 Welcome to Monet Cafe. I'm artist Susan Jenkins. In today's pastel painting tutorial, we're learning how to create storm clouds. It would bless me if you would like this video. Leave me a comment and let me know what you thought and also subscribe to my channel. Also, you can click that little bell icon to be notified of future videos. And this video is brought to you from the faithful support from my patrons on my Patreon page. If you support this channel, you not only help free videos keep coming, but you also get extra content. Now, the surface that I'm using is pastel matte. It's the one I've been using on the last few cloud tutorial paintings. The color is light blue, even though it looks very gray. The reference image is from one of my patrons on my Patreon page, Cindy Sanford. I loved this photo. I'm speeding up my sketch here, but you may notice something a little odd. My reference image is upside down and I'm actually sketching it upside down. This is something I recommend you do or try. It will really help you to develop your sketching skills. Now I'm going to do a watercolor underpainting and I have a large watercolor palette that I use for my tube paints, but you could just use a watercolor set. I really like this little 36 Arteza set. It's affordable if you're a beginner and has lots of great colors. The pastel matte surface that I'm working on is obviously water friendly. Now look what I'm doing. I'm even doing the watercolor painting upside down. Why on earth would I do that? Well, it's because you can use gravity as your friend. A lot of times when you're painting, if you have enough water to paint mixture, your paint will start to drip downwards, which actually, when you flip it the other way, has your trees and other elements looking like they're reaching upwards. I have this real time right now, but in a minute I'll speed it up and you'll kind of get the idea. This is a Chinese watercolor brush. I like it because it's nice and wide and I like to have strokes that have energy and not too fussy and precise. Now I just got a Payne's gray, a dark, and it dripped on me a little bit, but that's okay. I just used a paper towel to brush it off and this is supposed to be loose and drippy anyway. I'm just getting in basic colors that's pretty much, I would say, local color. My colors are a little bit different than what you see in the reference image, but local color is when it's a color that's close to what you see in the scene as opposed to complementary color. But these drips of paint are, you can see they're kind of like spreading and reaching downwards and it really made a neat effect, I thought. I also decided on watercolor for this underpainting because I wanted the sky to be soft and you can see how much I'm looking at my reference image here. I keep turning my head, but I've sped up a little bit here just so we can get to the pastel painting portion. Now, yes, it looks like a drippy mess right now, but this is actually what's so neat about an underpainting. It's just a neat way to get a loose beginning and kind of a road map to getting started. Now I wanted my clouds a little taller. I think I made them a little short, but I also wanted that storm cloud to feel massive. So I'm reshaping it a little bit with the pastel and this is a, anytime you see me using kind of a rectangular pastel like this, it's probably a Terry Ludwig pastel. I did use a lot of unison pastels for this painting. I used the Unison 120 half-stick set. They had some brilliant oranges and just some pretty kind of fluorescent colors, but I'll try to talk more about my pastels as I work. Now, you might be thinking, wow, look at that blue. That's not really the color that I see in that cloud. There would be a tendency when I was first painting to paint that cloud gray or maybe a lavender gray, but I've learned over the years that what's going to make your painting sing is when you learn to embrace the beauty of layering pastels and layering different colors, the colors are going to play upon each other in this beautiful symphony of color that will really just be a treat for the eyes, you know, when you combine colors in this way. So you're going to see me use two, basically two main colors for creating this large storm cloud. The first is this blue and the next one will be a purple and I'm lightly keeping such a light touch. Even some of the underpainting is showing through at this point and that's a really great point to make early on is to not feel like you have to cover up the whole surface or every little space that's showing. I'm actually going to be blending this cloud a little bit in a minute. Now, here's the purple. So these two colors, the blue and the purple are going to blend together to kind of create a new color, but also some of the blue shows more in some areas and some of the purple and it's just a really interesting and unique final result. Now, the paper was warping a little because of the water. So I just taped them down and then I continued working with the purple and I usually am better about where I place my camera. You'll still be able to see what I'm doing here, but unfortunately you're going to see my old tired face as I keep looking back at my reference image multiple times. So pay no attention to that old woman. Just keep looking at my hand and what I'm doing. So