 Welcome to Monet Cafe. I'm artist Susan Jenkins. Happy to bring you another free tutorial here on my YouTube channel and today's focus is tiny treasures. That's the theme this month and this is a 20-minute lesson that's all real time. So come on in the studio with me and Jackson and have some painting fun. I'd also really appreciate it if you would take a moment right now to like, subscribe, and hit that little bell icon to be notified of future videos. And I'm able to keep these free lessons coming because of the support from my patrons on my Patreon page. If you would like to consider becoming a patron it's only five dollars a month and you get extra goodies and extra content. Hello and welcome to Monet Cafe. I'm artist Susan Jenkins and I love bringing you lessons where you can learn from the convenience of your own home and have some coffee like I'm doing right now. Okay that's good. So that's the concept here in Monet Cafe is that we can gather with friends and relax and enjoy art. And I think you're gonna like this lesson today. I always seem to come back to this method of painting because I think it's so beneficial and I'm gonna go over all of the reasons or many of the reasons why I think this type of painting will help you and help you improve so much as an artist. What type? You may be thinking why is she pulling this out so long? It's actually tiny painting. It's this month's theme in my Monet Cafe Art Group on Facebook and also on my Patreon page. And there are so many blessings that you will get from tiny painting. First and foremost for me it's relaxing and it's kind of fun. You don't stress as much when you're painting small. So I'm gonna go over some of the tiny painting what I consider a tiny painting the sizes, some of the supplies and some of the techniques and I'm gonna create some tiny paintings with you right now. Let's get started. So first let me go over the sizes. Now for this particular month on my Patreon page by the way if you're a patron of mine you guys have been submitting some adorable wonderful tiny painting work in the homework album. So keep it up guys. I can already see by your comments that you're learning so much and you're like oh I get it I see why small painting is so beneficial. So for the rules for this month in my groups it's been four and a half by five I'm not four and a half four by five or smaller. But today I'm gonna be painting in what I would say is the more traditional tiny painting size. It has a really neat history to it. I believe it was original artist who wanted to be able to share art with each other. So they started painting small and they were called artist trading cards kind of like baseball trading cards and it was three and a half by two and a half. So that's pretty much the standard artist trading card size. It's also called a CEO that and that's an acronym that I have in another video going over all of that. So we're gonna work on those sizes today and I'm gonna show you I have these already made artist trading card sizes for pastel painting made by Color Fix. Now my hesitation in my voice right now is because they don't make these anymore. But I love them. They're a nice sanded surface and I have so many of them but you can't get them in the US anymore. So I make my own but I have a lot more to work on until that point comes. But I do just cut my own. I cut sometimes some this is a Sennelier LaCarte pastel card. I made my own with this my case just iron oxide. It's kind of a shiny surface. I made some of those one time. This is another pastel sanded surface. You can make your own out of watercolor paper. I have so many ways you can paint with pastels or you could just do tiny painting watercolor paintings and also I have this really nice black paper that receives water well that I think I'll make some tiny paintings with this as well. I'm not gonna do all of these in this one video but I'm gonna do a few little tiny paintings and share with you the the large value for painting small that you will receive from doing this. And like I said it's one of them is just it's relaxing. I think you're not stressing so much because you don't feel as worried if you mess up because it's so small. And also too you're not using as many supplies so the stress isn't there over a big piece of expensive paper. So anyway I'll go over more of the benefits as we paint. Here's some footage of the pastels that I have chosen to work with. I think I do add some more that are a little bit more teal in color as I work but this was just to get started. Now that looks like a lot of darks and I don't use all of those but it is a night painting. And I got my reference image from unsplash.com. I'll talk a little bit more about that in just a minute. And I have a one of the little artist trading cards made by Colorfix already on my board here. It is a sanded surface and I thought black was the perfect color to start with. And one more important element while painting is a cup of coffee. This is Monet Cafe, right? All right so you guys grab your coffee and let's get started with this real-time lesson. I like using unsplash.com for reference images. I don't get out a lot. My life has been crazy over the past few years so it's a neat way for me to find subject matter I'm looking for. And this particular photo is by Christian Lozan. He says usually too adventurous and many sleepless nights shooting the Milky Way. So he's got some really neat night photography and other photographs as well. And this is the only footage that's sped up and you could probably see why. Look how simple this is. It's a hill, some trees, and that's about it. We're going to add the stars later with a neat little technique. Now this is kind of a neutral dull, dull green. And I'm adding some magenta, like a burgundy I would say more. These are neutral colors and the reason is because at night we don't have a lot of light that will saturate the colors. So they become more muted but there is some warmth in that field. And now I'm using what I call the famous Terry Ludwig Eggplant color. It is a wonderful dark almost black. I believe the color number is V as in Victor 100. Terry Ludwig makes great pastels. And see how even though my surface is black, this is actually darker. Okay, so when you work on a black surface it doesn't mean that's the darkest dark you can get. And trees are typically your darkest element in a painting because they are perpendicular to the horizon or to the land. The land is flat. It's going to get more of the reflected light from