 Welcome to Monet Café. I'm artist Susan Jenkins, and I'm happy to bring you this tutorial of this sweet little painting. I had fun creating this, and this is a real-time lesson. And you're going to see me in this lesson, not only create this little painting, but experiment with a new product that I've never used before, new to me. Gamsol odorless mineral spirits. I saw another artist try it, and I was so interested in it. As a matter of fact, in this very lesson, you will see me do a little experiment where I compare different methods of blending pastels. I get asked this question all the time. Often I use water, sometimes I'll use alcohol, and now this new product. So stay tuned for a comparison. The reference images from unsplash.com. I love this site for copyright-free reference images. You can find me on Unsplash and look at my collections. I have so many photos that are copyright-free that I've put together in these little collection albums, and it really helps when you're just ready to paint. You don't have to go search. You've already saved a lot that you like. Many of these, this is the collection called Fields. Many of these are photos that I've used in my tutorials already. And here's the reference photo for today's lesson, and I wanted to give credit to the photographer. Her name is Amy Humphreys, and it was neat when I clicked on her name. That's so neat because you can connect with them if you like. And I saw that she's from Tampa, where I live. And so I thought I would reach out to her and let her know that I created a painting tutorial and a painting from her lovely photo. That's what's so cool about Monet Cafe and Art is how we're learning and sharing together. And I'm going to start this little painting now, but stay tuned to the end where you will see this experiment using all three products, water, alcohol, and the gamma-sol odorless mineral spirits. Now my surface is a little scrap piece of UART. It's spelled the letter U-A-R-T, 400 grit pastel paper. I do love UART paper. It is great for painting with pastels. You can get lots of layers. You can add water, obviously, as I'm going to be adding the mineral spirits. And I am using now a little piece of vine charcoal or willow charcoal. I like these sticks. I feel like if I hold them loosely I can get more gestural marks. So my surface is actually more elongated than the reference image, but I often just get creative and change things up as I paint. So I really love these long formats too. So this is encouragement to save your little scrap pieces of paper. I love painting small and you never know what little things you might discover. And now that I have the sketch in, I'm going to be creating the underpainting. This is the painting portion where I will wet this to create a beautiful colorful underpainting with which to lay my additional pastels on top of. These are Prismacolor new pastels spelled in U pastels. I like them. They're harder. They're great for underpaintings. And if you're not sure what an underpainting is, check out one of my latest videos. I have a new series of videos called Pastel 101 where I go over lots of things including section three or part three that's called underpaintings. You can learn a lot about why do we do them, how do they benefit your painting and lots more. And now I'm applying some color to the tree shapes. And notice too, my shapes are so general. At the underpainting stage, and really a lot of the painting stage, you don't want to get too fussy with too much detail, especially not at the beginning. I always say big shapes, big simple shapes. So now I'm working with some of the warmer tones, but just so you know, the blues were the ones that I used in the trees in the back. The darkest value blue is that tree, the largest focal point tree there. And then the other blue was a little bit lighter in value, a little cooler in color. And so now I'm applying the different values of reds and pinks in value stages. We know as artists or we learn as artists that darker values are usually in the foreground and they gradually get lighter as they recede. And keep your subject matter in mind. Anything vertical like a tree is going to be darker in value. Land and fields and things like that are usually lighter in value in general because they're flat and the sun is hitting them. So now I've got my general underpainting in and I'm going to apply the gamsol, I think I keep saying gamsol, mineral spirits, odorless mineral spirits. I just have a basic little brush here. And I typically use the largest brush. I can this one I just had near me, but it's a little painting. So this one works. And I'm just playing with it now, dabbing it on. I'm liking the effects. I have enough on it to where it's kind of blending and bleeding a little bit. So I'm getting a nice little, almost a wash type of effect. I'm keeping it a little bit in a zigzaggy type of fashion. I like when a painting draws the eye in maybe like in an S shape curve up around the back. So that was all there was to that. This is real time. Okay, it's not even sped up. So these things can progress pretty quickly. And I did clean my brush out before I went to the next color. And now I'm just kind of dabbing it around, letting it drip and run. Don't be afraid if it drips, even if it drips into the other color, because this is the underpainting stage that is supposed to be loose. Now notice it dried considerably lighter. So keep that in mind too. Now I'm using a set of pastels to start painting now that my underpainting is done. This is the Terry Ludwig set of Richard McKinley pastels. I love Terry Ludwig pastels. I love the artist Richard McKinley too. And