 Welcome to Monet Café. I'm artist Susan Jenkins and this is a place where you can relax and learn to paint from the convenience of your own home. This video is particularly for the beginner and while I create this painting that was done on regular drawing paper, I'll also be going over lots of tips on different pastels that you can purchase as a beginner. Here's a photo of the reference image. It's literally the field behind my house and I have come to find the sweetest friend in my little cow Oreo. She's not my cow. She's a cow that's in the field next to our house and I met her just before a tragedy in our lives of our home flooding about three years ago now and little did I know that the Lord was blessing me with this sweet gift that would be my companion and bless my soul during those years. Now she has kind of become an Instagram sensation. I literally get more views when I post Oreo videos than my art. So she's looking now at the portrait that I did of her and oh my goodness, such a sweet friend. So that's the field where Oreo lives. That's the reference image we will be painting. I'd like to go over the supplies I'm using and also embellish a little bit with giving you advice on some beginner supplies. This is just regular drawing paper. I like using drawing paper that's toned. I have a lot that I do on a gray drawing paper. This one's kind of taupe. I'm using combination pastels. These are Prismacolor new pastels. I will be going over those. But right now let me talk a little bit about some of the harder pastels that work well with drawing paper and good pastels for beginners. This is on the Dick Blick website, DickBlick.com. These are Rembrandt pastels. Now what I recommend is the ones that we're just showing are getting the half sticks. You get more bang for your buck by getting the half stick sets than the full stick sets. You get more pastels for your money basically. That previous one was the 30. This one is the 60 I just pointed at. They also have a 90 half stick set. So it's a reasonable and more economical way to get started in pastels. I know the harder pastels don't get the glory that some of the softies do, but those are so expensive. And a lot of times people forget that harder pastels really can give some great results. So this is the 90 piece half stick set of Rembrandt pastels. And by the way, Rembrandt's were the very first set of pastels I ever bought. And you just have to learn a lot to learn techniques and how to get better with them. So don't get frustrated with that. Now here's the other set that I showed kind of at the beginning there. These are Prismacolor new pastels, not any WNU pastels. Again, they have sets. They have a 24 set, a 36 set, a 48 set, and a 96 set. This is me zooming in a little bit on the 96 set. There's just a great assortment of colors in these. And I have gotten results that I've been very pleased with in working with just new pastels on drawing paper. And I do have videos on that. I'll share a bit in a minute. Another great resource for finding soft pastels is dakotapastels.com. I believe that's their website, not dakotapastels.com. And Mount Vision pastels are a great beginner set of pastels. You can't get them in the half stick sets. You get them in the full stick sets. But the great thing is they're a little more reasonable than some of the other soft pastels. And they're large. You get a... And I like the round shape of these pastels. I like a combination of round and squares. So again, they come in sets. I recommend there is a workshop set. I literally went and toured the facility because they're here. The factory's here in Tampa, Florida, where I live and near where I live. And I met the owner, Carl Kelly. He's such a great guy. And I have a video on touring the factory. But this is the Mount Vision 50 workshop set. You get two boxes and the colors are brilliant and gorgeous. And it's another reasonable way. So for 50 pastels, $179 at the time I'm making this video. That's the price. That's really not that bad for 50 nice soft pastels. So these are just the things that I recommend when you're getting started. And also I just went into my YouTube channel here and I collected all of the videos that I've made and put them into one playlist. You see where I'm marking there? You go to the main page, look at the tabs up top. And I made a playlist called Pastels on Paper. I think I've got... You see on the side there? One, two, three, four, five, six. Maybe five or six videos in that that focus a little bit more on using pastels on regular paper. And the reason I like to do that is, you know, I'm trying to save you guys some money. I know pastel papers can get very expensive. So hopefully these tips will help you get started a little more economically. Okay, now I held up this brush because I was thinking of blending tools. Maybe if I wanted to try to blend on this paper. I ended up not using the brush, but using that other little thing you saw there. It's a little piece of chamois cloth. Like you know you dry your cars with. I'll talk about that in a minute. All right, so I'm all set up here. I've just got a little pastel pencil here. You could use a regular drawing pencil if you want with just keep a light touch. And I don't really need to draw much in here. All I'm doing is getting in my horizon line. I have it kind of in an upper third, but not so high up. Just really roughly sketching in trees. I think sometimes when we are beginners, we have a tendency to want to draw too much. And all we need is basic shapes. I also do recommend something about the freedom of trees not being so tight. Draw them a little more sketchy and loose. And