 Welcome artists to this pastel painting tutorial where I will share why I love Sennelier Le Carte pastel card. Oh it's such a wonderful pastel surface. I'm so glad you've joined me here in Monet Café and here we go. This month in Monet Café we've been focusing on nocturne paintings, night paintings in other words, and this doesn't look like a night painting, right? But I will show you what I did to convert a daytime image into a painting with a night mood. My first step was converting the original image in a way I've been doing lately using some photo editing apps and I then convert this as I paint to a night scene by changing values and color temperatures. Now if you want to know a little bit more about the app that I used to do this I recently just uploaded a video. A lot of artists are very concerned about AI technology. I do think there are ways it's being used that is like plagiarism. So check out that video if you'd like to know my thoughts on how to use it and how not to use it. Now let me tell you why Sennelier Le Carte pastel card is truly one of my favorite pastel painting surfaces. There's multiple reasons and you might be surprised you know how I like to do wet under paintings. This paper is not water-friendly so you basically can create only with soft pastels on this surface. I love that it comes in so many different colors and also just so you know this is a great surface for animal paintings. Great for painting fur and feathers. And here is one of my pads. I have two different sizes that I typically purchase. This is the smaller one and I'm just gonna flip through it and show you some of the colors and also let you listen to how the surface how gritty it sounds. See if you can hear this. And even though it has quite a textural gritty feel there's something that's kind of soft about it. So I feel that landscape paintings especially with the impressionistic flair and also like I said animal paintings it really lends itself towards the softness of fur. Now this is the smaller size and it is well it's approximately 9 by 12. You could get a 9 by 12 standard size but it's 9 and a half by 12 and three-quarters. And the next size is actually 11 and three-quarters by 15 and three-quarters. And I love to buy them in these pads because of the color variety but also they sell these as individual sheets as well. Another thing I like is that the individual sheets are pretty sturdy. That's why it's called pastel card and it lays nice and flat. And since I never add any water-based mediums since it's not water-friendly that also helps it to never buckle. It's just pastel that I apply to this wonderful surface. So let's get started with this painting. This tutorial here on Monet Cafe is sped up a bit. The full real-time version is over on my Patreon page. So I've got my reference photo here. Here are the pastels that I chose. Again my patrons have access to downloadable images of my reference images and the pastels I use. But basically you can get a good glimpse of some of the colors I chose which make for a really nice moody night scene. And before I start painting I'd like to ask you a little favor. It's not big. Would you go ahead and like this video and subscribe to Monet Cafe if you haven't already. And if you'd like that extra content and real-time footage I'm always talking about consider becoming a patron of mine on my Patreon page. It's only $5 a month and it just supports this channel as well to keep these videos coming. Now first what I like to do is identify the big shapes. You can even do this by marking on your reference image if you printed it out. It kind of just gives you a basic simplified version of your composition. And then I just basically sketch it out. In this case I'm using Willow Charcoal. Now you can see my paper was actually kind of a leftover piece of Sennelier-Lecart pastel card that I had used for a previous project. I had some pencil lines on it. But not to worry. This paper layers so beautifully. You can get so many layers. I wish I had done a video one time where I actually count how many layers you can get. Keeping these shapes big and simple is crucial during this stage. Actually many of my tree shapes look more like geometric blobs. But it actually works better that way. Now we're going to block in. I've got my basic composition in. Very simple. And what I'm doing now is choosing some values. This is a really deep beautiful purple. I believe it's a Terry Ludwig pastel. And if you squint your eyes and look at the reference image I'm going to provide you a link to the reference image I originally started with which is from unsplash.com. I love that site for copyright free reference images. But my patrons have my altered version as well. So as you can see I've gotten in the two main trees that were the darker purple. Got in some of that dark for the foreground grasses. Add a little bit of that green to the distant trees to make them feel further away. Now I'm cooling them off a little bit. That was a blue earth pastel. I love that company. It's from Dakota Pastels. I know I'm converting this to a night scene but I wanted a little warmth in the sky. So I chose this pretty lavender pink and echoed a little bit of it down on the ground especially in the distance. Now I've got the basic paper covered. That's kind of the goal of the blocking in stage. Now we're going to start doing a little layering. I'm using a lighter value and even cooler color temperature to push some of those trees even further back. You see how I've now got like three levels of, well actually four, the big one in the front. I decided to darken a few to give even more feeling of depth and perspective. Often I let my painting kind of evolve itself and I use my artistic license to add things and once again I love a feeling of depth in a painting. Add more trees and now I'm cooling that sky off. Look at this beautiful periwinkle purple. I believe this is a Mount Vision pastel. Don't forget even though we've got a paper that has lots of layering capability, it is still very crucial to keep a light touch. You may be tempted to press hard. You may doubt yourself by seeing all of that surface of the paper still showing through. That's exactly how I felt when I first tried the surface but I still advise to keep a light touch. The more layers you add, the more it all starts to come together. I actually do some blending in a minute with some pipe foam insulation that will soften those spaces from showing through and give more even coverage and even though I was converting this to a night scene, I still wanted a little warmth in the ground. I imagined this as one of the early mornings that's like behind my house. I have this cow pasture behind my house and it is really foggy in the morning sometimes and sometimes you can still see the moon. This actually reminds me of the scene behind my house but you can also see a little bit of warmth to the grasses underneath, just a little bit. It's going to look a little bold right now but remember this is embrace the aspect of soft pastel, the layering capability. I'm going to be layering over these warm colors to cool them off a bit. You can see I've taken that dark magenta I used originally and layered it down even more in the foreground grasses. You see how fresh this color