 Hello there, I'm Sandy Olnok, and today I have four drawings that I'm going to share with you today in pastel, and the point of them is not really to tell you anything about pastel because I am just learning, but I wanted to share how I'm approaching the learning and that might help you and give you some encouragement as you start to learn in whatever medium you're trying. I have called this video, be fearless and try things because that's what I've been doing. It took me like a week to get all these pieces done, and I had a good time doing it. So I started off buying a bunch of sanded papers. This one is by UART, and out of all the ones I tried out of these four, and there's lots more brands out there, this one is the least expensive out of those. And it comes in black or in a natural kind of color. You could also get trial packs, so you could try just some small pieces and see how this stuff works, and they are listed on the back with what the grit is, so you can try different grits. All of the art papers that I'm going to show you are acid free and pH neutral and all that kind of thing. This one has the widest range of grits, but the smallest range of colors. So it really depends on what you want to do. The really high grits are really good for using with pencils, if you want to use colored pencils with them, if you're looking to get fine detail. But my whole thing with these is to try to figure out if there's one brand or another that I'm going to like better. I have been watching a lot of videos and reading up on what a lot of pastel artists use for doing their art, and I found some of them like one, some of them like another, and I wanted to test and see what's the difference. And I also have realized in the practice that I've been doing of late in the last couple months is that I don't really like using all the tools. There's all kinds of brushes and things, and I bought them and I tried using them and I just haven't found, I like them as much as I like just using my fingers. But using my fingers is messy, so I use gloves. I'm doing this and I changed the gloves out when I'm doing something like this with a black background. I wanted the black background because I wanted these chicks to stand out, and I also wanted to get a real good comparison between the four papers because this is really a test to see which one of these works in different ways. And there's some of them that work better than others. And there's one of them I didn't like at all, but the other three I actually like just fine. And this one is, like I said, the least expensive, not by a lot, but it's the least expensive and it works just great. And you know, smushing the color around with your fingers just feels like being kindergarten again. I don't know how many things I'm going to try with a giant black background because that was a little challenging to figure out how to do the edges of the chicks because that was, yeah, yeah, it was just hard. Now this Claire Fontaine pastel matte card pads, now lots of pastel stuff like pastel papers, call it card, don't know why it's heavier than a card stock. So there's that. But I really liked this Claire Fontaine brand and it comes in a range of colors and different companies have different ranges and some of them have them in mixed pads, some of them you can buy in big sheets, et cetera. So you'll have to do some shopping if you want to try some of those. But I like the fact that I get a bunch of different colors. This one says you don't need fixative, which scares me. So I put fixative on mine anyway, but it is a very velvety surface. I really liked it. I really enjoyed working on this one. The experience of putting the pastel on the paper, the soft pastel, it just layered nicely. And if you know me, you know I love me some layers. If I don't get to layer things, I'm not a happy camper. And with this one, I just had a blast adding on more and more colors to it. And I was testing with each one of these how tolerant it would be. And this one was probably the most tolerant of layers. I could add pencil layers and pastel pencil layers, my pastel pencil set, all different kinds of layers you can add on and keep working it and working it and working it. I didn't find any areas really where I worked it past what the paper could handle. So that was nice. Each of the papers is made of something different, like different ones have different things they glue to the paper and the different processes for how they create the texture on it. And you can also use non-sanded papers with it. I've done that before too, and have not been as pleased with it. And you know, all these professional people told me, oh yes, I use this and such kind of pastel card. So I thought I'd try it. That's what this whole thing has led to. But here I'm using my favorite combination with yellows using my purples. So if you have been around again, that will be a combination that's very familiar to you. During sunflower week you got to see lots of purple and yellow together. This, all this video did get washed out because I had this strong black-white contrast and my camera I think didn't know what to focus on because it had that really strong black. So the pictures at the end of each section of the actual finished piece are more what it looks like in real life. And they are all going to be in my shop and I'm going to try to see if I can figure out how to ship something without messing it up. I love this little guy, isn't he cute? He just looks very, very impressed with himself. I kind of like the way he's standing. Okay, now this is the one that I didn't like so much. And I was very surprised because I like a lot of the Sennelier stuff. I love the colors in this. That was really nice. I love the weight of this. It's a very heavy paper. But I didn't like the experience on the paper itself. It feels a little grittier than the others. And all I could find that anybody could characterize it as was a medium fine grit. I don't know what medium fine is in terms of numbers because I was trying to find apples to apples to compare these and was not