now you can see it's going to be a little dark for a little while, but it will gradually lighten up a bit as I work. I'm also going to use this purple. Is this the same one? I think it's the same purple to get some of these wispy clouds up high. I loved their energy and their direction and they're going to look a little dark to begin with, but like I often say, a lot of my paintings will have dark to light in my order of pastels, the order of values that I put down and I'm keeping it super, super light touch here. And so I'm just getting down some of those clouds and then I'll gradually layer some lighter values on top of them. And this is still what I would call the blocking in stage. Now I do have my watercolor already established that was an underpainting, but still a little bit of blocking in with the underpainting. And but I'm basically trying to cover my surface before I get too fussy. Here's where I'm blending the cloud. I wanted it to look soft. It was a little too chunky looking. And I have found that just a tissue, the kind that you blow your nose with, it's very handy because I just pull them out of the top of the box. And I just kind of wrap them around my finger. I try to turn it if I'm going to change blend to a different color so I don't contaminate it. But I'm just lightly blending the blue and the purple together. And notice how soft this cloud is starting to look now. And it's really starting to feel more like a cloud. So again, this is the blocking in stage. We're just getting in the big shapes, the basic values and basic colors to get started with. And then we will let the painting evolve as we go. So definitely resist the urge to get too detailed too quickly. And I'm just lightly blending some of these clouds up top as well. And I also realized I need to kind of reestablish my sketch. So I just got a piece of charcoal. This is vine charcoal. And I'm just speeding this section up. I'm just kind of getting back in my tree line. There wasn't a whole lot to the composition other than you know, the clouds, well, the ground, the clouds, the sky and the tree line, the rest is all just about color and energy. And I love seeing a reference image or in real life, where trees look like spectators, like they are, I always personify them, I think of them as people looking up at the sky, and just admiring God's magnificence. He is truly the master artist, right? So we're just emulating him poorly. In my case, his clouds just fascinate me. That's why I made this month's theme in Monet Café clouds. And I'm a sky watcher, definitely. I last night I went outside and I saw the most beautiful blue I've ever seen in a storm sky. Because I live in Florida, we have a lot of storm clouds. And I'm on a tangent now. So let me let me stop and talk about this. I'm looking at the reference image and I'm just getting I call these color notes. I'm not getting too detailed. But I'm adding color where I kind of want to remember what's happening with the color. It was a little more gold in some areas, a little more pink in other areas. And I want to make sure I have my focal point is definitely going to be some of those trees. I'm going to have negative spaces there. And also another focal point strategy is where you have high contrast. Those trees are going to end up being the darkest thing in the image. So our eye will go to something dark next to something light. And I'm going to have some of that sky peeking through the trees that's going to be lighter. So that'll immediately cause the viewer's eye to go there. And now I'm actually going to darken those trees. This is just a little dark purple pastel super dark. It's so dark, it looks black. It's probably a little teeny Terry Ludwig remnant. They're known for their or many pastel artists just love their one dark. It's called egg plant. I believe it's V as in Victor 100. And I'm using this to get the foreground is quite a bit darker than the sky. So I just want to get some marks of energy down. I will be adding more darks to the foreground soon. So once again, working on just the basic colors that are in the sky. I'm looking at the direction of the clouds. Now some clouds are going to be more prominent like the storm cloud. Some clouds are going to be a little bit more like supporting characters such as clouds that are more distant or more wispy like the ones up top. And some of them are just barely there like a whisper in the wind. And then of course, we have the sky in this particular case with the sunset. We're going to have many different colors in the actual sky. I recently had a question. I think it was from one of my patrons on my Patreon page, or perhaps someone in the Monet cafe art group on Facebook. We have a group of over 16,000 members that all want to learn about pastel painting, all different levels. We've got advanced pastel artist, very beginner newbies. And so somewhere along the line, someone to ask a question about the clouds that have what you call the silver lining. And I'm going to have my final result at the end of this will be a part of the cloud will have a little bit of that effect. But the question was, how do you make that stand out? They were having a challenge with the focal point maybe standing out. And I think it was because it was everywhere, you know, it was like in a lot of places that were too