to be able to get in these big shapes. And all I'm really doing here is getting different values of this color. And I'm just squeezing in a little bit of the Quinacridone Nicoleso Gold, Golden Fluid Acrylic into my dish enough to hopefully cover this painting, which it did. And now I'm adding some of the acrylic ink, the beautiful magenta color. And I think I added, I don't know, five or six drops or so. And you can use your own discretion with this. If you want it to be a little bit more pinkish, you can add more or less, whatever you want. So I don't know, what was that, like eight drops? But it made a really nice color. Again, just a little bit more of a reddish pink color rather than just the gold. I also recently discovered that this is a very handy tool. It's just a Tupperware container with two compartments. And it allows me to have a little water in one side so that I can change the degree of water to paint ratio. And like I said, I'm gradually going to be getting the mountains a lighter value as they recede into the distance. So, oh, and by the way, the reference images from unsplash.com, I will have a link in the description. I loved this reference image. It's, I think it's called a super bloom. Somebody told me, I think it was one of my patrons that in California, they have this season or this time where they have a super bloom and everything literally is just so gorgeous and colorful with these flowers and beautiful color on the mountains. As you can see here, I'm adding what is almost full strength of my acrylic ink concoction. I did have to add a little bit of water just to get it to flow a little better. So and then each time I go a little further into the distance, I'm going to add a little bit more water. I mixed a little bit more of the full strength to get it a little darker. And I noticed in the reference image that second little hill that I'm working on there is actually pretty dark. So I think it's because it's on the opposite side of how the sun is shining and it was kind of in a little crevice there. So just keep your strokes nice and loose. A lot of this gets covered up with the soft pastel. Question I get all the time is why do you do an underpainting if you just cover it all up? Well, I've learned over the years the goal is not to cover it all up. You want little bits of it peeking through. And I think you will see that as you get towards the end of the painting. I have a lot of little parts of this underpainting that are subtly peeking through giving such a beautiful influence of color to this painting. I think it's really what made it pop a lot of these colors. So I went back after it dried and added a little more dark to and really loose strokes for those gorgeous orange flowers that are going to be kind of popping up and just having some fun in this painting. I also noticed that I needed a little bit more dark in some areas as the mountains receded so that the ones far away would be the lightest in the scene. And now I'm using my marker once again to sketch in some of the gestural forms of the flowers. Now I'm not looking to recreate every flower in its exact spot that it is, but I loved the motion of the flowers. So I'm just using it as a guide, as a reference and a suggestion for me as to where to place these flowers. I want to capture that energy. I liked how some of them, it was almost like the wind was blowing or they were dancing. And so some of them are cascading in one direction, then they kind of whip around and go in another direction. And I really do like this marker technique. It's really great. Now, if you are a patron of mine, you're going to be getting almost all real time for this video tutorial. Definitely all of the pastel painting portion that I'm doing now in the Patreon version is real time. But just so you know, guys in Monet Cafe here, I mean, I know my Patreon page is an expensive, it's only $5 a month, but I will always keep free content like this coming here on Monet Cafe because I know there are some of you who live in places where $5 a month is a lot to you. So I think you can still learn a lot from this lesson as well. So now that we're working with the soft pastels, let me start talking about one of the general themes of this video, which is expressive strokes. The theme this month in Monet Cafe and on my Patreon page and group has been called different strokes. And we're trying this month, all of us, me included, with this particular painting to stretch ourselves to take things maybe to another level or different direction with our art and explore different types of mark making. Now I am pretty typical for when I create a pastel painting, doing a lot of layering and using broad strokes, often almost always until final marks using the side of my pastel rather than the tip of it. And you can see that the marks that I've been making in this painting thus far have been more of using the end of the pastel and not laying it. And I call it like painting with the pastel when you turn it on the flat side. And most often that's the technique that I use for what's called blocking in. You're really just blocking in the big shapes and the values before you add the next layer. Well, you can see in this example, I'm doing more little directional strokes. Again, it's a bit more like almost drawing for these initial stages. And it was a lot of fun. So this is my exploration in different strokes and different techniques and mark making. And guess what? I really liked it. And I really liked the final result of this painting. So I encourage you to, it doesn't have to be this type of mark making, but try things that are different. Break out of your comfort zones. A great way to do that is to emulate another artist. And if you're a subscriber here on Monet Cafe, I'm sure you've done that with my paintings. However, look for artists that you just love their work and even just try to recreate one of their paintings. Of course, don't share it like it's yours. And if you do say this was a recreation of, I mean, you could even do like Monet or I love Van Gogh. And I love Van Gogh's style. His style, I would say, had a little bit more of that expressive strokes, the title of this video, directional strokes, kind of like what I'm doing here with the sky. I made all of my marks in one direction. I didn't want the sky to steal the show. I wanted it to be kind of subtle because there was so much focal energy with those foreground flowers. So I just used, I think, three different colors of similar value and did what's kind of like a little feathering technique. And again, this was not laying the pastel on its flat side, but using the tip. And I do that for the majority of this painting. So I hope to encourage you to try something similar. I know we're doing that over, of course, on my Patreon page, but also in the Monet Cafe art group on Facebook, that's a group on Facebook that you can join. You just have to answer like three questions. And it's gosh, I don't, is it like over 18,000 members in that group, I think now. And even though there's artists of every level there, everybody's so helpful. The beginner artist is always welcome in that group to share. You can get lots of great feedback from your work. So share. If you take this challenge on, I'd love to see what you do. Now in that group, I don't get to see your work quite