 Welcome to Monet Café, artistic friends and visitors. I'm happy to bring you another step-by-step video tutorial and if you haven't subscribed yet I hope you will to keep more of these videos coming your way. In today's lesson I will teach you how to create a watercolor underpainting with pastel. It's an effective and easy way to give loose beginnings to your pastel artwork. Because I am often asked about the music in my videos I thought I'd share. The song I'll be playing towards the end of the video is Moonlight Sonata by Beethoven. How appropriate, right? The reference image is one of my own, literally from my backyard cow pasture that's right outside of my studio window. I guess this lesson could also be about punching up color like I often do and I decided also to give this a moonlight scene. There will be a lot of real time in the watercolor portion of this especially but I wanted to share that I did a quick preliminary painting on some unsanded Canson Me Tense paper. I used the textured side, the other side's a little bit more smooth but I did kind of on purpose. I don't know I wanted to just play with the texture and this is always a good idea to work out composition issues and choose your color palette. So that was a good beginning to get started. Now let's talk about supplies. I am so excited that Amazon has awarded me the privilege because of the success of Monet Cafe to have my own Amazon store so I'll talk about that in a minute but the supplies you will see me using in this painting coming up are pastel matte, pastel paper, willow charcoal, watercolor and pastels and I'll talk about other alternatives that you can use in case you don't have these products. Now I'll show you the products and then I will be showing you how you can conveniently find all of them in my Amazon store. First is the pastel matte surface. I love this stuff. I'm using white. It's made by Claire Fontaine. While I like the other colored papers by pastel matte, I really like the white for these purposes doing a watercolor underpainting. I also like how they have little sheets of glassine in between each page if you want to use that to protect your work when you're done. Now the watercolors I'll be using is the 36 set by Arteza. Arteza's been so great to give me products to try out and share in my videos and I have come to love this little 36 set. It came with a watercolor chart for you to actually put your watercolors down on this paper. It's very important to do this even if you don't get a chart with whatever set you get because they look so much brighter than they do in the dried form. Now I couldn't find the 36 set on Amazon. You may be able to find it directly from Arteza but I do have some other Arteza products and other watercolor sets available on my Amazon store. The pastels I'll be using is a variety. I have a lot of Terry Ludwigs. I will be talking about them quite a bit while I paint. Now this will have two versions like my other step-by-step paintings. I will have lots of information for you guys here in Monet Café. That was the Terry Ludwig darks you just saw there. But my patrons will get a full lesson, a little bit more real-time, a little bit more instruction but don't worry you guys are getting a lot too. And my patrons from my Patreon page also will get this color chart along with a printable or saveable reference image. All right now let me talk about my Amazon store. I'm so excited. It's called an Amazon influencer when they grant you the privilege to be able to have an Amazon store which was only possible because of you guys. I will have a link in the about section of this video and it's so conveniently organized showing all of the products that I use and ones that I recommend. I think you guys should check it out. And now let's move on to step two which is the sketch. Now here's my setup. I have my pastel mat in the center, my pastel selections on the left, and my watercolor chart with the examples on the right. Here is the Willow Charcoal. Also you can find this in my Amazon shop. I think it's under pastels and painting supplies. Maybe that's the one. But this section is going to be really short because there's not much of a sketch to this. Really it's just getting the horizon line in, a few of the tree shapes. In my practice painting I drew in some of the cloud shapes before but I realized they're just such big shapes I thought I would block them in. Now let's get started with this watercolor. You can of course use whatever watercolors you have but I'm going to be showing you my color selections from the color chart from the Arteza set. Now I know it's going to be a dark moody moonlight scene so I'm going with the blue violet and perhaps a little bit of the indigo. Maybe those three colors combine I use. I'm also going to be using some of those more turquoise colors and I'm going to try to lift up my palette so you can see my selections. And here's what I was mentioning about the colors in the set. Look how much darker they look than they do on the paper where they're applied. So once again it's a good idea to make one of these color charts to work from as you're painting. This was early morning when I got started. Actually I got up much earlier to get everything set up and this is the view. This is the cow pasture out from my studio window and I get the most glorious sunrises and actually moonlight scenes as well that I just thank the Lord for him blessing me with this little cow pasture outside my window. I love my art bin paintbrush box. This is so great for the studio or when you just have to grab some brushes on the go. Some of my favorite watercolor brushes are by the Princeton Art and Brush Company. I like the round brushes in different sizes and also these products are also in my Amazon store and I want to share that regardless of whether or not you buy them from Amazon or in my store it's a nice way for you guys to see the products that I'm using. I think I put this box under pastels and painting tools something like that and for a cheaper alternative I have used just these brushes from Walmart for years. I like their flat brushes they have they also have round brushes and for these purposes you don't have to go out and