I like how an artist recommended to have your mountains or your trees more smiling than frowning. Try not to let them trail off of the paper on the sides. All right, so now I think this is a mount vision I'm using right here that I talked about before. I don't have, I'm not using all of the pastels that I talked about previously because I was in such a rush this day. I really just needed to paint. I think, oh I know what it was. I've been doing a lot of computer work and I just needed to get to the easel. I didn't have time to pick out a bunch of pastels. So that's why I grabbed just this drawing paper. All right, what I'm doing now is I am just using the side of, I think this is a rim brand. And I'm using the side of this pastel just to shape some clouds. I don't want to say draw or sketch. You're making shapes with large strokes of the pastels or broader strokes of the pastel. And so I'm getting the gesture of these clouds and I typically like to accentuate clouds coming towards me. That's why I add a few more and try to get that sense of them moving forward into the sky even though there weren't that many over my head. I believe this is another rim brand pastel and I know there wasn't a lot of this yellow in the clouds but there is kind of a golden glow with, I don't have the other reference photo up here. I'll see if I can find it where you could see it bigger. There was a little yellow hint to those clouds. So I'm going to do a little bit of layering. Now, regular drawing paper gets the bad wrap that you can't layer on regular drawing paper. Well, you can't. Now see, here's where I'm getting the little bit of pink where I'm doing the blending. This is sped up only a little bit here just so the video won't be too long for uploading but it's not so fast you can't see. Now you see what I was going to say is you can blend on drawing paper just not as much as on sanded papers. That's the alternative to drawing papers is sanded surfaces literally like sandpaper but archival which means acid free and it's going to last a long time but this is good drawing paper I'm working on. This will last as long as oil paintings and acrylic paintings because the paper is a good quality and these pastels are professional archival. It's called quality with proper care. I do have on my website whenever anybody buys a painting I include some tips and I have a link or a page on my website, a tab where you can look at how to care for a pastel painting over many, many years. You know, some of the longest lasting paintings from the masters are pastel paintings. They have a quality about them where they preserve their intensity of color better than oils or acrylics. There's less binder in pastels. They are more earthy. They're closer to the original pigment. Maybe that's the best way to put it. I love pastels because of the word I just use earthy. I feel like I'm experiencing part of creation. Oh, I fixed that up. My blinds are making a shadow there or a light there. Okay, now what I'm doing is I'm using the side of one of those new pastels. I'm using it too to create a little bit of stroke work to show where some of those edges of grasses are coming back to. But for the most part, I'm just layering in some value, some darker value. If you've watched many of my videos, especially for beginners, and will advance to any level of pastels, it really is. Value is king, meaning the lightness or the darkness, even more so than color. If you get your value right, you can get really creative with color and go outside the line, I was very... This was something I don't know if I'd heard this years ago, but I was in... I was actually in the dollar store and I was buying foam core board, that black board you see me working on there. It's very expensive in art supply stores, so it's a dollar at the dollar store. And so while I was in there, I saw they had these chamois claws and it struck in my memory. Somebody years ago had mentioned that these could be a good blending tool. Never had used them, I really loved it. It was really soft. It just gave a little bit of blending and you don't want to over blend. I never blend later in a painting. I let the pastels do the blending mostly. But now I'm just... And I think these are washable, so if they get dirty, store it in the washer. Not with a white shirt or anything. But now I'm just using it kind of to blend. And one of the reasons for some blending is when you soften up edges and too much detail, then it causes things to recede. And I really wanted those trees to look like they were further back in the scene. I'm going to add some layering on top of it. But I was going to mention too that I didn't find a lot of success when I started out early working on... I'm just using more chamois work. I'm doing a little bit of work in these clouds here. But when I first started, I used regular paper. I didn't know any better. I was literally just trying to... So many people in our group can relate to... I think that's why the YouTube channel and the Monet Cafe Art Group on Facebook has been successful because so many of you are in the same situations I was in when I first started painting. I had my three boys when they were young. Me time, really? That just doesn't happen. And praise the Lord, they are worth every time, every bit of time I spent with them. But when they get a little bit bigger, you start trying to find some time for yourself I don't know how, but I stumbled across soft pastels and I found them very practical for my life. And so I started on just regular paper. I didn't know better. I bought a really cheap set of pastels. One of those you buy like at Michaels or Joann's. They