 Welcome artistic friends to Monet Café. Today's painting is called Secret Meadow because it's a kind of a secret where I live now off the road off a beaten path and today's lesson is going to be featuring using gouache and a pastel painting on top of it. But I wanted to share some photos with you and just a brief little kind of recap on some of my story. Some of you may know that a year and a half ago our home flooded due to Hurricane Irma and our lives, I don't say it a lot on here or on social media, have been very topsy-turvy and crazy getting things back together. But I just wanted to share that in every storm there can be a rainbow and God can bestow His blessings on you in the most interesting ways. And so now I get to see these beautiful views from the land that we live on now. Even though you know we have a tiny home and I've had to move my studio, even my precious Jackson loves it being out in the country. So just a little preface here to the beginning of the video and now let's get started. If you saw my last video I'm featuring the same watercolor paper made by the company Arteza. Arteza, actually I stand corrected, Arteza. This is a 9 by 12 inch, 140 pound, 100 percent cotton watercolor paper and I am very impressed with this paper so I will keep buying it. Now this is a little set that they sent me to experiment with. It's a gouache set and it's metallic. Okay so it's got a little sheen to it and this was kind of an experiment for me. I've never used gouache as an underpainting. I think I will again but I think I'll use a regular not metallic. You'll see why. Anyway these are my other supplies. I will be talking about them. Oh yeah and don't forget to get your Monet cafe coffee cup. All right let's get started. All right so here is my Arteza paper that I have watercolor paper that I've already taped up. I've that's my reference photo I'm using that's actually a picture of my front yard where our tiny house is located and I've taped it up just on the top so that I can lift it and apply water to the back. You'll see me do that and I'll explain why but I've marked off an 8 by 10 area to paint in and these are the metallic colors that I'm using, the gouache colors. Okay I'm just using three but I noticed I'll go ahead and squeeze these out so you can see it. This is just a foam plate. It worked great. You kind of see the little shimmery metallic color that pink was beautiful. I noticed that these metallic colors none of them were dark. They were all kind of a medium to a lighter value so you'll see in a minute I actually use some of the Arteza watercolors. Well these are all these three are the gouache and I did like the shimmer and the sheen to them but here is the, you can't see it it's not focused, but it's the Arteza water color. It's a nice dark purple and I'm going to use that to get my darker values in and I think I got another dark pinkish color. Yes that's water color. So I'm combining both watercolor and gouache here and those were from my previous video the watercolor ones. I did a video using the Arteza watercolor 60 set. You can go back and watch that video if you want. I loved it they were great. Now I've got some paper towels. I'm going to get started and obviously in this video I proved you can combine watercolor and gouache together. Why not try it? You know now in this photo what I'm trying to enhance right now I'm just sketching it out. I'm showing that the horizon line is kind of in that lower third. Well let me talk this out first before I talk about color. I always kind of look at shapes and positioning of things according to the dimensions of the paper. So it's kind of easy for me to do big shapes blocking them in and getting them fairly accurate. I need to do a video just on drawing sometime because good drawing skills will really help you with your painting. Now even though in that photo the horizon line looked kind of straight across you're going to see how I create an illusion of depth by giving those trees like three layers instead of just one straight line across. Now what I'm doing here is I'm just wetting the whole paper with water. Just a pretty good coat of it and it'll start soaking it up but it'll stay a little wet. And the reason that I do this is I'm trying to create a soft effect with this underpainting. Okay this is my watercolor I'm putting on now. It's a oh don't put it in your coffee. I've almost done that a time or two. This is the watercolor that's kind of the darker. I'm doing it in the upper sky because I know that metallic one already looks too light. And in my reference photo the clouds that are at the top are a little darker. There are some darker ones that are over the tree line but I want to go ahead and get it. And notice I'm doing big strokes with directional motions. The bigger and freer you can get with the underpainting the better. You want to create that sense of energy and movement. You don't want it to be tight and fussy. Now this is a metallic gouache here. And see it's kind of like now gouache is opaque. It's not see-through but it is still I'm using kind of more water than you typically would with gouache. I think I don't use gouache a lot. But it is blending with the watercolor just fine. Now go ahead and get that that metallic gouache as the darker clouds that are kind of over some of those trees in the tree line. And it is blending in quite nicely with