 Hello and welcome to Monet Café. I'm artist Susan Jenkins. We're gonna have some fun today and if you're new here please subscribe and hit that little bell icon to be notified of future videos. I'm happy to be bringing you this video which is really kind of fun. We will actually be working from a black and white photo. Why would we do that? Because seeing value is actually more important than seeing color. Hello YouTube family. I'm Susan Jenkins and you're here in Monet Café and I'm bringing you a lesson today that is a segment of a Patreon lesson that I have. On Fridays we have something I call PE Day, Patreon Education. We're doing something really fun. So today I thought I would just bring you the portion of that video where I'm doing a painting and also I am painting on a surface that I've never used before. I wanted to share that with you because I've shared often about my surfaces that I use and one of my favorites is UART paper and I typically use the UART 400 grit or grade paper and I like to buy it in the pads. Sometimes I buy it in the sheets a little larger but these 9x12 pads with 10 sheets and it ends up being oh under three dollars a sheet okay to buy this in this size. The challenge I've had is and I know a lot of you have is it curls and I used to say it's because I'm in a humid climate in the Tampa, Florida area but I've had other artists say they're in dry climates and it curls and I always find myself fighting against it as much as I love you are. I love you your company but um but anyway I had another member subscriber here in Monet Café I think that's where it was tell me that there is another surface like UART very similar that doesn't curl at all and it is here's the I bought it in this pack of 10 sheets it's Fischer 400 art paper and I bought it from a company 400 the same as UART 400 grade or grit I bought it from a company pro art panels now these are 12 by 16 sheets 10 of them and they're about four dollars a sheet that's approximate so um it's pretty comparable to UART except UART doesn't sell this size of a sheet um as far as the price is what I mean so I've never tried it but look at it's flat as a pancake I've had this literally for a few months laying just in a portion place in my studio where I keep papers and I've done nothing different to it than the UART but it's just it's not curling at all man I'm so excited about that I used to tape around the edges to keep those curls those edges from curling up so um so I'm using this for the first time and I'm doing a painting from black and white so I have a photo reference that's black and white I'm coming up with a color palette like I said it's part of the patron lesson which is kind of neat so I have to keep my patrons they you know they pay a little extra to support this channel and so I have to keep some things just special for them so sorry guys but you're getting the painting portion so this should be fun painting them our scene from black and white coming up with the color palette out of my imagination and oh by the way I have another announcement I am creating a Monet Cafe YouTube channel album it's a google album for you guys because if you're just a Monet Cafe subscriber if you're not on the Facebook group Monet Cafe art group on Facebook if you're not a patron of mine um whatever your reasoning is that you're not or can't be or whatever I feel sometimes like it would be neat if you guys could see each other's work if I could see your work so I have really loved the google albums I've been using on my Patreon group so I thought I'd make a Monet Cafe album I'll put the link I'm going to announce it later but I'll give you guys the link in every video where you can click that album add your own paintings and I'll probably encourage you to add a photo of yourself maybe holding your painting so that Monet Cafe on YouTube we can kind of be a little community more than just me up here yakking all the time so I thought that would be neat so that's coming soon too so anyway I'm going to get to painting it should be fun thank you bless you subscribers are up um I'm so happy about that and I'm just thankful for all of you all right guys this should be fun here we go another quick comment before I start I am wearing the Monet Cafe apron with the new logo design and just so you know I have the link to purchase it's on a site called Zazzle it's the only place I could find where you could get aprons made reasonably and just so you know I have since moved the logo up a little higher I thought it was a little low but it's a great apron it also comes in a khaki color I think I'm gonna order that one too I wish I could get it in black but I can't um it has an adjustable strap it ties in the back it's got these pockets and it washes great it doesn't fade at all so anyway just thought I'd let you know that now also I am going to be doing my reference photo that is a black and white of a marsh and I because this paper is already 12 by 16 I didn't want to cut it too short with an 8 by 10 hey Jackson and could be Jackson what do you think you like that photo yeah okay so since it's already a fairly large sheet I thought why not do an 11 by 14 I've been doing 8 by 10s a lot so like I do with my mats often this mat I had another one that was 5 by 7 on the inside 8 by 10 on the outside this one's 8 by 10 on the inside 11 by 14 on the outside so all you have to do instead of measuring it out and um you know it just takes too long