 Welcome friends in Monet Café. It's time to get a little bluesy today. I sort of like this music. Today I'm continuing the beginner series and I'm calling this use your artistic license. Often we try to just recreate a photo and I think it's really neat when you can learn to alter it in ways to make it more artistically pleasing. So join me as I paint from this reference photo that is of a field actually and at my parents property. It's just a beautiful field across from their home and I liked a lot about the composition but I didn't like all that green and I also thought that I might be able to make a road out of that path that looks like a mower came around and cut the grass there. So join me as I use my artistic license to make some changes to this photo. And if you haven't done so already you may want to go back and check out my very first in this beginner series video on simplifying things and we do that by creating a little notan or value study and I do have where I did this particular photo I did the value study. So check that out if you like. And some of you may have already seen I'm so excited I now have a Patreon account thanks to a lot of your suggestions. I'm excited to see where this is going to grow and I'm loving just the intimate group of artists that have already become patrons on my page. Now bear with me for just a couple of more minutes while I share with you some of the exciting new products I have available on the Monet cafe art store. Hello Monet cafe art family. I'm so happy today because I got one of my first designed t-shirts that's now available connected with my YouTube channel. Teespring is a company that allows YouTube partners with YouTube to allow channel owners such as myself Monet cafe to offer products and I majored in graphic design many years ago and but I still have some of those skills and so I've been designing some art artistic or artist themed t-shirts and it's a lot of fun for me because I love to show my artist style when I'm out and about and I'm real happy with the Teespring products so far. The one that I've got here this is I think it's called a flowy tank top I don't like tight fitting clothes so I like things that are loose and flowy they do offer a tighter fit tank top but I like this one I'm a medium just so you know and I think from what I saw got one other shirt they run a little large but I like that so anyway so it's really nice I like how it's just kind of loose and soft and I'll share some of the other t-shirts when they come in probably the one that'll be the main one is the happy painting t-shirt that is like my slogan at the end of the YouTube channel so I love to say happy painting so I've got a lot more designs and everything if you want to check them out just go down underneath any video and right under the description section is some little links you can click on it doesn't matter which product you click you can get to any of them they come in all different sizes styles shapes colors for men for women for babies we even have onesies and different products such as coffee mugs and tote bags so that's enough self-marketing there but I'm just excited and I thought you guys might be too all right let's get started okay time to paint now I have and my typical setup here I've got my reference photo I am going to be including a clickable link in the about section if you would like to use this reference photo to paint along with now I have a piece of I think this is an 8 inch by 6 inch piece of you art sanded paper I have many videos where I share about this paper it's a great paper because it takes water it does allow for other wet mediums which I will show you in this video now once again I am using the watercolor pencils that I used in the previous two beginner videos I really like the ease of using these but you can use anything that you like to do this wet underpainting technique that I'm going to do before the actual pastel application now I'm doing something in this video that I mentioned in the previous one I actually used a lot more colors for the underpainting in the previous one and I really wanted to stick to more of the just some basic values like a dark I'm all in the warm side of the color wheel and this one is more of a magenta it's it's just darker it's for my darker values now what you see I'm doing here see I'm making little dots often if I have a surface that is equal in proportion to the reference photo I already kind of can get some quick little drawing marks for for getting the actual basics of the drawing correct by just putting little dots they're going to match up in other words I know that that tree you can't see the whole thing in this video I know that the tree comes gosh almost halfway down the paper because I'm just I'm always looking at the edges of the reference image to kind of compare again this works well if you're working with the same proportions so that's kind of my little system of measuring and I think a lot of you guys probably like these real-time videos because these are little things that you can see when I'm have it slowed down like this if I had this sped up you wouldn't even notice me doing the little dots in the measuring so that might be a little tip or something that would help you getting a good I mean we do want to keep it sketchy and painterly but with certain things you do want to get the core things right especially when it comes to perspective and just the way things work in nature mathematically so so that's just a little tip of how I like to make little marks like that so now back to talking about the colors that I've used with these watercolor pencils I've got a dark which is here and then I think I have that I have three more I think but I have like a richer red then a medium value orange and then a lighter yellow so I'm really just using like four values here to get the basics in before I do the water application or alcohol I think I use in this case so and again you do not have to use watercolor pencils for this you can use pastel I have a lot of videos where I show using your actual pastels to do an underpainting with like just the little value study maybe the warm value study like I'm doing here and then you can use water or alcohol on your pastels and what it does it creates that loose impressionistic beginning to get started and you just tend to loosen up a lot more with an underpainting I love under paintings I don't always use a wet underpainting but I almost always