many silver linings. So we want to take it to a minimum when we have something like that in a painting that's a focal point, and let certain parts of your cloud are going to be just soft and barely there. And then other parts like that silver lining can have some drama, whether it's mark making drama, or contrast drama or color drama. So keep those things, though, to a minimum with your focal point. I like to think of it as where do I want my viewers eye to go immediately? And it was kind of, well, up to the cloud, but then you're kind of simultaneously seeing the cloud and those beautiful trees. And I'm going to have all those negative spaces in those trees before this painting is done. But I want the general flow to be coming in from the lower left up towards those trees up to the clouds over to those clouds to the left and then right back out of the painting, kind of the classic S shape curve. That's a really nice focal point strategy. So I'm thinking of those things as I'm painting. And I'm trying not to get too fussy on areas that are not the focal point. And the more you paint, the more these things you won't have to take notes and go I've got to remember to do this and you'll just kind of start naturally doing it and paint a lot. That's that's how you're going to learn to do these things. Now this color that I was putting in for the upper sky there, it's a little too teal right now. My my paper was had a little bend in it somehow. So I kind of had to work with that. But often you can have and my paper still curling that could have been what it was. I'm having to hold it down while I'm doing this often. If we find a color that's close, this will be good advice for beginner artists. But it's a little too too punchy, too bold. You can go ahead and use it and neutralize it, tone it down so that it's not stealing too much attention. And that's what's happening right now. This color is so bold that it's taking the attention away from my focal point, which is a lot is about the cloud. But you'll see I begin to neutralize this color as I work. And by the way, here's a little hint. Next month, the month of August, I don't know when you'll be watching this video, but currently, we're almost into August 2022. And the theme for August is going to be neutrals and using neutrals to really make your painting come to life. The power of neutrals is amazing. Now is where I'm going in and adding more of that dark foreground. This is a super dark green. It's like a foresty green. Once again, it's a Terry Ludwig pastel. They have an amazing set of darks. They have one called darks one and darks two. I started with I can't remember. Well, I think I might have gotten both sets, but I think the dark set number one is a great set to get if you can only afford one of them and they're not cheap guys. These nice pastels, like Terry Ludwigs, like Unison, Sennelier, they're pricey. And but I say if you're if you're getting serious about this, it would be good to get a nice set and some darks. I have one time recommended in one of my videos, the Unison 120 half stick set as a nice beginner set. And I should have been more clear about it. I mean the beginner that goes, okay, I'm liking this, I'm going to do this. It's a nice set because you don't have to buy a whole lot of other sets. I think it's that one's probably like 300 something plus dollars. But another set I've been recommending a lot lately is the Sennelier 120 half stick set. It's about 100. It's less than $140 on Amazon right now. I'll share it in the link in this video or in the description of this video. It is such a great set because for less than $150 to get a set of 120 pastels, now they're half sticks, but they have gorgeous colors in there. Okay, now I'm neutralizing the sky a little bit. You see how I toned it down with that kind of neutral color I have. So hang in there guys, if you're beginners and you're working with colors that you may not have exactly what you want, there are little tips and tricks that you can do to change the colors a bit. Like I said, to neutralize it, I'll be talking about that more with next month's theme. And by the way, other than speeding up the little bit of the sketch, a little bit of the watercolor underpainting, a lot of this tutorial is real time. So I know that helps a lot of you guys out when you're just starting and you kind of like to see my strokes not sped up. This is a nice little neutral kind of lavender purple. And I believe this one is from a set. I'm going to show the set in a little while. It's for painting clouds. It's a really great set. It's by Mount Vision. I happen to love Mount Vision pastels and they happen to be right in my area where I live. I live in the Tampa Bay area in Florida. And Mount Vision makes a great soft pastel. And it's a nice large pastel. They don't have half sticks. They have only full sticks. But the set called Thunderstorm Gray. I mean, it speaks for itself, right? It has a lot of storm cloud type of colors in it. So I'm pretty sure that's what this one is from. I can't tell if what I'm holding is round or kind of rectangular Mount Vision pastels are rounded. And and round pastels have certain neat things you can do with them, like rolling them. There's a set right there, rolling them, making grasses. But rectangular ones have their own assets as well. So