 Well, hello my beautiful artistic friends, welcome to Monet Cafe. This lesson is called Easy as One, Two, Three. I absolutely love bringing lessons for beginners, but I find getting back to the basics reinforces principles that are good for artists of every level. So join me in this pastel painting tutorial where I will share product information and create three simple studies that should give you some core education that will make it easy as one, two, three for your beginning journey as an artist. I would love it if you would go ahead and like this video and subscribe to this channel if you haven't already. Click the bell icon to be notified of future videos. Also, if you'd like a little more instruction, consider becoming a patron of my Noi Patreon page. It's only $5 a month. It will help keep these free lessons coming to artistically hungry people all over the world. Now let's talk about the products used in this lesson. The surface I'll be using is by Strathmore. It's a pad of toned gray paper. I use this a lot for studies and even though it's unsanded, I find it works quite well and it's a pretty good price on Amazon. But as always, check around. If you get free shipping on Amazon, sometimes that makes the price better than some of the other merchants. Now I'm using these dual brush gray scale markers and they're made by Tombow. I bought mine on Amazon, but I found a 50% off sale. I don't know if the making of this video, it will still be 50% off. But I'm going to include that link in the description of this video. To begin this lesson, we're going to be doing something that is called value sketches. Also called a notan or notan. And I love doing these because they're so handy. I keep them in a little index box and I can reuse them to create multiple paintings from the same value studies. In this lesson, we're going to be creating little value sketches of roads. And although I did create them a bit just from my own interpretation, I did get inspired by some photos on unsplash.com. It's a site that's great for getting copyright free reference images. If you're a patron of mine, I'm going to share a link to this album where I have pre-selected some lovely road images. And now let's create this value sketch. I'm going to use three, well, I have four of them up here. I think I end up just using three of these markers. We really only need three values. Value just means lightness to darkness scale. And we're going to need a light value, which is the one I'm using now. I basically just use this one to kind of sketch in a general road theme. These are going to be so simple in composition. And I think it should be easy to follow along. I'll keep this first one real time. And then the other two, I'll speed them up slightly. So you should be able to still follow along. So I'm using the lighter marker right now. In case you're not real confident when you first start sketching, even if you get something kind of out of place, it would be OK because it's so light. But basically, three values, a light, a medium. I'm going to share these actual numbers of these markers in just a minute and a dark. Now, we actually will have four values because the white of the paper is a value. It's the lightest value. So you have the white of the paper, the lightest value, the middle value, and the darkest value. So you can just get in the general idea. I think my index cards, they weren't the typical three by five size, but whatever you have is fine. Again, this composition is so simple. You can just follow right along with it. And as you can see, I have gotten in some simple kind of evergreen tree shapes in the first level of trees. And now I'm getting in my second level of trees that are a little further in the distance. We're going to talk all about how values behave as distance increases. Now I've gotten my basic evergreen trees in. So I'm going to get my darker marker. Hey, that rhymes. And with evergreens, you almost create little zigzaggy patterns. And it really helps to give that feeling of an evergreen tree. And they of course get smaller and sometimes a bit more sparse as they go up towards the top. Try to vary the spacing too. If it's all so equally spaced, it's going to look artificial. Things in nature have irregular patterns sometimes. And sometimes they have very regular patterns, but often with trees and branches, you can have things, sometimes they're blowing around, sometimes a branch has fallen off. So a little bit of irregularity is good with that. All right, now I'm getting my middle value. So I put down the lightest value first. You saw that one, just to sketch it. The darkest value is that first level of trees. Now I use that middle value for the next level. Do you see how that already feels like those trees are a little further away? And I think I went back and got my even lighter one, the one I used first, just to make some marks on this mountain in the background. All right, so we've got now, we've got trees in the foreground, trees in the middle ground, some mountain in the background. And now I'm just kind of sketching in the shape of this road of just very general. Of course, the road is going to recede, get closer in the distance. Typically in landscapes, trees are your darker elements. They get lighter as they recede. The lightest thing in a landscape image is typically the sky. And of course clouds, if you've got white billowy clouds, but the sky in general is very light. Now the next lightest thing is typically any flat ground. Because the sunlight, because it's flat, the