the sun or the stars in this case. But trees, their sides, don't get that light. So they're usually darker. Now I am going to add some of that eggplant color to the sky. And notice how I'm pulling my pastel in a directional motion from the top right down. And I'm trying to create an even value transition from the top down. Now that blue was too light. Sometimes you don't know until you lay it down. So I grabbed this set of Jack Richardson pastels. And this is a new set for me. And I love them so much already. By the way, I'm going to be doing a product review video over on my Amazon shop. I have my Amazon shop in every video in the description. You can click on it. It's really just a great way to get educated on many of the products that I use in my videos. This set on Amazon is about the same as it is on Dick Blick. So check out my Amazon shop. I should have that product review video for this set very soon. And here are some of the blues that I'm choosing from. I believe the next one is the one to my left of my hand. That one right there. I think that's the one I'm going to be using to add to the sky. Yeah, I think that's it. So this one was a little bit more neutral and a little darker. And things can be deceiving. In my hand, it looks kind of light. But when I add it to the surface, it looks darker than the first one I put down, that lighter blue. And so this to me was the perfect color to add as a nice transition between the dark and the light of the sky. And notice the sky is darker up high, and it's gradually going to get lighter as we get down towards the tree line. Now I'm using just a piece of tissue paper. We talk about all these different things and tools to blend with with soft pastels. But on certain pastel surfaces, tissue paper or paper towel works great. Now why I'm doing this is because I want the background of the sky to be smooth like, like the sky would be. And I want some of the clouds to have a little bit more texture. And I do blend a little bit more as I work. But so I'm just kind of working in trying to get the drama of the sky. And like I said, the transition from dark to light, I want the sky to have color though, too. So I even grabbed notice how this one has a little bit more teal. I think I mentioned at the beginning of the video that I showed my pastels and I wanted to add more teal. Now look how this one looks so light going on. Isn't that crazy? So sometimes it is good to get a little bit of a test mark. But it did really in this reference image, it really did have some lighter clouds layered on top of the dark background. And now I'm going to go ahead and use this color to get my sky down at the horizon line. I know it's lighter, but I'm resisting the urge to go too light too soon. So I typically recommend working dark to light. Get your darker values in first and then layer your lighter values on top of that. And you see how this is already creating that mood. And once again, I'm using my tissue paper to blend. Now let me talk a little bit as I'm working here. As I mentioned at the start of this, some of the benefits of painting small. I said at the beginning, I love how relaxing it is. I find I don't stress as much. It's a teeny little painting. And it's a lot of fun. You're not worried about, you know, wasting your money on a big sanded surface or a lot of pastels you're using. And so I like to put on some music and paint. Also to me the second and maybe the most important aspect is I find that you end up getting results that many of you are looking for. I get so many comments of you wanting to get a more painterly or more impressionistic style. Well, guess what? With tiny painting, you almost can't help but have an impressionistic style because you can't get a lot of detail. We're working with chunky pastels. And therefore we're pretty much forced to just get in the big shapes and the most important compositional elements. So it's a great way to loosen up and achieve that painterly style. And as I said, if you're a patron of mine on my Patreon page, you guys, I mean, you just dove right into this topic. I gave you guys over on my Patreon page, they get a little more content, and they get to share their work. And you just already have done such amazing work with a tiny painting theme. And you've shared many of the aspects that I'm mentioning right now, you've shared that it really is such a benefit to painting and getting better as an artist. Now you can see I've been adding some of the lighter values. I love this neutral purple. This is also in the Jack Richardson 40 set. And I liked that said it had really a lot of nice neutrals and a good layout for color palette to really create many paintings. This I believe is a Mount Vision. I love Mount Vision too. It was a little lighter. And I really loved using this blue to kind of get a little bit more color in and a value that wasn't quite as light as some of the others. And in a minute, I'm going to zoom in and show you what's called negative painting. I'm going to start carving into some of this tree line, which really gives some little interest. And now I'm going back to a little bit more. So you have this is a little more neutral than that blue I just had. And it's a little darker in value. Now why would I do that over here on the left corner over here? That's because I want my focal energy to be more right at that brightest point of where the light sky meets the dark trees. I don't want to pull the viewer's eye out. So I'm going to keep the edges a little bit darker in value. And also too, I'm getting a little bit of that up in the sky in the clouds. I want to keep my painting congruent or connected. So often I will use some of the same colors in the sky in other places, and also sometimes pull it down onto the land. And now we're starting to get somewhere. And I've only been painting for a few minutes. So you really can accomplish things rather quickly with tiny painting. That is another benefit of tiny painting is that you can really produce something rather quickly on this particular day when I painted this one, I did I believe four other tiny paintings. So it's a feeling of accomplishment. So I add that to the list of benefits. And what I've been doing here is reestablishing that dark tree line with the Terry Ludwig eggplant color again. Sometimes it gets a little lost as you're adding sky colors. I've got a nice neutral blue again. I believe this is a Rembrandt pastel. Harder pastels Rembrandt they're not hard they're kind of medium. And they don't have the punchy