these are some of his color choices that he used to create this set. Now this is a dark kind of a green, a foresty green. And I could tell it wasn't quite dark enough. So I grabbed a dark purple. I'm not sure if this is often I use one of my favorite darks. And a lot of other artists is the Terry Ludwig eggplant color. I think it's number something 100. Not quite sure. But now what I did with that rule, with value in mind, I wanted it to be a little bit lighter in value for those background trees. So notice how that fairly quickly starts to give a sense of distance. So if you have your closer trees darker than your trees that are further away, it creates the illusion of depth and perspective. And now I'm using that one green I started with to just kind of layer in some of the darker values that are going to be in the foreground. Now this is a field of a lot of grasses. And I am trying to keep in mind my little my little compositional pathway that I'm trying to create to draw the eye into the painting. And so I know a field in the reference image, it's really darker in the foreground than you think a lot of times. And sometimes you can exaggerate that even if the photo doesn't show, because it'll help to create that illusion of depth in your painting. Now I added a little bit of that to the top of the trees. Oh, pardon me. I am just praising the Lord pointing up to Jesus. I listened to praise and worship music while I paint. And I can't play it on here because it has a copyright and I would get a strike, you know, on the YouTube channel, which I have never had. Praise the Lord. Now I'm using a little blending tool. This is a little cheap piece of pipe foam insulation. I think I learned this technique from artist Karen Margulis. She is just so amazing. She shares so much of her her painting expertise and she is just an awesome artist. But this is something you can buy at like Lowe's or Home Depot or wherever. And it's literally the insulation used to protect pipes from freezing. But there's many other little blending tools you can use such as packing peanuts. People have talked about using pool noodles like kids use to float in in the pool. But what it does is it softens everything. Can you see how it instantly softened it? It also covers up maybe still some of the white of the paper or the creamy color of the paper showing through. But you still get that influence of the underpainting. That's something I cover in the underpainting lesson as well. A common question I get is, why do you create an underpainting? If you just cover it up and paint on top of it, but the underpainting influence does still affect the painting and the mood, you can still see that pretty pink color underneath. Now, also too, you probably saw me just kind of clean. I use a paper towel and kind of wipe off whatever I'm using to blend with so I don't contaminate colors when moving from a very dark value to a light value. All right, that's it for the blending. And now I'm going to start working on the sky. This is a beautiful lighter value turquoise I just used for that upper part of the sky. And now I'm moving to it's a little bit cooler. And the reason I went a little cooler in color temperature, cooler colors lean more towards blue, warmer colors lean more towards yellow. But the cooler values will be kind of like behind the tree because there's shadow and shade. And often I like to say, think of color as how you get affected by shade. You cool off when you're in the shade, so do colors. Now the turquoise that I put in the upper left area there, often we use warmer colors kind of in this little bit of green. And yes, you can put green in a sky. Often we use warmer colors down towards the horizon line. Usually the sun is reflecting off the land more and they're warmer. But you can use your creative license and put cooler, I mean, I'm sorry, warmer colors up in the upper parts of the sky. As long as you get the values correct, you can get creative with color and just have some color fun. So because this is such a teeny little painting, I'm using just these little corners of this chunky Terry Ludwig pastel and just making some little marks and giving suggestions of color in my sky. And it doesn't need much. It's such a little area. And now I'm using this kind of neutral gray. I'm just marking a little bit. I'm trying to create another layer of distance and making some of those trees feel even further away like there's three layers of levels of distance. Now look at this beautiful green. It's a really cool green. A warm green would be very yellowy grassy green. And this is cool in color temperature. And I'm putting it more on the field that's kind of middle to background. And now this is a little bit lighter and it's a little warmer. But it the value change creates a feeling that there's another little patch of grasses further away. And isn't that amazing just how value changes alone can create the illusion of depth. And you know I like to say painting really isn't all that hard. It's just a few rules you have to learn. Learn how your medium behaves and just learn how to use the tools. So that's what I love about Monet Café is there are so many artists that or people who have never painted and they want to be artists. And hey if you love it and you're trying guess what you can wear the label as artists. So you can see now I went to a little bit of a warmer green. I've just been laying different colors. Notice how I haven't over layered or the pressure is not too hard. I have a super light touch. I think that's something we're often guilty of as new artists. And I'm preaching to the choir myself because I did the same thing. Often