sunlight is shining down on it and it's receiving more light. Obviously more than the trees. The trees are vertical. So if the sun is back there behind the mountains, you're looking at the shadow side of the trees. And even if the sun is to your back, the trees are still going to be darker, one of the darkest elements in the painting. Now, because values are typically darker in the foreground, like I said, they get lighter as they recede. You'll have maybe a little bit of darkness in the foreground. Try not to overdo it. You're thinking about what is your focal point. The focal point is kind of those trees. You wanna pull the viewer in up and around that road just for some focal energy. Now let's do another one. I am gonna speed up the next one and you will be able to see a reference image. I used a reference image for the next one. So that gives you the basic understanding and now we're gonna do it all again. I totally believe that repetition is the mother of learnings. So now the things that I've already discussed should start to make sense. Again, I called this one, two, three easy beginner lesson because a lot of elements are in threes in this lesson and in art. And three values is usually a great way to break things down before starting a painting. Even if you're an experienced artist, I always create a better painting when I do one of these little value sketches. So three values, keep that in mind. Again, the white of the paper does serve as one value as well. And in this, I happen to do three paintings. I did four sketches. This particular sketch is one that I'm going to use for a larger painting, but I went ahead and made myself a little value study. And I really liked this one. I love the mountains. My whole family, my entire family literally is from the mountains of Western North Carolina and Appalachian Mountains. And I just love it there. We still call it home even though we've lived in Florida for so long. But I need to paint more mountains and I wanna make another trip and get lots of reference images of my family's property. All right, so you can see here, same as before, darkest element is the trees, lightest element. There's some clouds up there. It's gonna be the lightest element. The kind of a middle value is going to be the mountains in the distance and the flatness of the land. A little bit of darker with some grasses that are coming in and bordering the road. By the way, resist the urge to over complicate or detail these images. They really do need to be in a very basic layout and format. You don't want a lot of detail in these. And here is another one. And this one was also from a reference from unsplash.com. I will include those links in the description of this video. So if you wanna recreate from those photos, you can. And if you're a patron of mine, you will be getting images of my sketches as well. So you can create directly from those. Just one of the perks for being a patron of mine. It's only $5 a month and just such a lovely group of artists. Now these are the three that I chose where we're gonna actually create little paintings. I'm calling them studies and they're a lot of fun and I think a great learning opportunity. So here we go. Here is the Strathmore toned gray surface I'm using. I believe my pad is a nine by 12. And I'm going to create all three studies on one page. The same size that they are in the value study. I love creating studies and I think often we don't create enough including myself. I wanna just commit to doing lots of studies in a little notebook. And by the way, if you wanna save these, I simply put a piece of tracing paper over it after the pastel is applied to protect it. I just outlined the images with a charcoal pencil. Now, here's a little DIY easy way to make your own pastel tray. This is a lid to a Chinese takeout dish. And I just had some foam, very thin foam from a set of pastels I had gotten. You can buy your own foam and I just cut it to fit and it makes a nice little pastel tray. All right, here we are, three paintings. Remember, easy as one, two, three. We'll look here, we're starting with three values just like we did in the value study sketch with the gray scale markers. Now we're going to be using three values with color to get started. And I'm gonna show the color wheel in a minute to explain this color palette. I'm going to be using what's called an analogous color scheme. Analogous colors are easy. It's just basically colors next to each other on the color wheel. I'm gonna be working more with the greens and the blues. So kind of just imagine that warm green, middle green and blue. I'm also doing a little bit more of a neutral palette with this, we're in neutral month on Monet Cafe. Neutral just means they're not gonna be overly intense colors. Now the most basic color scheme is monochromatic which is all one color of different values. Kind of like the three greens I have down right now. And after I get in those three basic values, kind of like the value study, but this time with the color green, then I'll be adding some blues to this. So we're just doing the same thing again. No sense in doing the same sketch, making you guys watch it again, but basically just transferring it to our Strathmore gray tones paper. And as I said before, the more times you do this, the better you get. So here we have our little sketch. By the way, I did that sketch just in a charcoal pencil. That's all you needed to get the sketch in on the surface. And even though the surface is unsanded, I find it takes a few layers of