spend an arm and a leg on brushes. These little cheap brushes will work. Now I like to use the largest brush possible when I'm doing things like this. Of course you'll need some water you don't have to have it in a ball mason jar and some paper towels. I use these to control the amount of water that's on my brush. I also want to let some of you know that if you don't have pastel matte paper you can use watercolor paper to do this for the watercolor portion at first and then you can apply clear liquid gesso to give it a little texture pastel surface. It works great. All those products are also on my Amazon store and you know this is Monet Café so I like to get up early and paint. Anyway so a cup of coffee it's just perfect right Monet Café art with friends. Alright I'm going to talk a little bit about this surface my painting color choices and a lot and that's going to be the main focus of this particular Monet Café step-by-step tutorial and once again I'm using those darker purpley blues that I showed you before. I'm kind of combining the two colors and once again I'm using the largest brush I actually could have gone larger. I do have some flat brushes larger than these but but this worked. Now notice my strokes. The purpose of an underpainting I like to talk about is you're kind of creating a roadmap, a value study, and some energy and it should be loose and free and these strokes should be directional and that's one of the things that I wanted to focus on. These clouds they look like they're just reaching up and out like they're back behind those distant trees on the left and they're reaching out and coming up so I wanted to accentuate that and the second part of this video where I'll have more commentary for my patrons on my Patreon page I had one of my patrons specifically asking about focal point and I was like oh you know what I was really working on a good focal point with this painting so patrons if you're watching this now you'll have your separate video with more content in my on the Patreon page and if you don't know what the Patreon page is guys that's patreon.com slash Susan Jenkins for $5 a month you're supporting this channel and you're also getting extra content we're having a lot of fun I love my patrons. I want to talk a little bit about watercolor painting in general as I'm painting but as I'm working notice these I got a darker I got that more of an indigo color I think it was called notice how much darker that is but learning to control the water is one of the skills that I have found that I needed to learn when I was starting watercolor I think when I was starting early on I wasn't happy because I wasn't using enough water now if you use too much water you're just gonna get your paper really really saturated so that's why I keep that little paper towel there and I would say if you're not used to doing a lot of watercolor painting do a lot of little practice paintings but mostly have fun with an under painting the goal is to keep it loose and free so don't get all tight and fussy but again with watercolor painting your the water is your friend so try not to get your paint so thick with the initial applications now can you already see how I'm blocking things in notice this color it has a little bit of a different hue to it and I'm gradually going to add some of those turquoise is after this but notice the reference image the darker values and I'm gonna talk more about value when I get to the pastel part the darker values are on the left side and also they're in the clouds that are kind of above where I'm gonna put that moon because the moon is far away and there's still a shadow side to some of those clouds closer to us more in the foreground parts of the sky so that's kind of why I'm blocking out those areas to be a little bit darker now let's move on to some of these more turquoise colors now on in the scheme of color and color temperature turquoise colors would be considered a warmer blue okay they're getting a little bit more towards the yellow side of the color wheel and wherever you have a light source I mean I know this is the moon but there still could be a bit more warmth around it so I'm putting more of those turquoise colors in that area and incorporating it you see throughout and I know I'm exaggerating color here but that's the fun part about painting and this is the underpainting it's going to have an influence on your final painting I did have a video I did about three or four videos back where I tried to answer the question as to why would you do an underpainting that's one of the most popular questions that I get with regards to under paintings why you cover it all up anyway well first of all I try not to cover it all up but it really does influence the final painting with the color effects that it has underneath the pastel all right so you can see that I am exaggerating color but I'm trying to keep values a bit correct here okay so that too is adding to the underpainting advantages of having a roadmap it really helps when you're done with the watercolor under painting that you're like okay I kind of have a little bit of direction now for the darkest thing in the scene which is the trees especially the foreground trees I'm using this new pastel it's a number 305p I do have some new pastels in my Amazon store under pastel pastels and painting products and I decided I didn't need to blow dry this so that my pastel would be applied to a dry surface but I think I only have the 96 Prismacolor set in my Amazon shop but you can find new pastels on dickblick.com and I like to buy this pastel in particular called spruce blue because it is such a nice dark and harder pastels are really good to you that's what Prismacolor new pastels are there they're a harder soft pastel that makes sense they're still considered soft pastels but they're really great for initial applications I kind of use it to kind of sketch things into they don't take up as much tooth as a Sennelier pastels or Terry Ludwig pastels and now I'm just going to paint these trees with water I'm going to use this smaller brush here pastels literally are kind of the same as watercolor they just have a different binder you may have seen my video that