don't usually have professional quality pastels there. And so I really got quite frustrated. I think I might have stopped my whole pastel journey because of poor quality pastels and not enough information. If I hadn't got online and this is back many years ago when there wasn't that many resources and Bless Her Heart I found one artist on a site that's still around called wetcanvas.com Don't let the name fool you. They have a whole pastel forum in there and I got on there and I was just so hungry for information and Bless Her Heart Deborah Seacour who's still a member of this group here. Oh amazing pastel artist. Such professional gorgeous work and a sister in Christ. She was the sweetest thing that helped me so much in learning what to do. I did everything wrong. So I think that's what's been my passion in creating this channel a few years back. And by the way some of you may have seen I just went over actually I think I have like 230 videos now in here. Some of them are private. You can't see them but I have 200 public, 200 plus public videos that you can watch on learning how to use pastels. It's not just pastels. I go over a whole lot of artistic information with composition and value with color and color theory and the science of color and lots of things like that. So again I think that was my passion for it. You know what I want to share. I'm going to bring you guys along with me on my pastel journey and that's what that's been over these years. So I am just I'm overjoyed at the success of it and also over the Monet Cafe art group on Facebook. I like close to 10,000 members in that group every level. We have contests. It's such an encouraging helpful group. If you have any questions you do it's a private group so you don't have to feel like you're putting your work out there for the whole world to see. It's just the pastel artist in that group which is great. I should probably start talking about the painting now. Now what you were just seeing there was all real-time footage that last part where I was talking right before the shammy cloth and I'm speeding it up again just a bit. Again I have very slow Wi-Fi where I am out in the country and sometimes it's better if I can just give it a little bit of speed to help with the uploading time. Now what I've done is I really loved even though this field, I know it so well like I said it's my backyard, even though this field I know those grasses are very golden. There was something I was seeing we have to or we can learn to interpret color as artists. One of the questions I get from artists is how do you change the color? How do you come up with the color palette when it's not exactly like what's called the local color. Local color just means what is exactly there. I mean if you took a color swatch and matched it but I don't, oh my hair is in the way I don't like to paint that way I mean unless I absolutely love the local color in the same which is sometimes gorgeous in the reference photo but often reference photos either they lie or they're boring what do I mean by the lying Reference photos often a camera will alter things and change things they won't give exactly what the eye sees. Our eyes don't see everything at the same time we focus on one thing or the other and so a photo often will capture everything in focus and often will get the values not correct artistically so I often will alter like those trees in the background there they're almost all the same value but to accentuate the artistic mood and feel I pushed some of those trees back by cooling them off they're not as green and I lightened their value cooling means making them a little bit more towards the blue end the cooler end of the color wheel and I lightened the value they're not as dark in value so that is where you break out your artistic license to be able to do that but I also wanted to interpret the golden grasses with more of a pink mood or feeling to them like a blanket of not really pink it was more peach that was like this glow and I know it was kind of coming from the sky but I I accentuated that enhanced that to give it more of that blanket of a peach feel I don't use the color peach a lot but for some reason some of those tones just felt right for this particular painting now here's another tip with using regular paper and I think this goes for sanded paper as well use a light touch you don't want to just press hard at really any stage of this unless you got to the very end of the painting because you are limited in your layering ability you're going to lose the ability to even get a color to show up if you press too hard you're going to crush the pastels pastels have they're made of this earthen pig earthen material that has little crystals in them and when we over layer over blend over work our painting we get a painting that looks dull and dead and lifeless and I am saying this out of experience because I have done this so many times I am still trying to get a lighter touch to preserve that luminosity and gorgeous brilliance of pastels that's one thing that's so amazing about this medium now what I'm doing here is I'm using I believe this is another Rembrandt and again these are a medium I would say a medium hardness pastel the new pastels in new pastels are harder than the Rembrandts but again they have such great abilities to them again they're not the softies they don't give that really just strong color and richness to them but I have done so many sketches with new pastels and I really love them so what I'm doing is I'm working in if you look at the reference photo I know it's little but sometimes working from small thumbnails is better than working