soft pastel. Also, this lesson works for other mediums. The principles are the same. Whether you're working in acrylic or oil, watercolor is basically the same principles. The way you apply your values will be different, a little bit different. So that's another lesson. So just getting in, once again, what is the darkest value typically in a landscape painting? Do you guys remember? It's typically trees, and especially trees that are closer to you. Things closer have a darker value. Now let's move on to our middle value. This is a nice neutral, kind of a nice neutral middle value, green. It's a little bit warm, and warm just means it's closer to yellow. And then it would be to like turquoise or something. That would be a cooler green. So I'm just kind of scumbling in. Scumbling just means kind of random mark making. Some of these middle values. Now, what does value do in the foreground? It's a little darker, right? So as this field is receding in the distance, it's gonna get a little lighter. We just know that. The same way it works with the trees. It works with the land the same way. So that's why I'm kind of using this lighter value to get in some of the grasses, the flatness of the land as it recedes into the distance. Now the beauty of pastels is we do have the ability to layer. So you can actually just layer this color a little bit over the original green that you had put down. And I didn't add any color to the trees or the background mountain or the sky yet, because I'm gonna be adding some blues, cooling it off a bit. I did look for kind of like a nice taupey color for the road. The road is going to be a little bit lighter than the grass values. And it kind of depends on your road. You know, there are some roads that are like a white gravel road. Some roads can be darker, some can be paved. So mine's just gonna kind of be like a little worn out path of like some dirt underneath. So I'll add a little bit of warmth to it later as well. So just this is called the blocking in stage. I'm sorry, my screen is cut off where you can't see where I'm adding some of the lower colors. And once again, if you're a patron of mine, you'll be getting a snapshot of all of these images along with my color notes, I call them, where I make all my little marks there. And here's where I'm going to be grabbing some greens that are a little cooler. Now, as I mentioned, values get lighter as they get further back. Colors typically get cooler as they recede into the distance. So I found some greens that were basically a little bit lighter in value than the first trees I put down. They're not gonna be as dark as the evergreen trees that are closest to us. They're gonna be just a little bit lighter in value and a little cooler. Can you see those colors that I put down? They're just lean a little bit more towards blue than the original colors. So I'm gonna use this one right here to get the second band of trees. Now they're obviously going to be smaller. That's another thing that happens in the distance. We've gotten three things that happen so far as distance increases. Values get lighter as they go further back. Colors get cooler and elements get smaller. So those are three really easy principles that if you follow, you're already gonna give a sense of depth to your painting. So there's the next color that I used for the second band of trees. And I'm gonna use this even cooler blue a little bit lighter in value, just a tad to get in an idea of some trees even further back. And really just putting in these simple little principles with five pastels, well actually six if you count the topi colored road, already gives you a feeling of a little painting. So it's really as easy as one, two, three. I know I'm belaboring that and beating you over the head with it, but I want you to know it's not that hard. I always say painting is easy once you know the rules. And I'm taking this cooler color that's a little bit darker than some of the grasses I put down. And I'm kind of giving an idea of some grasses beside the road. Usually you get a little bit of a shadow, especially foreground grasses, they're gonna be a little bit taller. And it gives a feeling of height to some of those grasses. And before I tackle the mountain, I'm going to get an even lighter value. And maybe, yeah, it is a little cooler. Look at that. Can you see how that's getting more towards blue or turquoise color? And I'm just filling in those spaces kind of behind the first band of trees, the second and the third band of trees to give the feeling that there might be some trees back there at the base of that mountain that are even further away. So it gives you a fourth level of distance to this painting. And while I have a color in my hand, I usually look for other opportunities where I might be able to put it down. I felt like in my mind, the sun was kind of back behind those trees. So I knew the grasses on this side would be a little bit in shadow. So I kind of cool them off a little bit with that color. And I always say this expression, it's been my new thing. You cool off when you get in the shade, right? You get cooler? Well, so do colors. So keep that in mind. I did tweak this second level of trees just to give it a little bit darker at the base there. And I'm going to use just a little bit. I don't want to overdo this a little bit down at some of the areas on the side of the road where it might be a little more shadow. And it also helps to pull the eye into the painting a bit. We're leading the viewer down that road. Also too, this is