we think we have to add color to make the painting look complete before it needs to look complete. It's in stages that we create through layering. Now this is maybe that eggplant color. I realized I didn't have enough value deeper darker values in the foreground. And I am going to layer on top of these. But I knew I needed something a little darker in the foreground because the tree in the background it was such a heavy focal point with value in this composition that I wanted to balance things out a bit. So now back to my point about layering. You see right now if I was starting as an early artist when I was an early artist I would have had the tendency to want to finish that foreground because it looks kind of messy right now. But your painting is going to go through this little they call it like the puberty years. The adolescent stage. You know how a lot of people well I was that you're kind of awkward during your teenage years. I don't know I remember a lot of kids I was like wow they didn't go through that stage but I certainly did. And your painting goes through these stages too. So embrace it and don't feel the need to finish a particular area of your painting. Try to work the whole. At least that's how I work. I like to work the whole. And I feel the painting at the end has more harmony and congruency. It works better when you work the whole rather than getting caught up on any one area. And I've been adding some value changes in these trees. I know that the light is going to catch these upper branches. And where's my source of light in this in my imagination it's in the upper left. So that lighter green value is kind of on the tips of those leaves and branches sticking up to the upper left. And I know the other side is going to be cooler because the sun is not reaching around to that part of the tree. So I'm just gradually making some value changes creating that illusion of depth. Also notice I'm not drawing or painting any particular leaves. I'm just creating little shapes. And in reality we don't see that way anyway. We don't see when something's far away all the individual little leaves and twigs and branches. So your painting is going to feel more I think of the word romantic and painterly and impressionistic. If we embrace that truth that things are usually a little less focused when they're far away. Now cameras often I sometimes say they lie. Well they don't really lie but they capture things. If you use the automatic setting on a camera often it tries to capture everything in detail. And that's not how our vision works. If you look at an image the peripheral areas if you're not looking at those are going to get a little fuzzy. So that's what we're trying to recreate in our artwork is more of how we see as people and not how a camera sees. Now I love purple and this reference image did have some sort of suggestion of some purple flowers. I couldn't actually tell what they were. So I'm just going with it. I'm making little purple shapes and just gradually getting letting them become smaller closer together and more flat as they recede into the distance. And I wanted to bring another color in. I thought this worked well with those warm tones of the underpainting. So it's just a little bit of magenta. Also too when creating flower shapes avoid keeping them too patterned or every flower facing the same direction. That's quickly a way your art's going to look amateurish because that's not how nature works. Often or almost always especially in a subject matter like this a field of flowers they're going to have I call it a spontaneous harmony. They don't have a pattern but they have a beauty in a harmony much like music like a song. And now I'm adding here's my punchy color it was that punchy pink I had. This one's a little bit darker I think but I'm adding the lighter value on top of that darker magenta. It's often a good idea with flowers and lots of other subject matter to put your darkest value down first because a flower the base of the flower or the shape of the flower is going to have a darker value especially down towards the bottom. And because we are have the ability to layer with pastels we convince we create more convincing flowers by putting the dark value down that's going to give it some contrast for the lighter value to rest upon like the sun's hitting it on the top so I hope that makes sense. So I'm playing with color here a little bit trying to recreate what nature does so beautifully which is that beautiful harmony like when the wind's blowing and some flowers blow one direction some blow the other I just love that. Now I realized quickly that was a little bit too light I really did like that pretty lavender color but I need to get something down a little darker first for it to make sense and not feel unrealistic. And once again notice how I'm not over detailing any of these flowers our brains have this wonderful way of putting things together you know of assuming what something is there's something called closure you put something kind of close enough together your brain figures it out so often we need less detail and not more in our artwork. And also notice too how I've flattened out things as they get towards the distance and you're not going to see as many individual flowers because of the distance because that's how things work perspective in nature. And I wanted to create a little more drama around that focal point of this tree this is what's called negative painting I used that yellowy color for some reason I just wanted that yellow little bit of turquoise in the upper sky and now I am taking the darker pastel just ever so gently adding some tree trunks you