so why not just use the mat to make it fast all right here we go I am using a pastel pencil just for the sketch and as a go ahead and give you my opinion of this paper I absolutely loved it it's literally just like you are at paper but it doesn't curl and it's close to the same price so I am definitely using this paper pretty much in place if you are I have to say because the curling is crazy I don't know if you guys experience that but I do and I am speeding up the video portion of this because the full portion is part of my patreon page but I still want to bring this video to you guys so I am going to give some commentary while you watch me paint here and I also want to share with you some of the strategies that I use when working from a black and white photo and what some of the advantages are in doing that why would I do that and so I'll be talking about that in a minute but first let me tell you a little bit more about the pastels that I'm using here okay so I am using my set that I've been using so much the unison 120 half stick set I'm really loving the set it's just seems to have a little bit of everything in it I don't have to go far in my studio I can pretty much do a whole painting just from the set so I shared with my patrons also that I'm going to try to contact unison and let them know that you know since I'm sharing about their set so much if we could get a coupon code or you know something if maybe they could work out so I'll let you guys know about that but uh you guys didn't get to hear because it's in the patreon lesson but I shared with them my concept and my direction from working with the black and white photo and what I did was I chose a color palette I chose one that was called a split complementary color palette and I'm not going to go into all the details of that here and as you see me working right here I'm doing what's called a warm underpainting I'm doing some I put some darks in for where the background trees were and where the kind of the bank side of those marsh grasses are then I get in some reds and oranges and lighter oranges all decreasing in value or lightness and darkness as they recede into the distance and if you haven't seen my video on five ways to create depth in your artwork that's basically the principles I'm using here and pretty much what I use with a lot of paintings that that video's gotten a lot of views and I think it's because it's something that really does have a lot of information it's very useful information it's what I've learned over the years I didn't reinvent the wheel making that video but um so when working with a black and white photo you are forced to focus on value and you might think at first well gosh what colors do I use I mean I'm it's just like so open-ended well first of all we know that marshes usually are have greens or oranges depending on you know the seasons and so you can kind of use that to your own discretion but it's also forcing you to learn more about color theory so when you learn a little bit more about how color works also in that video I made then you have a bit more freedom and more confidence in what colors you use I had originally begun this with what I said a split complementary with a complementary colors are just colors that are opposite on the color wheel so I had a lot of oranges or I wanted orange and opposite from orange on the color wheel is blue a split compliment complementary is where you take the orange instead of going down to the blue you go to the two colors right next to that which were more of like purples and teals and um and they they just work well together something else I've also shared on my patreon page which is really awesome is do you guys know what the color wheel is based on I mean how how does it how did it come about we know that Sir Isaac Newton kind of invented the color wheel concept but what was it based on why do these colors work why are complementary colors good to use together and there's got to be a reason well it's based on the rainbow and that's just to me another sign that we have a great creator that even gives us the seven colors in the rainbow lots of sevens in nature and how awesome it is that there's order and design and it's things that resonate with our spirits you know you know why do certain certain colors work even non-artist kind of know when some art and colors are right and so uh so anyway that's kind of the strategy I used with my color palette and uh there's another uh color you can use a color wheel to do that a pocket color wheel but there's another neat thing I don't think this is available in Europe for some reason but it's a company uh that has a website called palaton.com and it's a neat online way to play with different color palette strategies you can choose an analogous color palette which is um colors well let me first start off you can do a monochromatic color palette I believe which is just one color with different values you can do an analogous color palette which is two colors uh or colors that are kind of adjacent to each other you can do a complementary you can do all kinds of different um ways that you can choose and then you can choose the different color palettes that you like so I'll include um I'll just put it in a little description here palaton.com if you want to play around with it it takes a little while to figure it out but once you do it's super cool um now I'm doing something here I call uh well I'm now off the sky