tone my paper completely before I start getting more of the basics of the power or the the direction of the painting going I just love to cover up that big surface with some color and now I'm using that red that I mentioned I'm getting and typically if you're gonna use three values for a warm underpainting I would use a red like a darker red a medium orange and a yellow those are going to be three different values now I'm back to using the darker one I'm going ahead like I said I used four here but typically you'll use if you do those three I mentioned you'll use the red for the things that are vertical you'll use the orange for the field or the grass or the land because that's going to be the medium value and you'll use the yellow for the sky that's a general very basic breakdown of the values in a landscape vertical things are the darkest flat things on the land are usually a lighter medium value and perspective and distance has a lot to do with how values change but these are the basics and the sky is like almost always the lightest thing unless you're doing a night painting or something so I'm keeping this real time but I'm gonna let you guys just check out this process while I add that bluesy music back again and I appreciate a lot of your comments about the music I just think it's fun okay if you're gonna have like blank time with nobody talking or anything you know why not have some music if you don't like it just go ahead and turn it down alright here we go more painting fun I'll be back when I add the water or in this case I think I wanted to add here that this is a point where I'm doing kind of the point of this particular video I mean there's a lot of little artistic lessons and things I'm I go over in this but one of the points was using your artistic license and I wanted to turn that green field more into a road so I'm using some directional lines kind of sweeping and energetic to give that sense of the road I thought I'd go ahead and add in just some of the darks that look like I wasn't sure at this point if I was gonna keep it looking like it was a area that had been recently moan like mowing in the grass or if I was gonna turn it into a road and I do as you could see from the beginning painting turn it into a road so these are some of the decisions that you can make and a lot of times it's good to have a plan but don't be so strict on the plan that you know sometimes we do something and we get this unexpected little thing happen we're like oh wow let me make the road do this you know so it's kind of fun to be able to loosen up and explore and change things now with all of those values in place I am now going to use my little technique and let me see I think I did use alcohol in this where I use alcohol a brush and a paper towel you know I may have used water in this case I'm not sure it doesn't really matter either one works and I'm using notice how I keep my brush rather flat to the board instead of having it perpendicular to the board and using the tip I kind of lay it on its side to use it and it helps cover big areas better and it also for me it helps me to paint a little more loosely rather than just holding it straight up and down with the little tip there so I'm just keeping still a very loose feel just giving suggestions of trees at this point and I do rinse the brush out between value changes so that it doesn't get muddy it's okay if one bleeds into another it's okay if it gets drippy it will add to the spontaneity of it and the loose feel loose impressionistic feel but in general you know kind of keep things a little bit separated so you remember why you put them there so I think I will speed this part up just a little bit I mean you get the general idea and then we'll get to the pastel application all right here we go now we've got a nice value study a warm underpainting that's going to really make these colors vibrate and and just have such so much more interest than if we just use greens and blues and I've decided to give a little bit of a a teal blue color to the sky I do add some other colors in with this I like to give a little bit of a variety of sky color I mean it's really there's so many colors in nature all playing off of each other that it it just creates a more beautiful painting if we emulate what nature already does okay so I end up adding I think a little bit of lavender to this and before it's all done I add some warmer like that little warm peachy color down at the horizon line now at the horizon typically on a kind of a regular day near the horizon the skies usually lighter and it's usually darker in value up towards the heavens now I'm using a little piece of pipe foam insulation here I just wanted to go ahead and blend the sky in so I kind of get that that creamy color oh I've blended a little bit of the red some of the creamy color of the paper covered kind of like I did with the underpainting okay so I don't have that you art beige color shining through but here's why I'm back to my description of darker values usually are in the upper heavens lighter values are down towards the horizon line and cooler colors are typically towards the heavens and warmer colors are typically towards the horizon line so that's why I use that little peachy color you saw before kind of above the trees a little bit more to lighten it up and warm it up a little bit now I'm using this kind of a little bit of a dull gray blue for those middle distance trees now I'm comparing values here that blue it may look like it's the same color it's actually a little lighter in value trees further away things further away lighten in value and cool in color temperature now a lot of times I'll do the same value for all the trees and then I lighten it up layer later with what I put on top of them but in this case I I ended up kind of changing the value a little bit on the middle trees and the background trees now I'm doing the same thing here I'm just kind of scumbling in if you don't know that term scumbling is just almost like scribbling you're just kind of scribbling in little shapes I'm looking at some of the lights in the darks in the tree you can kind of see the bottom part of the reference photo to the upper right there and you see there's darks and there's lights and everything and you can you can tackle that later with your layers or you can kind of start to get them in as you lay it down there's all kinds of different painting techniques and you know I've learned that it's