don't want them everywhere you just want enough to suggest some of the focal area of this tree and it's amazing what you can create with big old chunky pastels on a little painting so now you can see a little more closely and this is a yellowy green now you can see even better how I'm going to come in and paint negatively I find these little negative marks and what I mean by negative is you're creating the space in between things but I find the negative marks really are like the icing on the cake often when you do this with trees and between tree trunks it truly creates such a nice contrast that it becomes a beautiful focal point now I'm just really gently layering some additional grasses I'm doing a few little vertical strokes and then occasionally like I said I'll create more of a blanket stroke as it gets to the distance because the grass is flattened out but this using this little corner edge of this Terry Ludwig is kind of a neat way to create some little indications of stems and this was the painting at this particular point I decided to walk away it's always a good idea to walk away and come back but I did decide to add more detail to this painting and I was really happy with this little painting it felt joyful and carefree and now let's do some experimenting I think I'm like a scientist at heart and I love experimenting with art supplies now I'm going to be using water alcohol and the mineral spirits to compare how they behave when applying to pastels on different surfaces this particular surface is you art 400 the one I was just working on now this is just the water and I'll share my my conclusions of the results as I paint a little bit more but I just want you to notice how the water behaved on this one and as you can see water alone works quite well and now we're going to do the alcohol this is 91 percent and I think you could just get all kinds of different percentages at drugstores I don't recall exactly what the figures are but I've used a little bit of everything really whatever I pick up a drug store and all kind of works quite well all right so now I'm trying to give the same amount of liquid to each one at that initial application and then I'm adding more liquid kind of pulling down to see how it behaves with more liquid in kind of a wash format so and I'm trying to do each one similarly so that it's apples to apples comparison now one thing I noticed immediately was that the water dries more opaque it does have a bit of a smooth application okay let's move to the mineral spirits and I'll keep giving you guys my feedback with this once again same technique adding trying to add about the same amount of liquid to the top area there I don't know how I missed that footage but and then gradually adding more liquid and pulling down now I noticed both the alcohol and the mineral spirits behaved more like a wash rather than being so opaque as the one on the left as the water now I added a little bit more liquid to the mineral spirits and now going back with the alcohol on this one just to see how it behaves when I blend it with more liquid and now I'm doing the same thing with the water and again I'll give some of my own personal conclusions when I'm finished now we're moving on to a different surface this is pastel matte I love the surface I like buying the white even though it comes in colors when I want to do an underpainting that's really colorful um and it takes water so beautifully water color um any kind of wet medium and so this was a good paper to do this on once again using just the water here and it has a real smooth application with water alone and I noticed the color does behave a little differently notice that middle one the color seems to get a little darker I think it even stayed that way once it dried that was with the alcohol now here's the mineral spirits and um it has a really uh interesting wash type of effect I'm again adding a little more liquid to it now this is watercolor paper I loved seeing the differences here I really liked the alcohol and the mineral spirits better on the watercolor paper so I want you to notice the difference of color in this particular example this is just the water again and as in the other ones I think it applies a bit more smoothly and consistently um and the alcohol has more vibrancy and so does the mineral spirits when I add that one and uh can you notice here the color difference with the alcohol the color is much more vibrant than with the water and this is the mineral spirits again it's similar to the alcohol in that the color is more vibrant and it has a little bit more of a wash effect to it it has a bit of inconsistencies um some of that could do with how I applied it perhaps but I I like the alcohol and the mineral spirits better and when it comes to cost of course water is your cheapest option then the alcohol and then the mineral spirits uh this one I probably added too much liquid playing around with it at the end but I think the greatest example is really on this watercolor paper maybe I got better as I applied it but I definitely lean more towards the alcohol and mineral spirits so I hope that was helpful for you guys as I'm learning I just feel like I'm going to bring you guys along with me so if you appreciated this video I hope you will subscribe we have lots of fun here click the like button leave me a comment it really does help with my youtube uh standings and also consider becoming a patron my patreon support from my patrons with only five dollars a month is what really helps me to keep these free videos coming to people all over the world who are hungry for art instruction all right guys happy and blessed painting