color that many of the really soft pastels have. And by the way, if you're brand new to pastels, I work with soft pastels. I don't work with oil pastels but in the range of the family of soft pastels, they have different degrees of softness and hardness. The softies, this is a real softie that I started. Yeah, this is I do keep using it. This is a teal pastel. I believe this is a great American. They are very soft. And some of the real soft ones are Sennelier, Jack Richardson, the hand rolled Jack Richardson that I talked about Terry Ludwig and Unison and quite a few others. But those have the more brilliant color. They're great for adding final marks. Medium pastels would be more of the Rembrandt's and Mount Vision, I believe is a nice pastel that's kind of in between. It's it's soft. It's between medium and soft. And that's another great pastel. Now some of the harder pastels or medium to hard would be Rembrandt. Great for blending at the end like I was doing in the sky. Harder pastels are more like the Prismacolor new pastels. They're long, rectangular sticks, and they're great for grasses and line work and many other things. So again, if you visit my Amazon shop and go to my idealist that soft pastels, you'll learn a whole lot. Now this is where I'm adding in some of the little grasses in the front. I did go a little bit lighter and warmer in value. I knew that I did have some light to that sky that is going to be coming down to the ground. And so I wanted to get a little bit of that in the ground of some interest also to kind of draw the eye in for interest. Using my little tissue technique again, I felt like it was a little bit too textural still. So I'm just lightly blending. I also just so you know, use new pieces of tissue when I blend, you don't want to contaminate the color. You don't want to just take the one piece and blend everywhere or it's going to make everything muddy. So I'm very careful about that. Now here's where I've zoomed in and I'm using that blue color I mentioned before. Notice it's a little darker in value than some of the lightest lights I used. And the reason for that is because when you go to do what's called sky holes or negative painting, you don't want to get anything your lightest light in the negative spaces of the trees where the sky is showing through. It really does look almost too light, artificial, kind of like popcorn. So resist the urge to grab a really light value when you're carving into those trees. This is that teal again and I decided to use this to create some of the drama of the clouds. That's what I was the finalizing on the cake is going to be getting some of the direction of the clouds and how they're reaching up to the stars. That's what I loved about this reference image is I love images where it looks like creation is praising the Lord and trees and flowers to me look like they are a captive audience to the heavens and the skies and the clouds. And so I felt like they were worshiping and praising the heavens and the beautiful stars. Now just as I was saying before with carving into the tree line, I used the purple to do a little bit of that and also add some of that down into the grasses. It kind of neutralized and toned down some of the light grass strokes that I made in the foreground. So just kind of still working on the sky and the and the clouds reaching upwards and in a minute I'm going to show you I'm almost done but I'm going to show you how here's where it is now. It looks sometimes the angle looks different when I move my camera. You can see it's very dramatic and dark and so now here's a little trick I've shared in a few videos for adding stars. Talking about harder pastels, this is a it's not quite white but it's a Prismacolor new pastel. They're harder and I've found for this technique where I literally use a cheese grater and just scrape off little bits of pastel. I find that using harder pastels is better than real softies. I've used softies in the past and let me share here what I'm doing and I'll tell you the difference but I put down a piece of tracing paper and some masking tape. I don't want this tracing paper to move. Now I've just got a candle container that I burn candles like crazy so I have empty candle containers all the time and I'm pressing rather hard. What that's going to do is it's setting those little bits of Prismacolor new pastel into the pastel paper and they don't move. Now if you find you have a random star or something you don't like you can kind of move it around. Usually I use an Xacto blade but I happen to have some little tweezers close by in my bathroom so if I don't like where something is I kind of scrape it off move it around a little bit. I can also tap it if I don't want certain stars to be too bright and usually that's what I want. I want to create focal energy so I want a few of them to be brighter than others. So I dabbed just my finger and focused on keeping a few of them brighter than others. Now back to the reason you don't want to use soft pastels with this. When I would press really hard is they almost smush out to become too big and fuzzy so and last thing is a little signature and trust me it has to be tiny on these tiny paintings that's another good thing for Prismacolor pastels. So here is our night sky that might be small in size but it is not small in drama and excitement. Now just so you know here's a teaser. I have oh my goodness so many more to upload this month. I have a tiny painting tutorial of a cow coming up also a tiny painting of how to capture light using soft pastels. Also we're going to get a little abstract. This is one where I show you literally how to repurpose an old piece of pastel paper and just get fun have some fun with color and abstract elements. I'm also going to be giving a tutorial of some sweet geraniums. I took a photo at a local produce market that just was adorable and also we're going to the beach. Look at all these paintings and believe it or not I have one more that will be coming. I don't know if I'll be able to upload all these this month. Tiny painting also allows you to experiment with freedom. I'll be sharing metallic watercolors with iridescent pastels and oh my goodness that one was so much fun. So if you haven't subscribed yet I hope that's motivation to subscribe. Please like this video, leave a comment. It really does help this video to get seen more and consider becoming a patron for only five dollars a month to support this channel. So I better get busy. God bless everyone and happy painting.