I did a little a few videos back where I did an alcohol wash using alcohol instead of water with a pastel under painting so you're literally painting with pastels so you see how this is working and it does kind of darken it up and it it allows you to I love the painting aspect of this because I can keep very loose and impressionistic strokes once again controlling the water so it's not too drippy and just having some fun here and this is why I didn't worry so much at the beginning about the sketch you know you can just get in very general shapes don't get all too fussy about it because you really develop it as you go and I find that whether you're painting you're under painting with watercolor or using pastels and then applying water or alcohol the painting aspect really does help to have those loose beginnings now let's move on to this field and some of the colors that I'll be using it is like nighttime or it it really wasn't nighttime in my reference image but it was almost nighttime so I'm using these darker tones I know that there was green even though what you're seeing in the reference photo looks so dark I could see an influence of green so I'm trying to stay more towards those foresty color greens and the foreground in my image was just kind of blah and boring so I wanted to create a little bit more interest almost like there were some rows like a plow had been through the field so these are just energetic marks I go back and correct them a little bit prospectively later but sometimes you just got to get that energy going now this is also adding to the focal point now what do you think the focal point of this painting would be well of course it's going to be that moon you can see the highest level of contrast in the reference image is the moon and the clouds around it so wherever there's the highest contrast is usually it's a strategy for focal point by the way I have a focal point video five ways to create a focal point that I'll try to put a clickable link up here where you can click that or check it out when you're done looking at this watching this video now if I was to add just the greens I was mentioning before to this field it would be very segmented from the rest of the painting color in life in creation is all influenced upon each other the field is going to be darker especially behind those foreground trees on the left there's going to be more shadows there now I lightened it up a bit for the distant fields they're going to be a little lighter for a couple of reasons one is that they're further away we know value gets lighter in the distance gets darker in the foreground we also know we've got a light source back there our moon is going to be shining so it will influence the background field that's closer to the moon it will also influence some of the clouds around it and some of the trees underneath it and as you can see here I'm doing big energetic strokes this is something that is supposed to get you feeling artistic and inspired and create some movement in your painting often we get so stiff and static and that's another one that's one of the most popular questions I get or comments I get is people's like I'm trying to get more impressionism or energy or life in my paintings so that's definitely a way to do it is by doing these loose and carefree and energetic gestural under paintings now notice I added some dark there in the foreground once again values are a little darker in the foreground I know that I'm going to go further with this when I do the pastel application but once again I know this is a roadmap it's kind of giving me a value map and a little direction as to where I'm going to be headed and now that I've got those cooler purply values kind of reflecting the sky onto the field now I can add some of the influences of green and I'm going with a little bit again of the foresty greens not really yellowy greens as much here and I could have left this just using the blues teals and purples and that dark new pastel I added for the tree line but you know I was like I'm having fun with the watercolor I've really come to love watercolor painting oh I was so frustrated with it when I first started I think I started playing with it because I had seen a few other pastel artists use watercolor under paintings and I probably did the same typical things that everybody does is just be too fastidious and serious about it and not letting the water do the work but all this comes together guys also too I like to clean things off I actually have part of my thing is stained there I think from some acrylic ink I used it's a good idea to go ahead and kind of kind of clean it up a little bit for the next time all right blow drying it again and getting ready for the pastels let me make another quick little positive about using the watercolor watercolor takes up no tooth of this pastel matte if you've been working with pastels long we do a lot of layering and it can take up the tooth of the paper so watercolor you haven't taken up any of the tooth of the paper all right now I'm going to put up my reference image here so that I can talk a little bit about value a very handy tool as a beginner artist or any artist is a gray scale and value finder let me talk a little bit about how it works it is kind of unusual it's 10 stages of black to white now black is number one I would have thought it would have been white number one okay but white is number 10 and have you ever heard the term high key painting well these are the higher numbers they're the lighter values so that's a high key painting to have higher lighter values also this gray scale finder has amazing amounts of information on the back so it's really really a great tool another great tool for the beginner artist is a pocket color wheel I'm always going crazy about how awesome this is it has such a wealth of information right on this color wheel and you can learn about color schemes and strategies to create your color palette and also to these two products are on my Amazon store you guys are going to get worn out with that but I do have that under I think it's studio tools something like that all right now let's look at this you see how those little things are carved out like