from a big reference photo I see value and shapes better when I shrink something down smaller often I'll just do the thumbnail of something on my phone and sketch from my phone and because I use Photoshop I often when looking at reference photos or doing things I shrink them down really small just to break down that composition and that value so that's a really good thing to do is see if you can work from some thumbnail reference photos of course real life is best but I haven't been able unfortunately to do a lot of what's called plein air painting French word meaning on location I longed to that's one of my goals by the way I've been so thankful and blessed by whoever recommended me to start a Patreon page because now I have 200 Patrons and the little contribution of five dollars a month I mean I still feel like I just can't believe somebody gives me five dollars a month it's so sweet and I know it might sound like a little from an individual level but it adds up and it really helps me to be able to do things as an artist that I wasn't able to do before and one of my goals is to do more on location painting so I and bring you guys along with me you know bring one thing I have thanks to my Patrons and just hard headedness and perseverance I have gotten really good at the filming part I should I'm not great but but I I've gotten streamlined that's a better word and so I'll be really good at taking this on location because I've gotten compact I've had to do that too because of the flooding of my home and literally having to live in four different places since the flooding of my home and we're still not in our final place and my husband wants to on the land that we have where we don't live he wants to build a Monet cafe art studio for me I've never had my own studio always worked out of a room in my house which I still do and so that is another goal so if I can you know my page grows I'll be able to do that but anyway so but again I'm encouraging you beginners because I started at a kitchen table and I literally had to move all of my supplies when I go to cook dinner for my three kids so I hear you guys especially in the Monet cafe art group I get to experience a lot of you guys who some of y'all are working around kids are working in really small spaces and I tell you what the passion of an artist we won't quit when we get focused and dedicated to do something but that's the good thing about a group this channel here that I can share with you and you feel you learn that oh I'm not alone here but also in the art group as well and on our Patreon group and my Patreon group I have a private Facebook group for them so that one is even a little bit I would say more I get more communication with them because I literally can't keep up with everything that's going on in the other group Patreon group I can give you more special attention more critiques on your art if you choose to contest original painting giveaways things like that it's lots of fun I'll provide a link at the end of this video but if anybody's interested it's www.patreon.com slash Susan Jenkins okay so now I've gotten in some of the I wanted to get the darker value this is back to real time I wanted to get in some of the darker values in those grasses dark values tend to come forward so when you have things in the foreground you want the darker values and the brighter more intense colors as things receive they get a little paler and less bold in color when you get to the background what I'm doing here is you don't see individual flowers anymore you see more of a blanket of flowers I'm using the side of this I'm not sure that might even be a Rembrandt too the side of the pastel to just give a blanket of flowers in the background there and after I laid the dark down in the foreground I'm just kind of working in and around them to add some of those values and colors I didn't necessarily think of these as having to be grass like I said I know this grass it's kind of just stiff kind of coarse grass that has little patches here and there but I didn't really want it to look like that so I accentuated the color a little bit changed the color a little bit now I'm using this little bit of a I think it's kind of a lavender pastel this is what I was saying before you can use pastels to blend themselves I find this is my favorite way really other than at the very beginning sometimes using a piece of pipe foam insulation that you can buy at any hardware store or that little chamois cloth and that's really cool but using a pastel to blend so that's an excellent way to kind of soften edges and when you don't want something in the distance that stands out so much alright I'm going to speed it up a little bit more add some music oh there's again a little bit of a cooler color in the background is going to push those trees back even further alright enjoy this rest of this part with music stay tuned though to the end of the video and I'll be popping back in soon now I was getting fairly close to finishing here and I was trying to get the effect of those grasses being deeper than they were in the reference photo and the flowers being more on the tops and the color being more on the tops of them kind of reaching up so this was really a painting that I needed after a long day and this is the final again on regular drawing paper so I hope you learned a lot on this video that focused a little bit more on beginner products and techniques and if you'd like a little more you can become a patron for $5 a month on my Patreon page at that link above there and there's a clickable link here at the end of the video thank you guys so much be blessed and happy painting