all real time in this particular lesson, just like the very first one I did of this in the sketch. So both of those are real time. And now moving on with our analogous color scheme, we're going to use colors that are adjacent to green and that would be blues. And so I'm getting some, have you ever noticed how mountains seem to blue out in the distance? And it's because it's one of the things we can see really far away. I mean, even if a tree is super tall, if it's super far, you can't see it. Well, mountains are so tall that we can see these things that are so far into the distance. And they literally are so far that they blew out. And the reason they do this is there's a lot of air between the viewer and the mountain. And air actually has substance. And it's creating a barrier between you and that element. And colors that are warm are typically lost because of the vast distance. So that's why I'm choosing some blues. And now I've got a little bit of a purple. With pastels, colors are so much more interesting if you layer multiple colors rather than just trying to find the exact color and having one color. And typically the tops of the mountains are going to have a little bit of light hitting them in various places. This all kind of depends on clouds and things. So I got an even lighter value of a beautiful purple. Notice a lot of my pastels are so teeny. I'm using these from what I call my workshop palette. I just have a palette of pastels that have various values and colors arranged according to value and color. And I can just easily go grab them. And some of them I've got to order more and I just haven't had time to do that. But I did love that little pretty purple. I sort of lost my little tree back there. So I gave it a little bit more dark value to make it show up a little bit more. And now I'm adding a little bit more of that really light or not really light, but really pretty bluish green in the distance. And now because I like my painting to feel connected, the painting doesn't have any purple anywhere but the mountain, right? So I know that there's probably gonna be a little bit of shadows on this road. The road is a similar value to this purple that I have. So I'm just going to go ahead and add in where there might be a little shadow where some of the grasses are, you know, up kind of taller on the side of the road casting a little bit of a shadow. And look at this, even though this is unsanded paper, I've been able to get quite a few layers down. And if you're a very beginner to pastel painting, you'll hear pastel artists talking about sanded surfaces. Yes, I do mean sanded like sandpaper. They're professional, they can get quite expensive. And you often can get a lot of layers and really vibrant color. Now I didn't know this when I first started painting with soft pastels. So I had to work on unsanded papers for a while but you still can get decent results on unsanded surfaces like this one. Now here's where I said I wanted to add a little bit of warmth into the road. So I just got a little bit of a earthy kind of a neutral color. Again, this is neutral month in Monet Cafe. So this first painting has colors that are a little more muted. That's probably a good word for neutral. Neutrals aren't always gray. They can be colors that are just a little dull and they have their own inherent beauty. I've had a couple of lessons already on neutrals. If you're seeing this video, even if it's not neutral month, if you go to the two lessons prior to this one, I think both of those are on using neutral palette and what are the benefits of using neutrals? So often a road has little rocks in it or little grooves in the road. So I'm adding a little bit of a lighter value just to indicate kind of like a little brokenness to the road. And it's pretty much done at this point. I go in and give a few more tweaks, darken the values a little bit in some areas of the foreground and also give a couple of little final marks where some of the pastel is kind of rubbed off. Now I'm working flat. Oh yeah, a little bit of that pretty blue and that pretty to cool off the grasses in the foreground. I'm working flat. It helps for filming but the pastel dust does lay upon the surface when you work this way. It's best to prop up your art on an easel, whether it's a table easel, whatever, that way you don't have the dust just moving around as you're moving your pastels. I do pick it up and take it outside and knock it off. I don't ever blow my painting inside. By the way, there's all these things about the toxicity of pastels and I've got a study that was very extensively done and you don't have to freak out over the toxicity of pastels. But if you are sensitive to it, wear a mask and try to stay in a ventilated area. So here I'm again just adding a little bit more value, a little bit more of some energetic strokes indicating those grasses that are growing up beside the road. And oh wait, I have forgotten something. What's missing here? Can you see what's missing? It's the sky and because I mentioned the sky is usually the lightest value. Yes, see, look how dirty my hands are. I typically wash my hands a lot. They do make a product. If you don't want pastels on your hands, you can either wear gloves or you can use, it's called gloves in a bottle. And yes, it really does work pretty good. You don't have to wash your hands as much. It doesn't seem to stick to your hands as much. But because the color of the paper was already lighter than anything in the painting, the sky almost worked without putting