the watercolor. So this again is about big shapes and values. And again the clouds at the top are typically darker. So I just got a bigger you know loaded my brush more with that color. Now I'm going to go ahead and get in my darks. That's a dark purple. And again my paper is already wet so these are kind of go on will go on easily and smoothly. And I don't have the wet my brush quite as much when the paper is already wet. So I'm just kind of getting the shape in of these trees. Again kind of keeping directional strokes keeping energy. And now in a minute you'll start to see how I have made different levels to these trees. Now what I'm doing is I've I don't have as much paint on my one. I'm going back and fixing that. But I won't have as much paint on my brush when I go to the second level of trees. And what it's going to do is right there it's going to make those look further back. All this is going to be enhanced and with pastels anyway. But again I mentioned this all the time. And under painting is kind of like a road map. There's that second level. Now there's a third level of trees. You see that and way in the back there's going to be my smaller trees. Now see what I've done instead of doing that straight horizon line across the front. I've created a sense of depth by giving different levels of trees. I'm darkening them a little bit because the illusion is going to be enhanced even further with the pastels that I choose. The values and the colors that I choose going to really increase that sense of depth. Now I'm just kind of rewetting this foreground. And the foreground the land the flat part there is going to be darker than the sky. Okay so I'm picking that darker color and I've focused a lot talking about under paintings and why. The reason why would I pick this red color. You know this reddish pink color instead of green. The reason is because it's going to make it vibrant when I do put the green down. Now notice I put a lighter pink. That's the gouache again. Again enhancing the illusion. Color lightens in value and it's not as bold as intense. It's a little duller as it goes back to the distance. So see already how just almost like a little value study with gouache and watercolor. And that wouldn't all that hard to do. It's kind of fast and simple. So I'm going to enhance some things here but my goals is what I wanted to say before. I noticed an undertone of pink in that photo. I took the photo when the sun was going down and for some reason the photo captured more pink than was actually in the sky. And I thought why not go with it. Now what I'm doing here is I just flip it over. I know you can't see me. But I'm applying watercolor. I'm not watercolor water to the back of the watercolor paper. It will reverse the warp. Okay so it flattens your paper out. A lot of times when you coat a watercolor paper with water it's going to warp some. And this is just basically fixing that issue. And I find it works really great. And it may be a little warped when you first get working on this. But in both cases that I've used this paper it flattened out great. By the end it was totally flat. Now here's the magic liquid ingredient. Clear liquid gesso. The clear is the one you want to get. Don't get regular gesso. The clear gesso has the grit. And another reason you want. Oh there's my foam brush. Just not a wet foam brush. Just a dry foam brush. The other reason you use clear is because it helps you. It helps the underpainting to show through. You don't want to cover it all up. It clouds it a little bit. But not too bad. You know when it dries it's even better. So just a good coat. The foam brush helps to keep the gesso very smooth. So you don't have a lot of texture or lines in it. But sometimes I actually like using kind of a rough brush. If you want to get that texture in your painting and make it look more artistic. But this will give you a good even coat if you'd rather keep that. And sometimes I just enhance the gesso a little more on different places. So this is pretty much it. You've got a quick underpainting. You've got your clear gesso. And now we're getting ready to apply the pastels. Now these are the colors that I've chosen for the soft pastels. I have a variation of greens. I have some cooler greens, warmer greens. Greens that are darker value. Greens that are lighter value to enhance that illusion of that grass going back into the distance. I also have some darker value pastels to reinforce the darks of those trees. I have some lighter values of blues and greens to make the trees recede in the distance. And of course some of the sky colors and some of the pinks that I'm still trying to enhance in the sky. Although I've got a nice pink underpainting now. So I really kind of get that mood established early on. Now let's get going with the pastels. I am basically the liquid gesso has dried. Everything is nice and gritty for the pastels to have something to adhere to. I'm going ahead and getting in some of the darker value blues that are in those clouds. I like to go ahead and get my darks in for the clouds first because often I lighten them up by using a harder pastel to apply over them. I lighten them and soften them up. So I'm just getting in the darker shapes of the clouds and I'm just going to keep painting here for a while. Turn on some music and you know me. I'll pop back in and add some commentary in a