 Welcome to Monet Cafe. I'm artist Susan Jenkins bringing you part two in the Impressionistic Butterfly series in soft pastel. In part one I talked about the sketching tips, underpainting fun, and I even showed you how to make your own do-it-yourself pastel surface, which we'll do again in this video. And in this lesson I'll be painting a monarch butterfly. I'll talk some about my soft pastel application, but this video is gonna be substantially sped up. My full version will be over on my Patreon page, but you'll still get lots of content here. And at the end of this video I will show you how I remove and cut this DIY pastel surface I created on watercolor paper. It's a lot of fun. I'd really appreciate it if you would go ahead and like this video. And if you haven't already, subscribe to this channel and hit that bell icon to be notified of future videos. And to get the extra content and support this channel, you might want to consider becoming a patron of mine on my Patreon page. It's only $5 a month. You can cancel at any time and you can join the family of artists all learning and growing together. Our subscriber spotlight and then we will get started is from Mary Ann Keller. Mary Ann was so thankful for a video that I created on creating depth in your artwork. So thanks for your comment, Mary Ann. It really blessed me. I suggest you watch part one, but it's not needed to learn from this video. And that link will be in the description of this video. So I started with the same sketching principle as I talked about in the first video where I make a little box around the butterfly. It helps to isolate it, frame it out and get the proportions correct. For this lesson, I used my Neo Color 2 wax pastel. Sorry for the reflection of my light above me. And I think these are the ones that I used in the first lesson. And the colors that I chose were ones that I thought would kind of compliment all of that green. You know, the background is all kind of a yellowish green. So I definitely didn't want to use that color as an underpainting because I wanted to give a little fun, a little color drama going on. So for the background, I chose kind of a teal, a bluish teal, a lavender. And then for the butterfly, I'm using a bright magenta. If you've seen the first lesson, you know that I just basically apply these colors onto the watercolor paper. This is an Arches watercolor block. A block just means the pages are glued together and it keeps the pages nice and flat. Sometimes watercolor paper can curl. And I'm going to show you at the end of this video how I take it off of the block. Now you don't have to use watercolor paper. You can use pastel paper for this lesson. The same principles will apply. And when I'm getting these colors in, I'm not trying to keep everything super specific. I used a darker value for the leaves or the grassy looking elements on the sides of that flower stem. And just some other colors in the background and definitely the magenta for the butterfly. So I just add water. You can see how these neo color wax pastels kind of explode with color when you add water. It's really fun. You could use watercolor for this part. You could use pastel for this part and just blend it in. So there's just tons of options when doing an underpainting. So you always can use other techniques if you don't have these supplies. And often this is really just to get a nice loose beginning and to create some color fun. So now what I'm doing is I'm going in once it's dry and I'm adding some other neo color wax pastels or maybe just one here, a darker value. And I'm just getting in some of the darks. Yeah, that was a really dark kind of teal color. And I'm just getting in a little bit of the form of the butterfly so that I don't lose my sketch and just blending some of this color in the butterfly is darker in value than you think. I think that's why I added this because that magenta alone was too light. If you squint your eyes, you can see that butterfly is not super light. And now I used an interesting technique where I literally put some water on my brush. I'm having fun, you know, sometimes I'm just experimenting and exploring when I'm trying to paint in these lessons. And so I thought that would be a neat way to apply these wax pastels is to use them like little paint palettes. So here you can see me doing that. And I do apologize for speeding this up. I'm trying to get this one finished so I can get on with this new theme in February. And once this is dry, I'm going to make my own pastel surface using the clear Gesso like I've talked about so many times clear Gesso is like this magical product because it has little bits of sand in it or grit. And when it's dry, it causes your surface to be kind of like a little sanded surface to apply pastel. And because it's clear, it dries, it dries quite clear. And you can see your underpainting beneath it. I say this all the time, don't use regular Gesso. Not only does it not have the texture, it also is white, you'll totally cover up your underpainting. So once I apply this, and it doesn't matter if it kind of bleeds and blends, it just adds to the impressionistic background. I kind of purposely blend it out some of the butterfly wings, so it didn't feel so pasted on. Once it's dry, I'm going to be using a lot of these Terry Ludwig pastels. This is the Maggie Price set, which I like a lot. And I would say I used primarily this set, it had some beautiful yellowy colors and green colors, and also some colors that were perfect for the monarch butterfly. So you can see when I apply the first layers of pastel to the dried clear Gesso application, it looks quite textural and gritty. First time I tried this, I can't remember how I learned it. I don't know if I heard it somewhere, I was just playing around with it. But I was definitely concerned at this point, I thought, well, this is not working. Because look at that, it looks like golly, not good. But the first layers are going to look like this. And I have a little trick to fix that, that really gets this going. So I know the background has some beautiful greenish colors, and some yellowy greens. And at this point, I'm not all that concerned about trying to carve in around or negative paint around the stem and the flowers. I'm working, like I said in a recent video, I'm working bottom to top deepest values and colors as a base as a background. And then I'll gradually add my flowers