looks right now? Now this is a really dark green even though again it's a night scene. I wanted to give it just a little bit of feeling of either early morning light or late afternoon just when the moon comes up and you'll see how these warm tones just basically peek through by the time the painting is done. You can see I'm just developing things more and really I often use the analogy of it being like a dance or a symphony as you paint with soft pastels. For me it's so meditative and beautiful. You may not feel that way when you first get started though. Now I'm going to add some lighter values just to give the impression of those top grasses and I'm making them just kind of chunky and just resting upon the top. The perspective of this I imagine down very low like the photographer literally got down on the ground and you're seeing through the very tall grasses and all of those values are going to be darker in the foreground. So now here comes the pipe foam insulation. When you see me moving it out of the frame I'm wiping it off with a paper towel. I'm really trying not to contaminate colors. So I work colors in sections. I don't want my colors to become muddy and this can happen if you just take a blending tool and just haphazardly start blending. I also blend directionally. Notice how I'm pulling up to give the feeling of those tall grasses. Alright look at that nice soft moody feel. Now I'm creating an even deeper sense of perspective by just using value and color. I'm making those distant trees feel far away making the sky feel a little bit foggy and I also now I'm going to start deepening the values to establish a night scene. So I'm starting to add those cooler values on the tops. You see how that's already starting to feel like fog and if I had not gotten down the warm values to start the entire painting would have felt too cool and very monochromatic or even analogous and I wanted a little bit of warmth there. And now finally we're going to start adding some detail. Notice I didn't jump to the flowers right away. Also, I typically if flowers are smaller like this, I put them in later. And what I'm doing now is I decided to make my flowers purple and blue. I love those colors. And I'm just giving very gestural marks. I'm using my reference image that I altered and the actual reference photo as a guide, but not as a rulebook that I've got to follow it exactly. So I let my instinct maybe or my just feel of how I want these flowers to be reaching and I often place my flowers in a way that they look like they're an audience, you know, anticipating a sunrise or staring at the moon in these cases. Now I've just just surely gotten in some basic shapes for the flowers knowing that I can add a little bit more detail later. I'm also trying to keep them once again, like the grasses. There are some peeking on top. Keep the viewer's perspective in mind while painting. You wouldn't want to add flowers that are too light in those deep roots. So make sure you bury some of those flowers. Now I'm going to start carving in some grasses. I've chosen some greens that aren't too heavy on the warm side. And I'm literally just kind of carving carving them in down into kind of the deep places. And the same principle trying not to take the light values too far down where it wouldn't make sense in a scene like this. Now this is a beautiful little purplish blue. And I'm using it to just glaze ever so lightly over some of the trees over the grasses. And it's giving that moody feel of like I said, fog or something like that. I'm continuing to choose colors that enhance that nighttime moody feel. And as I stated earlier, I feel the cart pastel card really does lend itself towards that painterly impressionistic style. I always feel like my landscape paintings come out with a more soft and dreamy feel. And now I'm going to enhance my stars, my focal point flowers, I'm going to choose some flowers to give more detail, more color and color contrast to strengthen the composition. I don't want them all facing the same direction or in an equally spaced pattern. Keep in mind nature has this beautiful rhythmic spontaneity. And I've already sort of predetermined that I'm going to place a moon in the upper right third. So I'm envisioning these flowers kind of looking towards that. Oh, I need my glasses sometimes. I'm darkening some of the focal point flowers to give them a little more interest and contrast and still playing with some of these sky colors carving in these are called sky holes, carving in the negative spaces in some of the branches and trees. That's why I said originally, sometimes it's okay just to create the geometric shapes of trees when you block in because we can carve in the negative spaces later. I'm working in some of the cooler blue colors down this is like a pretty blue green down into some of the grasses. I know that they're going to be cooler where the deeper grasses are they're more in shadow. And I'm trying not to lighten up the foreground too much because that's really just not going to give that effect of deep grasses and those flowers buried deep. And now it's time to add the moon and stars. I've zoomed in here so you can see a little better. And what I'm going to do I'm going to create a moon that appears circular. I'm not trying to draw lines. I'm trying to draw a circular shape. I don't want real edges. I want a just a value change. And I'm giving it a little bit of warmth with some of the lavender. And now I'm just adding some stars with a lighter pastel. You'll see me brighten those up in a minute. I got one of my pan pastel blenders to kind of soften the moon a little bit. I want it barely there. I realized I needed a little bit of depth or darker values in some of the sky. And then I want to create a little bit of a light kind of coming from the moon. So I had to darken it before I lighten it. You'll see me do that in a minute. And also I later decide to make a little crescent shape. Sorry for that. Who is that old woman that just got in my frame with the gray hair? I don't even know. But I missed a little bit of footage, but you'll see at the end how I brighten the stars. And here's where I'm doing that little kind of crescent feel. Now I'm realizing that some of these grasses on top will capture a little bit of that silvery moonlight. I don't want to overdo it, but I just add a little bit of glimmer to some of those grasses that are reaching up to see that moon rise. I continued to add my more enhanced color by pressing harder. It's the final marks where you can begin to press hard. I continued to deepen some of the color and then give more of the bright highlights to the stars and the moon. By the way, I never used white. I only use kind of a light lavender. So here's the final. I think you can kind of see where I made that little crescent moon. You know, sometimes you can see that and the other side of the moon. So I enjoyed this. I hope you did too. And if you are in the Monet Café group on Facebook, Monet Café Art Group or one of my patrons, keep sharing your night paintings. It's been a fun month so far and I love seeing what you do. Find me in all of these places. Tag me if you recreate from my tutorials. Become a patron to support this channel. And as always, God bless and happy painting.