minute. You can see that I've been adding my darks and I've been keeping a pretty light touch by the way. Okay because you can quickly overfill this with just the clear liquid gesso. But notice how now I am using the lighter values of tealish bluish greenish colors and even in the far distance those trees will have more of that bluish color. So again that just enhances that illusion of depth. That first tree, it's kind of the first in the line of perspective. So it's obviously going to be the darkest. It's a little darker here than it's going to be because I'm going to add some of those greens I'm holding up right there. Some of those are going there in that middle ground foreground of trees and then I'm also going to use a green to kind of soften up the foreground tree. Well not yet. Now I'm actually getting in some of the lighter cloud colors. Again just looking at the shapes. Try to forget that you're painting clouds and just paint shapes and also try to keep the shapes going in the direction of the way the sky is moving or at least the the mood that you want to create. We have this beautiful thing called an artistic license and we can change things to create the mood that we want. I got the feeling like the wind was just sweeping from the left to the right and upwards. So I try to keep most of my movements that way. Alright now it's time to put some green on that ground on the grasses. Far far distance. I'm going to have like some blues like hidden back behind some of those trees and then a paler, duller kind of a green. Gradually getting to a darker green to create the sense of depth and some real darks. That's kind of a purple there where those shadows are going to be under that tree. A little bit of the shadows coming back from the other trees in the distance but mostly you can see I'm working from darker values in the foreground to lighter values in the background. Warmer values typically in the foreground to cooler values in the background and notice that cool blue I just added. That's the shadow side. That's where the trees are. It was a cooler blue. Now if you're confused about warm versus cool I do have some videos and on this YouTube channel I have my videos now arranged according to playlist. If you go to the section called playlist you'll see I have them in groups so you don't have to search through all of the videos and so I think I have some like on color theory and that's probably where the ones to describe cool versus warm colors. Now you know I always look back on my videos and sometimes I see where I'm like you know I love that. Notice right now the colors look very fresh and the more you work the more you add the more you lose that freshness and I did go ahead and do quite a bit more on this painting but I kind of miss that that I hadn't just done a little bit more instead of a lot more. I'm creating a path there just so you know kind of to lead the eye back into the painting and you create like a dark area of a like a path of grasses or something whether it's a trail but it's mostly just a way to make the viewers eyes kind of meander and flow from the foreground to the background of the painting and then you just gradually add your grasses and directional strokes on top of that swatch of darkness that you've you've laid down already. So now you know again keep it fresh and don't overwork it. I went a little far with this one but I really like the mood that I've got going right here so that's the cool thing about making videos you get to go back and look at them go oh yeah remind myself to back off a little bit. So it's always a learning process even when you've been painting for a long time like me but anyway enjoy this. I'm going to play some more music and you guys just relax enjoy the process and I hope you're learning a lot. Here's where I'm going to be using some Blair fixative low odor fixative just to kind of splatter and spray a little bit look notice how dark that got that's why you don't want to do it at the end of your painting. You just do it as a way to add a little bit more tooth to your painting so I just let it dry. Now I can glaze over if there's a little more grit to that foreground surface where I applied it I didn't really apply it to the back remember foreground values are darker so now it's a little darker and I can I can without being as muddy I can add some some grasses on top of that and again it kind of enhances that illusion of depth. So fixative is good during the working phases but not at the end I get asked that a lot and now I'm using a harder pastel a new pastel in U P A S T E L and these are good for just getting those little wispy grasses they're harder and they have a harder edge so you can get more linear strokes and with grasses you don't want to overkill or have so many going exactly in the same direction you want to vary it up and keep it fresh and free. All right so I'm finishing up here this was a fun painting and again another time to experiment so I hope you learned something and again if you want to order any of the Arteza products there is a 10% coupon code it's Susan Jenkins one capital S capital J in that look in the about section of this video and you can get 10% off until April 25th if you want to order so anyway I hope you enjoy this here's the final painting it was lots of fun for me and it's always great to be with my friends in Monet Cafe. Happy painting!