anything on it. But I loved cooling it off a bit with a pretty turquoise. Again, still working with that analogous color scheme. These are just colors that are next to each other on the color wheel, basically greens and blues leaning a little bit into purple. So that little section of the color wheel is the analogous colors. And often I like to combine a few colors in the sky, almost always at least two colors. And so I wanted to add a little bit of that lavendery color. I believe it also connects the painting. I've got some kind of turquoisey colors in the grasses and trees and I also have some purple. So that sky really felt connected, harmonious because it had some of the same colors in it that the rest of the painting did. I went and got a lighter value. A lot of times at the horizon line, in this case it's kind of the line between the mountain and the sky, where the sky meets the earth, it's usually a little bit lighter in value, almost like a little bright sunlight shining back there. So there's that little study using an analogous color palette using, I don't know, 12, 13 colors or so. And I actually did go back in and lighten the sky up a bit with a little bit of a lighter purple. I just wanted it to be a little lighter to give some drama to that sky a little bit. And I did add a little bit more purple to the road as well. I thought I'd go ahead and show you the actual pastels that I used as well. Again, quite neutral, you see that? And also too, these are various brands. Now that's a whole another video. And now we're ready to move on to number two. The sketch is actually quite similar to sketch number one, which is fine. The road's a little bit more centered and the trees are a little bit more equally spaced on either side of the road. But we're gonna give this one a different color palette or color scheme. With this one we're going to be using something called a split complementary color palette. Now, before you know what a split complementary is, you need to know what a complementary is. Basically, complementary colors are just colors that are opposite of each other on the color wheel. So a split complementary is pretty much like what it sounds. You choose one color, go to its opposite color, and then pick the split of it, the colors on the opposite side. In this case, you chose purple, you went to yellow, and you chose the split on the green and the orange. You can do this all the way around the color wheel. And this happens to be a particular color palette that I love, I think it works very well. And I really do like the one where you pick kind of a purple or purple violet like I did here. Opposite is that kind of lime green. And the split of the green is going to be like the greens and oranges on either side. So, and here we go again using a charcoal pencil to get in a super simple composition and sketch just using the one value at this point. And I wanted to make my trees rather lively, leaning and having some energy to them. I have pre-chosen my colors and values. Now look at the top there. What number are we talking about a lot in this video? Three, okay? Three values, dark, middle, and kind of a lighter, mauvey color. And that's three values of my sort of red violet color. It's not quite purple, it's kind of a red violet. So here we are once again, kind of a red violet. And now green is the complement, that lime green. The splits are going to be a little bit cooler green and an orange. So this is super easy. I got an orange and I got three values of orange. I got three values of green and a lighter green. So basically 10 pastels to get started. And I am speeding this up. I don't want this video to be like two hours long. So we're doing the same strategy. Now I know trees, you wouldn't think of them as being this dark kind of red violet color. But guess what? If you get the value right, you can get creative with color. See my trees all kind of leaning and having some energy. So there's the darkest dark. And now I'm making that tree and the tree in the back feel a little further away by lightening the value. There's our second and third banks of trees. Added a little bit of that lighter value to those that are further away. You already feel a sense of distance, right? And now we're gonna go ahead and get in the middle value of the road. Now these are all warmer colors. And what this does is it results in what I like to do often is called an underpainting. You know how I was mentioning earlier, the beauty of combining colors by layering. And when you create a warm underpainting, what you're actually doing, you're using warm colors, basically to lay down colors that are going to really make your greens look beautiful. So I've got some warm kind of pink, mauve-y colors and I've got some warm, earthy, orange-y colors. I'm gonna make this road a little bit lighter with the lighter value that I chose. It leans a little towards yellow, but it's still a warm color with a lighter value. I think too, when I finish this one, I want you to take note as to how this warm underpainting influenced the final painting versus the one that we did first. You know, the first one, we just went ahead and laid the greens down. So with these being side by side, you're going to be able to see just what a difference an underpainting can make on your final color. These are questions I get all the time. One of my most popular questions is, why do you do an underpainting and what color do you choose when you do an underpainting? Well, this should help you to see why. I really love the warm