now I'm picking a couple of these purpley colors. And I'm going to be using it again. It looks a little dark right now. But I know that I'm going to soften it up. I want certain areas to get more attention than others. So I'm just giving it a little bit more contrast by putting some darks in and pulling the eye up. Those clouds are basically doing a focal point strategy that's called I think it's called convergence. I always call it pointing, literally taking the viewer and pointing them where you want to go. So again, coming in from the bottom left around to the tree up to the cloud, up to those clouds I'm working on now and leading the viewer up. And you'll see me now using one of the Mount Vision pastels to just lightly glaze over some of that those cloud shapes and kind of tone down some of the areas while I leave a few other areas a little more prominent. And like I said, I'm sorry for the footage in my head being in the way. But one advantage is that while I've been working, you can see how many times I'm looking at my reference image, which is obviously to my right. I think I move it later to be to my left. But draw or paint what you see, not what you think you see. There's a tendency when we're first starting to paint a cloud like our brain tells us what a cloud looks like. But it will benefit you greatly if you really check out your reference image and look at it a lot while you're painting. Now you can see I added a little bit of that lighter peachy color to the undersides of some of those upper clouds. The upper one's kind of in the middle and to the right. And I'm using a little bit of this peach here. It's it's kind of a neutral peach, a lighter neutral peach. And I'm toning down some of the areas that I've already added some color to later. You'll see me come back and really get some color that's real punchy in certain areas again, trying to keep my focal point strong and beautiful for this painting. Now I'm taking this darker pastel and putting in a few clouds that are really far away and I'll soften those up a bit too. One thing that is of utmost importance, probably should have talked about it sooner, but I have in my other cloud tutorials, is where is your light source? So where is it in this painting? Well it's behind the clouds. Behind the clouds looks like it's kind of to the right and maybe lower right. Not totally down at the horizon line, but somewhere back in there. And what's happening is the light is shining up onto some of the undersides of those clouds that are up high, thus giving them that glow, that pinkish tone. And I know too that what how light behaves is things closer to the light or sunlight are warmer. Things further away start to get cooler. So that's why in the upper clouds I put pinks instead of orangey colors. It's a little further away from the sun. It's going to be cooled off. Now I got another angle here, but I still didn't get my big old head out of the way. I don't know. I don't know what happened. You know, it's like I tell you what guys filming yourself while painting is more challenging than you might think. And sometimes you get it right and sometimes you don't. Okay, I zoomed in a little bit more here. Here's where I'm doing some of the negative shapes. I'm taking some of these pretty, pretty fluorescent kind of colored pastels and just getting in some of that focal point color that I want to really be exciting. And I'm just kind of carving in the shapes in between things, even some of those grasses that are sticking up there. I am going to speed this up ever so slightly for the rest of this video. It is trust me, it's not so fast that you can't see what I'm doing. And in a minute, I'll be adding some music, but I wanted to make another point. I noticed while I was painting, and it was pretty much what was in the photo as well, I was seeing a shape in the cloud. I was seeing an elephant's head, that larger kind of in the middle where there's a bump and a trunk kind of coming up. And then I was seeing some kind of weird little blob to the left, like that area right there. So I decided later, you'll you'll be able to observe me doing this to soften those areas a bit and subdue them a little bit more. So everything didn't look very flat. And to kind of break up that shape so that it I wasn't it was driving me crazy. So I thought maybe somebody else might see that too. It's funny how those things happen, even in nature. Well, that's what happens, right? We look up at the clouds and we see shapes. But I didn't particularly want an elephant to be my cloud shape. Here, I'm softening up with a little bit of a tissue. So I'm going to add some music. Oh, I gotta say something else. I'm adding some pizzazz with some brighter colors now, even some little light highlights and some of the distant sunlit areas. And this is when it starts to get fun going in with some of these bright colors, adding the negative shapes. Oh, I might as well keep talking here. Here's where I'm giving a little bit more contrast to a certain area of the cloud. Because this is where I'm going to add that silver lining in that main shape here. What I'm doing is I it looks a little weird right now, but I gave it a little bit more contrast, a little dark. And I'm going in and kind of carving in some of the little shapes that I see. I didn't get it just like the