successful in finding that information. So I would guess this to be a much lower grit than some of the other papers that I was trying to use. However, it did like a lot of detail. Like it was fine with getting a lot of the detail in there. But the surface just doesn't feel like it should take that much. I don't I couldn't quite figure out what the deal was with this. And maybe somebody's going to come along and comment and tell me what I was doing that made it not work as well for me. But this one took me way longer to do because I just kept having to add more color to it. And every time I touched it to do any blending, it lifted off so much color I had to go back in and put more color in. And even the dark chick on the left that is supposed to have some black. When I put the black background in, I suddenly realized how much black I did not get in there because he started washing out. I mean, you can already see the contrast that I'm getting with that black background is just going to completely overwhelm any of the color that's already in there. Even though, as I said, it's it's blowing out some of the color. I had to go back in and rework all that. So if you're going to add any black backgrounds, then be a little wary of that. I realized after I probably should have just put all the black background in first on all of them. But I was kind of experimenting doing it in different orders for each one. There is an artist on Instagram. I will leave her Instagram link down in the doobly-doo. She is amazing and does fruit in pastel on black backgrounds. I mean, it's really stunning, striking stuff, you know, full of contrast, which I love, and she's self-taught. And that was something that was inspiring to me as I was doing this. I was thinking about her and it's one of the reasons I think that I opted for that black background because she just has fun doing what she's doing. Like she never really stressed out about trying to go to art school and trying to figure out how to do it right. And she talks often about how people have told her, well, you're supposed to do it this way, you're supposed to do it that way. But she's self-taught. She just started doing what was working. And that's where the title of this video came in, being fearless and trying things. Just grab something and start putting stuff together and start making. So this pastel board was experiment number four, where I was like, OK, this is an expensive thing. It's it's like 10 bucks for one of these small boards. Well, small boards, nine by 12. Fortunately, I got it at the same time that there was a closing sale at an art store. So I got a good discount on it. I also bought some really giant ones, like ginormous ones so I can do some really huge pastel drawings. But I saved this one for last since it is the most expensive. So I can get some practice done and some of the others. And I opted not to do the black background because I used the last of my black pastel, there's only a sliver of it left. So I figured I probably should maybe do something different. So this one is just going to be the chicks face blown up really big. I had a lot of fun with the beak and the surface of this one and it was just delicious. I really, really, really liked it. And it's a board, as you saw, so it doesn't require being taped down necessarily to stay in place. I put some tape underneath of it and I still put it on the board behind it just so that it will sit in the camera correctly and sit upright so that you could see it. But it was a lot of fun to work on this surface. It blended so nicely. I just really liked this a lot and was kind of bummed that it's expensive because it's not going to encourage me to play a whole lot with it. But the experience of doing it was so nice that I probably will play more. I'm trying to figure out what's going to be a really great subject to do one of these large boards with. Because I want it to be something really spectacular. But it's, yeah, different art supplies give you a different feeling when you're creating them. And the only way you're going to know whether you like that thing or not is by trying it, just giving it a shot and seeing what happens. And a lot of times I know I get questions on different art supplies. Well, you know, will this work with that thing? Will that work with this thing? And my answer is just go ahead and try it. It's just paper. Now, granted, this board is 10 bucks. So this is not one you want to necessarily experiment with. But once I had all those other chicks out of the way, I had spent time trying to learn how to blend yellows and make them work. I felt very confident jumping into this one. So, you know, don't go for the most expensive thing first. But try stuff. Don't wait for me to tell you whether or not something's going to work, because I haven't run all the experiments. There are some where I can tell you that a particular paper maybe won't accept water mediums or that something is not going to work well with an alcohol based medium. So there's some advice I can give you, but a lot of stuff you could just give it a shot. Sacrifice a half a sheet of paper. Try out the medium and see how it works. And it's also going to work differently for you and your technique than it will for me and mine. So I encourage you to be fearless and try something new. Try something crazy. Try something where if you look at that and you think if if I saw somebody try that, I would be amazed and see if you can try it and amaze yourself. This little chick just amazed me. I just think he's adorable. And I had so much fun with that nose that nose was a blast. I think I'm going to keep him. I think he's not going to go in the shop because he's adorable and I think he needs to be in a frame. So here are the chicks that I taught you on Monday. You can do the purple sandpaper from your garage like I did or the fancy you art one on the right hand side. Learn how to draw a chick, make an Easter card out of it. And I will see you again next week with more experimenting because that's what I do around here. I'll see you guys later. Take care.