as much as I do from my patrons. My patrons are like my little special family. So if you're watching, my patrons are going to have their own version of this, of course, but if you're a patron of mine watching this version, I can't wait to see what you do. I really enjoy seeing your work, guys. Also, I wanted to mention that in a little while, I'm going to be adding some music for you just to watch and learn. But I wanted to mention that I didn't do much blending in this. I let the pastels blend themselves. You did see me use my finger a little bit just to kind of soften up those mountains that are really far away. But later, you're going to see me pull out a little device gadget that looks like a little sponge. And it's actually a pastel blender. It really is just a little sponge, but made by Pan Pastels. And they're pretty inexpensive, but I use it to kind of soften some of those really dark marks in the foreground where I made the dark area with the grasses. And I use it to soften some of the mountains in the distance. Now with this right here, the marks I'm making, I am doing it a little bit more on its side because those were far away. And often when you have grasses or flowers or things in the distance, they end up becoming more horizontal than vertical. You can't really see individual flowers. So you get more of these horizontal bands of things. And I did just love that band of purple on that mountain. It was just so beautiful. Typically, like I say in many of my videos in pastel painting, you work dark to light. You do have the ability to layer lighter colors over darker colors. So you'll see that while these purples look pretty dark at first, I'm gradually layering lighter values on top. Think of it as layering down the deepest parts of those colors, like where the roots are. And then you're glazing the lighter colors on top where the sun would be hitting. So these blues and bluish purples were just so beautiful to me. And if you're watching this video and you've been coming to Monet Café YouTube channel for a while, I'd love it if you go ahead and subscribe. If you haven't already become a subscriber to this channel, it really does help all of my videos get shared more by YouTube. Didn't you love that little magenta I just put in there? That was a Prismacolor New Pastel. They're longer and more rectangular. And now I'm using some of these gorgeous reds and oranges that are in the Sennelier Paris Collection set. Again, I used primarily other than some of those blues and purples, the Paris Collection set. And oh my goodness, it is on sale on Amazon right now at the making of this video. Now, if you're seeing this video six months from the publish date, it might not be this price, but right now it's $110 on Amazon. I will have the link in the description of this video and I have never seen it that low. I've seen it like 128 before. I think it's normally like 150-ish. So that's a super value. Now, let me just on that note talking about soft pastels. If you're looking to scrimp on something and you're wanting to start with pastel painting, don't scrimp on the pastels. I know they can get expensive, but if you're trying to buy pastels at these little craft hobby lobby, I love hobby lobby, by the way, but Michaels, Jo-Ann's often, sometimes they might have a better value quality pastel. Often they have, though, these little cheap student grade pastel sets. That's the first thing I bought when I tried this pastel painting journey. I almost quit painting with pastels because I thought, this is terrible. I'm not doing what I'm seeing other people doing, but fortunately I realized that I was using a grade of pastel that wasn't quality, so it really does make a difference. So do what you can. I mean, I know we can't always afford what we want, but this Sennelier Paris collection is a really good value. If you're looking to bump up your pastel collection, I also wanted to mention that with this style of painting, or really with any style of painting, it's good to use directional strokes. Like if you see, for example, the mountains, you can kind of tell where the mountain curves are or where it's going down into a valley, and you can make your strokes to accentuate that and really give it that three dimensional quality. Also too, just a little tidbit of information, when painting mountains, typically the values get darker in the little crevices, and where I'm painting here happens to be some really deep little grooves in the mountain that I'll lighten up in a minute, but they get darker typically in the crevices and they get darker down at the bases of the mountains, and these can be subtle differences. It doesn't have to be a lot darker, but if you squint your eyes, you can see even in the reference image that the tops of the mountains are usually lighter, and down at the bases, they're usually a little bit darker. And I know some of these colors look pretty bright and vibrant, but I do tone them down a little bit with some layering as I work, but I really did love how colorful the reference image was, and I decided to just go with it and make this painting super high chroma and intensity. These little ones that look like squares, they're Terry Ludwig pastels. They're usually like a longer rectangular shape, and I break them in half, and I really liked some of these because they have a little bit of a neutral tint to them. They're not super bright, so this is what I was talking about when I said that I would tone down those yellows. I just basically got some neutral colored pastels and just kind of softened the vibrancy. All right, my beautiful artistic friends, I hope you've learned a lot from my commentary here. I'm going to add some music so you can just relax and watch, hopefully learn, and perhaps try this style yourself. I'm going to be back at the end, so don't go anywhere, enjoy the music. I really hope you have enjoyed this. I learned so much myself in just trying to create a different style of mark making. Again, I hope you try it. I'd love it if you'd comment on this video. Again, it does help when you leave comments. YouTube will literally share my video more, but I also love to hear what you have to say. Let me know if you liked kind of my new painting style and departure perhaps from the way I normally paint. I did and I had a lot of fun with it. I also really love this gorgeous bright color. If you guys recreate from my tutorials, I would love to see them. If you are on Instagram, follow me at Susan Jenkins Artist and tag me if you have a painting that you share. These are some of my final strokes. I don't think I'm going to put this in my Etsy shop. My husband told me he wanted me to keep it, so I guess I have to keep this one. I kind of like it, but I will make a print available of this. I think this would make a gorgeous large canvas print. Fine Art America does such a great job in making these canvas prints. You can literally hang it right on your wall. You don't have to frame it under glass or anything. Anyway, I'll share a link for that in the description of this video. Here's a little bit more of a close-up. You can see how the underpainting is peeking through. This was a lot of fun. Thank you so much for being part of this artistic family. My Monet Cafe and my Patreon family have truly blessed my life. God bless you all and happy painting.