cloud and a little bit of a lighter edge. And that will give you that feeling of that light just shining right behind that certain area. You see that? You can kind of see that now it looks more like a focal point right there. And you can see how I softened up my my elephant shapes there. Before I add the music, I just want to make a few comments and announcements. One is that I am going to be one of the featured artists on Pastel Live. Again, this you could be if you're watching this video after August, this is not going to apply to you. But if you're currently watching this video as I just posted in August, it's August 17th through the 20th. There's an event called Pastel Live. Now they're pre-recorded lessons, but the artist are going to be with you live as you watch them. And what it is is 30 of the world's best Pastel Artist all giving you tutorials. And like I said, you can chat with them during the lessons. You will have replay access to all of the lessons. And I'm telling you, these are some of the best artists, Pastel Artist in the world. I was so honored that they contacted me this year to be one of the artists. Now I'm doing Beginners Day. It's August 17th and it is, well there's discounts if you register now. If you get too close to the event, you won't have the discount. I can't remember the exact prices. But if you register before the discount period is over, the Beginners Day is less than $200. I think it's $197 for that day. And then I think the next level to get the remaining three days is around $300 or $400 for that. But I'm telling you, for that money, you will get an amazing Pastel Education and experience like you can't believe. So I'm excited. I'm going to be there. I'm going to be watching all of these other artists paint as well. And there's all kinds of neat things. There's little breakout forums and fun stuff like that. So it's definitely going to be the place to be if you are wanting to learn more about pastel painting. So I'll have a link in the description of this video where you can click and go read more about it and sign up if you want. And I'd really appreciate it if you go to it by clicking the link in this description of this video. I get some credit for it. If you do, I mean you could type in Pastel Live in your search bar. But if you click my link, that helps me out a little bit. So that'd be awesome. Also too, if you recreate from any of my tutorials and you're not a patron of mine, my patrons have a homework album. I get to see what y'all do. We get to chat more. I have a private Facebook group. So there's a lot of little extras by being a patron of mine for only $5 a month. And you can cancel at any time by the way. But if you're not a patron of mine and you recreate from this video, you can share it on Instagram and tag me. It's always artist etiquette if you recreate from someone's tutorial to mention the artist. But I love it when you tag me and I can see what you do. And on Instagram, my account is at Susan Jenkins Artist. And you can also tag me on Facebook. I have a Facebook page. It's the art of Susan Jenkins at the art of Susan Jenkins. So I love to see what you do and I love it when you tag me. Now, I guess I'm not adding the music. Here I am adding, what am I doing here? Where's this color coming from that I just added in those grasses? Well, I didn't see it in the reference image, but it's a way to make your painting be connected, have harmony and come to life. What's happening is color from the sky is echoing down onto the land. And when you add those colors onto the land, your painting is just going to feel so alive and full of life. And make sure though you keep your values right. You can have fun with the color, but notice the values I'm adding aren't too light. And the ones that I do add in the grasses that are a little bit lighter, they're going to be the ones that are reaching up over the kind of the tops of some of the other grasses, and they're catching a little bit of that that light from underneath those clouds, like these right here, a little bit lighter. And they're just some fun little blades that are saying, hey, I'm wanting to see that sunset, too. So that's a way to really connect your painting is to reflect some of those sky colors down onto the ground. All right, thanks for bearing with me through those little announcements. Now, I really am going to add some music. We've only got like two minutes left, so enjoy this. Feel the peace of the moment. Wasn't this a beautiful scene? I just love this reference photo. So enjoy this music and I will be back at the end. Well, there's my big head again, but I am getting close to the finish here, getting in a few other little darks to reshape these trees and my little simple signature. And by the way, I think this took about about two hours. I really hope you learned a lot with all of my jabbering and my big head in the way. Please leave me a comment. I would love to hear from you. Here's a close-up view for you. And if you're a patron of mine, I can't wait to see what you do in the homework album. If you're not a patron of mine, it would be awesome. If you would like to become one, it's super easy. Only five dollars a month. You can cancel it anytime. So subscribe, become a patron, check out more videos. God bless you for being here. And as always, happy painting.