great to try to emulate other artists with their techniques to learn but in time you'll end up with your own technique I'm finding that I've started to kind of change some of my techniques I've emulated other artists for a long time and and I realize I like that I mean I might enjoy that style but I've kind of come up with some of my own ways of doing things over time so those things will happen now I am getting as you can see I'm working mostly with this darker blue right now and I got in all of those what I think are going to be either edges of the grasses going around or little trails or paths within the road to kind of just get those darks and right away so that's all I'm focusing on right now is the darks now I've got a darker value I think it's a purple and I'm going over again just scumbling you never want to draw leaves and shash and saying never but individual leaves especially when things are far away are you just not going to see them and you don't really need to get that much detail our brains figure out what a tree is by mass and shape and value and color so that's something that's great you don't have to draw individual leaves it's really time-saving so working more with the dark values and the darker values this is the darkest value I use in the whole painting are going to be the things that are closer and things they're in shadow and like that side of the the little edge of that grass that I'm doing there the Sun in this case that's another thing you want to keep in mind where's the Sun and in my instance here the Sun is to the upper right and so there's going to be a shadow side to those grasses that I did the the sweeping grasses on the upper part of that road the sweep around behind the tree now with basic values in place and my darkest values in place it's time to start layering this painting and and building upon this foundation I'm not sure why I use the red there I just I think I want to get more of that sweeping motion kind of going oh I want to raise the level there because I had my road a little too low I end up altering that a little bit so I'm going to start kind of laying in now we've got most of the warmer tones in or all of the warmer tones for the base and now it's time to get the the grassy colors now you notice in the reference photo that's a lot of green yeah that's what I'm doing there I'm raising that level also to I'm using a piece of pipe foam insulation here I did want to kind of blur out those middle ground trees and I think even the little ones in the back there just that's gonna give that illusion of distance because you don't see detail when things are further away all right so now is where I'm just gonna gradually start laying in color I know that there's gonna be a little bit of a cooler and a darker greens on that side of the how do I want to word this there's you know like when there's a road there's usually grassy edges so there's a little almost like a shelf and typically it's gonna be darker on those sides like that so I'm just kind of using my value and my color to make that believable now I'm adding a little bit more now we I am gonna have some greens in these trees and the green I'm using here is a cooler green because they're further away I'll use warmer greens in the tree that's closer to me just for highlights now here's where I'm just laying down a it's a little bit of a warmer green but I'm getting those horizontal strokes that's gonna emulate a field that's far away and now I'm going to add I know that road I still want it to have grass on it and maybe have bits of rock and earth and things kind of peeking through and now I'm actually brushing out a bit of that pastel I realized that curve underneath the tree was higher than I had it so that's the neat thing you can pastels are really more alterable than people realize so right there is where I kind of brought that on the bottom of the tree up a little bit higher I wanted the road a little wider there in other words so I just kind of reestablished some of the darks and voila there you go you can erase pastels you know so you've got a lot of versatility still with pastels so you don't always have to be so afraid I mean we want our marks to be purposeful but it is nice to know we can change things okay here's where I'm layering in that green I'm kind of trying to give the impression of a little flatness there on the tops of the grasses and just checking and working with some of the direction of how the land's going to be laying you see I already am getting the impression of flatness beside that little ridge of grass now I'm going to work on a little bit more of that layering of grasses in the distance and I'm using a cooler blue there was some of the the warmer grasses I could tell were in there but because it's far in the distance I'm cooling it off a bit there and I'm going to continue to work here while you guys check out my process of building upon this painting and keep in mind too that I myself am using my artistic license here so I'm kind of exploring and working and altering things and staying open to what happy surprises may await me I often find that as I paint I'm like oh look at that maybe I could do this here so enjoy while I paint and I will be back for more commentary soon. Sometimes you just have to take a break for your sweet kitties my hubby brought in my little dusty some of you may remember the video that I made a while back she's she's about a year old now but I found her we've had so much rain or actually last season and she was literally about to drown in a puddle outside of the field in front of our house and I just heard the sweetest little meow while I was outside and found this little clump of wet fur and so there's my sweet dusty she likes hanging out in my studio I'm reestablishing some of the darks I've got kind of a basic design in here and now I'm able to look at okay how are these grasses growing beside the road and now is when I'm going to start giving it more definition so once again that is the edge of those tall grasses there and so I'm making them darker I am going to lighten those up but I'm giving that indication of a road with with a hedge of grasses kind of beside them so and adding these darks and definitely helps give that illusion and again I've still got some darks in at the foreground because I'm gonna make kind of some ruts in the road and the neat thing about roads is that I mean of course they do have some basic design elements like usually