tones underneath. So I'm adding a little bit more of my darks, kind of again, to border the road a bit. You don't want any of these to be hard lines. You want to kind of suggest break them up a little bit. Now, putting some of that middle green value on top of those oranges, can you see that color? How fun that is versus the really cool, just plain greens on the right. Now I'm using some layering of some greens on top of some of the trees, also giving a little bit of that even in the road. I love to connect to my color even if you just put a hint of it somewhere else. Now we're gonna go on to another green. It's probably not much lighter or darker in value than the first one, but it's cooler. And we know that colors cool off in the distance. So I'm putting some of these cooler colors kind of down where the shadowy sides of the trees are. And I'm first gonna put down, yes, a green for a mountain. Even though I know I mentioned earlier that things cool off in the distance, do you remember the other thing I said? Value is king, okay? If you get your value right, it can work in the distance. And I'm going to, again, lighten up some of the top of the mountain there. Remember I said sometimes sunlight hits the mountains on the tops and give it a little bit of a lighter value. I usually put my darker value down first, even if it's a middle value, and then my lighter value on top of that. So it's already giving a little feeling of distance and feel that nice warmth underneath. Isn't that fun? And now I need to make a decision on the sky. Now I want this not only to be a limited palette, this is a beginner lesson, I want my painting to feel harmonious and connected. So what would be a color that I could use for the sky? I didn't really want to use the lighter green, it was the color of the mountain after all. So I decided for some color contrast, I would use a little bit in that pink, that red violet family. This is basically just a lighter value. It was a little too pink. See, it's not as warm, it's a little too cool. So I said no, no to that. And I could have used like the warmer value that's in the road, but I still did really like to pull out that little bit of that mauve influence. So I got a pink that worked a little bit better. It wasn't quite as cool as the other one. It was a little more warmth to it. And I thought that just made such a nice touch with that pink sky. So this is really also a neat example for you to see that. If you just learn a couple of simple things with respect to color palettes, these simple color palettes I've shared, I'm gonna do one more on the third one. And using the rules of value, you can literally take your little value study and create multiple different color schemes. And you are the boss. You've got control. You got the wheel, I should say, as to what colors you use. So again, it's just some simple rules. And once you learn them, the sky's the limit with your creations. I added a little bit more of that warm yellow, but there's still a little hint of that pink influence behind. Again, combining colors is what makes painting so beautiful. Here's a recap of the colors that I used. And look at that, such a simple palette. And now can you see how beautiful the warmth of this shows up? So the second one I just did is much warmer. You get those little hints of earthy colors beneath. And the first one is much cooler. These are so fun. I really, I just wanna keep doing studies like this. Now this last one is going to be what's called a complementary, the simplest one, I should have done it first. Just compliments. We're doing a pretty blue violet with an orangey color, but I'm going to go a little analogous on the blue side. I'm gonna go a little into some of the purples and other blues on one side. Kind of in that family of blues and purples. Now here we go again. Another notan or value study that I'm recreating with just a charcoal pencil. So just speeding this part up and then we will get started. Now I'm gonna do something interesting with this one. This is going to prove to you that you have creative license. I'm gonna make a night scene. Look at these beautiful purples that I've picked out. And like I said, I went to some blues which are analogous, they're on the sides of the purples. And I went with the complement of the orangey colors, yellowy oranges, and a little bit, this is gonna be my punchy color, that little red violet that you saw at the bottom of the palette there. Now I'm at about 33 minutes into this video already, so I am going to speed the last one up a little bit more. Again, the first one was real time. The second one was sped up only slightly. You can pause it, totally follow along. And this last one, same concepts. But notice how I'm gonna be able to just make my values a little bit darker. Again, remember the purples I showed you? Three values, what are we talking about? So much, I'm wearing you out with in this video. The number three, so three values. We've got a dark purple. I believe that was the Terry Ludwig egg plant. A middle value, which is really kind of dark too. And then a lighter purple, same concept. My land is the lightest other than the sky. My trees are the darkest and they're getting a little lighter as they recede into the distance. My sky, notice the sky is darker in value than the other two, why? It's a night scene. So I went with a blue that's not like a super light value blue. It's still gonna be one of the lightest elements in the scene, but definitely darker than a daytime sky. I'm using that pretty lighter