keys okay like I said high key painting low key painting it's like little keyholes it's so that you can see and compare the values in your painting once again I'm veering a little bit from the photo and brightening things up a bit even in the field but you can see here that the field is kind of more that darker but I'm going to go a little bit maybe more towards like seven or eight and the sky is definitely lighter even though those clouds are pretty dark on the upper left side it's more like I don't I think it's more of like a seven in between six and a seven in some areas and then as you get closer to the source of light notice how it gets lighter it does get a little darker I'm showing certain areas but it does get a little darker in some of those foreground clouds that I didn't really show that so look how light it gets around the light source all right and the lightest light is going to be where I'm going to put the moon is kind of right about there so it really is a handy tool now I'm going to talk real quick about an illusion I just put this on my patreon page as a little trivia I'm doing like trivia Tuesdays look at the two values of the square a and square b which one would you say is darker which one would you say is lighter hmm it looks like a is darker and b is lighter it's in the white square right well in this little illusion if you look at what this actually is and take everything else away guess what they're the same value this is what I talk about all the time value is relative and this little illusion really demonstrates that well all right let's go on to step four which is pastels along with the pastels I'll be using something to blend with sometimes I'll use a little shami cloth sometimes I use some pipe foam insulation I thought I'd show you I keep my little shami cloth squares that I cut the dirty ones in a little delicate slanty bag and I can just wash them instead of all the little squares here are my pastels that I've already marked out on my color chart next to where I'm working this makes it very convenient for grabbing colors now I'm working with my darkest dark right now I think this might be the terry load wig eggplant it might be in a purple that's a little bit lighter actually and vertical things like trees in the foreground values are darker in the foreground are usually one of the darkest things in your scene now this is going to be kind of a night scene anyway so a lot of the trees are going to have some dark I'm going to lighten them up a bit I'm using a real light touch for the trees that are a bit further away because values get lighter in the distance and once again things are closer to the moon the light source so I'm going to lighten those up and give them a little bit of a cooler more teal color to some of the distant distant trees in the background now I'm going back and getting in I want to remember my energetic strokes I'm just I wanted the hill to feel a little bit like it was rolling rather than just a flat hill that would have been boring once again later I step back and notice that I want to get my perspective right now if you've been a subscriber for long you know I love to cover all kinds of various topics I love pastel painting but like I said I love watercolor but I love to give sometimes things that are going to help you just be a better artist even if it's something like drawing skills so I have a video on painting roads and perspective sometimes I'm doing these videos because I'm trying to get better at it and you guys just get to come along for the learning journey but I really liked that video on getting perspective right now the reason I mentioned roads is these lines in the field are very similar to how perspective would work so watch me later probably patrons I'll still be talking to you guys but Monet cafe I am going to speed this up in a minute I'm already about 20 plus minutes into this video so I don't want it to be so long for upload time and keeping your interest so you'll be able to watch the rest of this sped up notice all the real time you've seen here but notice when I get to the part where I kind of correct these lines in the field all right so I'm going to use the pipe foam insulation for blending and I'm just kind of blending and getting tree shapes in and sometimes I use this almost like a paintbrush if I have the dark color on the pipe foam insulation oh I need to talk about what pipe foam insulation is I go ahead and use it like I am now in the darker areas areas where I know like the foreground is going to be a little darker notice the directional strokes creating energy again let me talk about this pipe foam insulation it's literally the stuff you can buy at the hardware store that insulates your pipes and colder climates and you can buy some of it really cheap and just cut off a little piece this works great like I said the chamois cloth works good even paper towels works good you know you can blend with paper towels all right now I'm going to get in some of these blues but right now Monet cafe I'm going to speed the video up for you guys you can watch the rest two moonlight sonata and if you haven't subscribed I hope you will subscribe check out my amazon shop or amazon store in the about section of this video also I will have while it's still available I will have this original painting available in my Etsy shop and also prints and other products you can find all my stuff from my website too all right guys enjoy Monet cafe the sounds of Beethoven to my painting and I will be back at the end so don't go away well this was a really fun painting I loved exploring with the colors and getting a little bit fun and having some energy and the focal point of that moon so I hope you guys enjoyed this I know I enjoy every time I get to be with you guys in these lessons even though we're not together physically I feel such a connection with you guys especially when you comment and tell me a little about yourselves I just love that so check out the new amazon store I'm so excited about that and subscribe if you haven't become a patron if you'd like to but most of all keep coming back learning and growing in art together is better all right guys happy and blessed painting