you have two ruts where the tires go and you have a middle area with grass in the middle but roads like lots of things in nature have a lot of spontaneity to them they have pebbles here and there they have little grasses and weeds peeking up through you know certain spots and so you want to make sure your road is a little bit wild and free following a basic road design but not so detailed that it becomes stiff and predictable you know so I I think having things a little bit unpredictable can be a good thing I'm adding a little bit more of the like that warm magenta color that's indicating shadows even though it's a warmer color I just thought it would work nice because typically shadows are cooler but you know sometimes you can again use your artistic license and the more you paint the more you get more confidence with color I'm I'm always I think pushing the envelope a bit maybe too much sometimes now I'm doing a little layering that's gonna indicate like the top shelf of those grasses the grasses that you just kind of see the tops of them and again I'm gonna paint a little while while I build upon this road design concept and hopefully you're learning as you're watching okay now you can see the road has started to take shape I have developed like the center part of the road usually where the tires aren't hitting and it's gonna have some wispy grasses and leaving the ruts where the tires are a little bit more rocky I mean even though this was Florida I happen to like roads in like North Carolina and Georgia that have the red clay and the earthy real pretty earthy color that's why I decided to keep those warm tones underneath because in Florida you don't get those beautiful colors you get pretty much just sand but it's all still beautiful too now I'm adding the cooler colors here on the left side of the grasses because that's the opposite side from where the sun my source of light is is on the upper right so cooler things are going to be in the shadows on the opposite side of the sun and so you can see kind of how this is developed and I've got some purples in the road and again the point of this whole lesson was just to use your artistic license explore have fun and while if you're you know because the focus of these videos that I'm doing the series is for beginners well because I know this because I did it while you might get overly frustrated when you're first exploring using your artistic license or playing with color you're going to make a lot of mistakes and but they're not really mistakes they're just another cog in the wheel of learning so everything is just moving more towards you becoming a better artist and consider it like I said in my I actually just put a video on my patreon page oh and I want to talk about that a little bit too about just time to play that sometimes it's good to have a focus when you paint do something small just have a particular little goal in mind and think you know it's fine if I just throw this away and that way we end up having more fun with it we don't get so fussy and and hard on ourselves you know so I encourage playtime and and just enjoying the process of painting and also to I'm going to talk a little bit about the patron account and it's so new to me still and I'm so grateful to the at this point I think I've got 36 patrons and I I'm just blown away that just blesses me so much and right now it's mostly a support tier where you guys are supporting the fact that I've actually made over 168 free videos on this YouTube channel over the years and you guys many of you ask how you could help support the channel and so that's the neat thing I have the first tier at five dollars a month so for about the cost of a cup of coffee per month you can help to continue Monet cafe and literally bring art to the world I mean Monet cafe is seen worldwide there are so many people who don't have the resources that I have personally had in the United States or maybe in a position that I've been in my life in the past where I just didn't have the resources the time or the money to go do any art instruction outside of my home so but I wanted to add not only is it just a support for Monet cafe and you know me personally being able to provide better videos and more videos it's also something where I am going to be doing things just specifically and specially for my patrons on my patron page I'm going to have some lessons on there that won't be on the YouTube channel I'm also considering doing maybe some personal critiques and you know so all of this is in the developmental stage for me but you know how I know it's going to all work out I don't stress about it because Monet cafe is what it is the success that it is today because of you I have literally just done what you guys have asked I've just like let you guys lead and I find that's a great way to work and a great way to provide what the viewers want so that's kind of the goal with the patreon page it is a blessing for me because I am going to I have a personal goal when I reach a certain level to be able to get a better studio light it's a few hundred dollars and that will really help me right now we this is a personal note we spend a lot right now personally on just still getting our lives back together since we had to totally relocate after the flooding of our home in 2017 we're still renovating a small home that we're living in right now and currently building a garage because we haven't had any outside storage covered storage I should say so after when I'm not painting or working on my bookkeeping business I am building with my husband I've often said I need to create a YouTube video for that I bet it would be very successful because my husband oh my gosh he is just so gifted and so talented but at the same time we're just two people doing this so it does take some time so anyway not enough of that stuff but I do love the personal element of Monet cafe and how I get to share on here and you guys share with me oh my goodness I love hearing your stories and truly developing an art family that's how I feel anyway alright so this is pretty much finished up and I hope you will explore and use your artistic license and have some fun and don't be afraid to experiment and don't be so hard on yourself so anyway you guys are such a blessing to me and I do have more beginner videos on the way I have a couple more that are already filmed so I'll have them ready for you very soon alright guys thanks so much and happy painting