already a fractured sky which is I'm not doing a lot of different value changes I do have a little bit of light down around the tree line usually around the tree line it's a little bit lighter now I just lightened up the values of those trees they were a little bit too dark but notice that I'm using the same purple I always say if I've got a color in my hand I might as well maximize my time and and use it but also it creates um a harmony of the painting and a cohesiveness where your colors aren't just all in one place they're a little bit throughout the painting not everywhere but you know in strategic places and so um so that's what I'm doing with that purple so right now it really is that split complementary color palette that I uh originally started with um glazing over the water a little bit but I do end up adding some greens before it's done um now once again back to the black and white so if you work with a black and white photo you can take any photo you have that you want to work with convert it to black and white the neat thing for my patrons was that for their pe lesson their patron education on fridays I provided them with black and white photos a whole lot of them that they had never seen the color version so their homework over the weekend is to literally uh create from uh black and white that they have no idea what the original color was except for some things that are kind of you know obvious like green grasses and stuff so but they don't have to be green you can you can do whatever you want as long as you obey the rules of value you can get creative with color there's an expression that says value is king but color gets the glory but but really it's value is what you should really focus and learn and then color will you know everybody talks about color theory color theory but if you get value right you're you're definitely ahead of the game for sure all right so now back to the fractured sky a lot of the colors i'm using especially in the upper sky are all of similar value so they're creating some interest with color but they're not uh going to be the star of the show because I wanted the water and the marsh to kind of lead the eye in and if I had the sky with and the reference photo doesn't have real detailed clouds but if I had it with too much busyness it would be competing with the focal point I have another video on focal point that's one of my favorite videos too the focal point one and one called uh the golden ratio the grand design uh I have one on light too I really get into the science of these things and it's like I say often in my patreon page I don't want to create copycat artist I'm trying to give you guys art principles and lessons because we're all unique you don't need to be another Susan Jenkins artist just like I don't need to be a you know a Marlo Baguetta or Alan Picard and so we can have artists we admire and learn from and even copy at first yes that's fine if you copy someone's art that's what a lot of us are doing to learn but eventually you want to you want to learn the reasoning behind it and you will develop your own artistic um style you know I'd love to see that I'm seeing that with some of my patrons now but anyway you see how I've added the greens I've used a lot of the strategies I talked about in that other video of how colors get more neutral as they recede in the distance um but anyway I I really I've ended up talking for most of most of the whole video here I'm also too this painting is going to be available in my etsy shop I'm trying to get it to where when I finish a painting I'll have it available in my etsy shop you know that's the kind of the goal of artists too is to sell your work so I'll have the link to this painting in the about section of this video I'll try to put it right at the top and thank you to those of you who have purchased on my etsy shop it's still fairly new I mean just a few months old and and I've been very blessed by having some sales and I'm very very grateful uh for that especially in this crazy time with uh COVID um because my other business uh had to do with the school system so it really suffered um but anyway so uh I hope you guys enjoyed this and um leave some comments if you haven't subscribed please subscribe I love to try to answer your questions also add some work to the new Monet cafe google album you don't have to be a patron you don't have to be in the facebook group it's an album for anybody who visits this youtube channel that you can put your work in there now oh I'm spraying some fixative here I wanted to darken the foreground I usually don't spray fixative at the end of a painting I know I'm talking a mile a minute sorry guys um I usually don't spray at the end of the painting because it does just that it darkens your whole painting and I usually never spray it spray it in the background I want to keep it lighter values in the distance but occasionally I will use it to darken strategic areas or to get a little bit more layering you know another exciting thing coming I've got a grand reveal of a product uh I can't blow it too much I'm working with the um the inventor and the owner of this company that is a really neat way to uh protect our pastel work I'll just leave it at that so here is the final with some rich blues and oranges and just full of color I love Marcheine's and once again available in my Etsy shop for purchase all right guys I enjoyed being with you again happy painting come back soon