and my stems and things on top. Now I'm working around the butterfly. But I am what I'm doing here is I'm using what I said to make this look a little bit softer. And not so gritty is the magic trick. Okay, it's just a paper towel. And I'm blending in the background. But notice how I'm putting some of the background into the butterfly. You may recall how I've talked a lot about echoing color. And I feel that is really a huge part of a painting feeling connected and in harmony, rather than a paint by number where you grab each individual color and you paint in a little section, it's just going to have that really more of the feeling of nature color is always reflecting off of elements in a scene. And now I am reinforcing some of the darker markings on the butterfly. And this does happen to be one of the pastels from the Maggie Price terry Ludwig set. And I believe it might even be the eggplant color, or it might just be a really dark purple. I'm not positive on that. But anything somewhat dark will do. And while I'm getting the marks in fairly accurate with respect to the anatomy and where these particular marks are on the butterfly, I'm not going to try to overwork anything at this point. This is all still very loose. And I want to apologize on the front end for my shaky camera footage. Unfortunately, I wasn't thinking I set my device that holds my camera on the table. And it every time I move my hand, it seemed to shake a little bit. And I am working flat here. I say this often, I don't recommend working flat with soft pastels. Sometimes I do for filming purposes, but it is always best to work at an easel. And so what I'm going to do now is, I don't want this to look just all segmented and separated. So I folded up a little paper towel, and made a little point to it. And so I'm kind of blending and pulling some of the darker marks into the butterfly. Once again, if you squint your eyes and look at the butterfly, the left side, the two wings on the left are a bit darker, with some light reflecting through kind of that middle section, the right side is lighter. So I'm going to develop that as I work. But again, move on get get basic shapes in and things and don't get fussy. For two reasons your painting will start feeling tight, disconnected. Also, you will overwork it and cause your painting to look flat with color. All your colors get muddy when you over layer and become very neutralized as you add colors. And also since we're working on a homemade surface, we don't want to overlay or anyway, I'd say with the clear Gesso, you get a good seven to 10 layers as long as you're not pressing really hard if you if you're just light with your strokes. Now I got in a little bit of dark just to suggest again, my squinting my eyes trick to see where the dark values are if you squint your eyes and when you do that squint really hard. And I can see where I put those dark leaves from the stem. They're a little bit darker on the underneath side and I'll later come back and add some highlights. So I'm still kind of developing things a little bit more with the background. I got a little interpretive with the background in the reference image. There are no other flowers of that type in the background. And it was I don't know a little boring to me. So I'm just suggesting some distant flowers in the background that you'll see them develop very subtly though, they because they're far away, I don't want them to get too much attention. So my principle I talk about a lot is working dark to light and soft pastel working from the ground up or from the base up. And these flowers, there may be a tendency for the yellowy flowers to grab a bright yellow or a light yellow. And they really are nestled in or resting upon a darker underneath base or kind of like the little part of the flower, the pod, whatever you call it that holds it the little stem. It's a little bit darker. So I still work dark to light. And now I've got kind of a pretty green. So yellowy green. And I'm getting those greens on to suggest the flowers. And later I will come back and add my lightest lights. So think of it like working the whole. Try not to get bogged down in any one area too soon. And use one way to do that is to take the pastel that you have in your hand and use it in other places that you might see a little hint or suggestion of that color somewhere else. Now I am getting one of the other pretty kind of yellowy greens that's in the Maggie Price set. And I'm just kind of scumbling in some of the little lighter areas on some of the flower tips. I want to keep the light and the more detailed strokes around my focal point. So I didn't want to go down and add that way down at the bottom. It'll pull the eye right out of the painting or too much in the background because you won't see as much of that detail in the background. So still just kind of having fun with this and developing it. Now I grabbed a green that is more like a little bit of a grassy green. And I'm using it to suggest where some of the sunlight is hitting the little leaves that are coming out from that stem. And I grabbed another green. I don't think this one was from the Maggie Price set. And it felt a little too light for me or for the scene. So I added it in a few spots but tried not to overwork it too much. And I continue to work the background a little bit more. Notice still the influence of the blue underpainting especially if you look above the butterfly kind of to the right. You can still see that underpainting peeking through and this might help it to make sense as to why I chose a color like that. Instead of doing an underpainting that was like a mossy green. I mean none of these pastels would have really shown up or had that color interest. So having your underpainting peeking through is a wonderful way to add just beauty and color fun to your artwork. So I love creating underpaintings. To me that's just part of the interpretive part of art. All right I've got my Maggie Price set again. You can see it has some wonderful colors for the monarch butterfly. A lots of little rusty orangey colors and yellows. And the principle I keep pounding in dark to light. We're even going to do with this butterfly. So what I want to do is I'm looking at my areas that have kind of the darkest kind of orangey color. And in a minute I add another one that I think is even a little darker. It's kind of a magenta burgundy color. But the portion that's