value, kind of a violet lavender violet color for the road and going ahead, remember if I have a color in my hand, where else could I use it? Just blending it in some of the grasses in the distance, but it's a little lighter back there. And I'm using this lighter blue for the road. Now right now it's one of the lightest values in the scene, but I am going to be using that lighter blue a little bit in the sky as well. You'll see me develop the sky. I'm using that middle value blue to layer over some of the trees. Now your trees, they're dark at first, but you can layer the middle values on top like I did in the other two. Notice I add a little bit, like in the first one, I add a little bit of lighter green on top of the dark first value I put down. All right, darkening up towards the heavens. Skies usually work this way, whether you're talking about daytime or nighttime. It's usually a little darker, tad darker in the upper heavens. Think of space, it's darker in space. And then it gets lighter at the horizon. Now this is a little blending tool. I held up the thing real fast. It's made by Pan Pastels. Literally looks like an applicator for eye makeup. Well, guess what? You could use an eye makeup applicator for this. Now I am careful not to contaminate the colors. I kind of wipe it off to make sure I don't get the dark area of the tree into the sky. But now I'm going in and adding some more darks. This again is a night scene, so I'm just developing this. And there I go, getting my road a little bit darker. I wanted some light in the road because I'm gonna add some moonlight to this. I'm gonna put a moon up in the sky and some stars. And heck, why not even some fireflies? We're gonna make this one fun. For the fireflies, I'm going to use those warm yellowy colors I chose. And this first one was so soft that it was by crumbling on the paper. And this again is one of the disadvantages of working flat. I literally needed to just turn it over and let some of the debris fall. Typically I would take this outside, but I wanted to keep working. But I've slowed this down a little bit again. Usually with lights or fireflies, you'll get three values. You'll get like a darker warm yellow, a middle warm yellow and a lighter warm yellow. And you layer dark to light, making smaller marks with each layer. So you put down basically like a little circle of the darkest, then a little bit of that middle value in the middle of it, and then a little hint of the lightest value. And it gives you three layers of values of color and it really makes it look like it's shimmering. So it's a little technique. It's in another video of mine, but that's the basic strategy. And I chose the warm color of the fireflies for a couple of reasons. I feel like they have a little warmth to their little light and they're closer to the viewer. Remember, things in the foreground typically are a little warmer and they cool off in the distance. And I'm gonna be adding this moon. I wanted it to have a little bit of warmth, but not too warm. So what I did, I put a basic idea and the moon doesn't have to be a perfect circle. Often sometimes it looks cliche or artificial when it is. So I just get a general idea. That was my guideline there. And I got a little bit of a glow around it. Because I'm gonna have a little warmth to it, I made my glow a little bit of that pretty lavendery red violet color. Now I'm getting my little bit of warmth in. That wasn't quite warm enough. So I'm adding a little bit more and then I'm going to add my lighter value on top of that. It's the lightest yellow that I have. And I was losing a little bit of layering capability here. So I was kind of having to fiddle with it a little bit, but it was good enough for a study. And now I'm just adding some little stars. I didn't want them quite as warm as the Fireflies. Also, they need to be teeny, they're far away. And I could have left the scene as just the basic complimentary palette. But I decided to go ahead, sometimes when the moon is shining, you do get a hint of some of the warmth in the grasses. So I added a little bit of some greens, not super warm greens, but a little bit of a lighter value green in the distance there where the moonlight might be shining. And we know values get lighter in the distance. So, and then I just added a little bit of more color to that road. So it wasn't just the only like purple looking thing in the scene. I do get that little influence of purple in the sky. Remember around the moon where I added that little red violet value down there? That kind of connected that to the painting as well. I hope that makes sense where I talk about connecting things. We don't want our painting to feel like a paint by number. And often colors play upon each other and it will make your painting feel harmonious when you incorporate little bits of color throughout the painting to make it consistent. I lost some of my Fireflies and all that layering. So I added some back to the top again. And I hope you guys have as much fun creating these as I did. Like I always say, I have a heart for the beginner. So please, if you liked this video, please click like, subscribe to this channel, comment. I love to hear what you have to say. Your feedback is very important to me. Become a patron if you like for $5 a month. It not only gives you extra content, but it helps me to continue providing these free lessons for people all over the world who don't have any other resources to learn. So God bless you all. Happy painting and I have lots more on the way.