closest to the body at the top of the butterfly is a little darker. You can see kind of like a squint your eyes again. Look around the body of the butterfly right underneath the head. And there's kind of a lot of dark in that area. And then there's again even more dark on the left side and particularly the left bottom wing. Now here's that magenta. This is part of the Maggie Price set. And oh gosh that's just such a pretty color. I love this color. So I know with pastels because they are opaque. I can layer color. So I can get my darks in first and gradually layer some of those lighter areas where the sun is shining through the wings. And it's hard. I admit that that can be tough sometimes to have the confidence to go gosh do I really want to put and when I say dark I just mean a darker value. I don't mean black or you know or the darkest value that you have. So you're just basically looking at the area and giving it a general layer with a light touch of what you might see is one of the darker values in that area. And then you just identify as you paint those little areas that might have those highlights. So you can see I've used the orangey colors, the rusty colors, the little magenta colors and I keep stressing light touch. It's okay if it looks a little loose and not smooth at this point. That's another thing I had to learn. I just wanted to work it and work it and work it. Any one little area until it looked like the photo or whatever I was looking at in real life. And that's not the way to create a painting that's more true to life. And here's where I'm going to speed the video up substantially. Again if you're a patron of mine you will continue to see the speed that you see here. I'll be back at the end with more commentary about how I remove this watercolor paper from the watercolor block and even some tips on cutting, matting and framing. So stay tuned, there's more and enjoy. For the third painting in the series I chose this pretty yellow butterfly and I decided to use for the underpainting acrylic ink. I tell you what there's so many different ways you can do an underpainting. This color is gorgeous. It's called quinacridone magenta and this is indian yellow. I really love combining these two colors. They just compliment each other so well. So I did something interesting. I did a watercolor wash, which I do a lot, but I made this new discovery. Watch what happens when I add the quinacridone magenta. I mean that's just magical, right? I don't think I've ever done it like this just on water, but for some reason the indian yellow did not do the same thing and that's because colors are created from different elements and sometimes they behave differently. So I just thought that was a neat discovery with the magenta. See how they look so beautiful when you blend them together. So I just made a nice loose underpainting. That's kind of the deal with underpainting. You just want a nice loose beginning and I just thought these colors would make a nice underpainting. Here I'm doing the same process of applying the clear liquid gesso to make my own soft pastel surface because it's just so textural and gritty when it dries. You're not going to see the rest of this painting here on the Monet Cafe channel, but if you're a patron of mine I do have more of this footage over on my Patreon page. But let's go ahead and take a look at the final. And now you can see how I'm taking a plastic palette knife. You could use a butter knife, but these watercolor blocks they're glued all around the pages and you think well how do you get it off? Well there's a little break in one side of it. You slip in a blunt edge object and you pull. Now one of my patrons on my Patreon page had the same challenge it's so coincidental that she had it the same time I did. I was having a really hard time. I was like it's normally not this hard, but when you get down to the bottom of a watercolor block it's like the glue is thicker and it's really hard so you have to have some strength. But I finally got it off and I was really happy with these and I want to show you how I cut them and it will actually make sense now as to why it's a little wider in the middle sections of those paintings. What I do is I have some sheets of this is either glassing or tracing paper and I have a paper cutter from Harbor Freight. I love this paper cutter. It was affordable and it works great. So I lay down a piece of tracing paper or glassing. The reason is because you can see that little arm that comes down before it cuts it braces it and holds it and I just keep it it will sometimes collect some of the pastel from the painting. So the tracing paper keeps it from smearing it and carrying it forward to another painting. I did trim the outer edges just a bit because some of that glue was still remaining on it. So just a hint off of those and then you can see in the middle sections where I had an inch of space is now making sense because when I cut it at a half inch all of the paintings will have the same border or little perimeter around the painting. Now at the very beginning you saw how I blocked it off with the masking tape and it is the masking tape that's from the hippie crafter that they generously gave me that product and it really did work great. Of course regular masking tape works great too. I did feel like the hippie crafter masking tape was more repositionable. So here's the three that I finished and these are really great. When you work in standard sizes like a five by seven you can find little mats and frames to frame your work. It also makes it easier if you sell the painting for your client to find pre-made mats and frames and they made a nice little series and with the Monarch butterfly I really liked the black mat on it. So this was a lot of fun. I hope you learned a lot. If you've enjoyed this lesson and the other hundreds of free lessons here on Monet Café would you consider liking this video and of course subscribing to this channel so you get to see more and also if you would like the extra content and just to support this channel so I can keep the free videos coming. Maybe consider becoming a patron of mine on my Patreon page. It's only five dollars a month and you get lots of extra content and it's just a lot of fun. You guys be blessed. I'm feeling particularly happy because I just had my first grandchild. It's a boy and he's beautiful. All right everyone god bless and happy painting.