 Welcome to Monet Café. I'm artist Susan Jenkins and today I'm bringing you a seascape painting tutorial. So I want you to enjoy, relax, imagine smelling the salt air and the ocean breezes on your face. Here we go. Hello artists and visitors to Monet Café. I'm artist Susan Jenkins. Today I'm bringing you a tutorial on painting a seascape. Now I've already started this but you'll see it from the beginning and I'm gonna break it down a little bit for you to give some more specified instruction on certain areas. And also we have a special guest in the studio today. It's Mr. Bob Ross. Sorry to grab you by your Afro Bob. But my husband recently bought me this. I wasn't sure if it was a joke or whatever but I love it. He is so great. He's gonna be a fun little mascot for the studio. He used to say happy painting at the end of his videos too. I didn't know that until not that long ago. So if you see him hanging out in the studio during videos just say hey Bob. So anyway enjoy this tutorial. We're gonna have fun. Let's get started. Very quickly because some of you have asked about the Monet Café products like the t-shirt I'm wearing in this video. There are clickable links underneath every video where you can click and check out the products. I have a new t-shirt called I'm an Artist. That means I'm creative, cool, passionate, and a little bit crazy. And the Monet Café apron is awesome. I have a clickable link in the description section of this video. Here we go. Here's some footage of my palette that I've been using and for this painting I've had a lot going on lately. I literally just grabbed this little I call it my working palette. It's a little box from a previous pastel set that I love the divisions in it. So I just added some foam and made it like a nice little palette just for keeping pastels for painting I'm working on but also kind of temporarily storing them. And then I usually have you know a pretty decent color arrangement if I just want to start a painting willy-nilly you know. So I already had a lot of these in here and the ones that I added for this particular painting was some of these warm tones, some of leaning more towards orange and pink, and then even into some reds and burgundies, and some of these brighter colors that I used for the sunset that's in the background. This is the lightest light that I used for that sun and it's going to be just that middle part that's so bright. And then I have some neutrals here. So basically I have blues and purples, not everything's in perfect order here, and I have greens and kind of some random greens and things here. And I've got my more of my pink type of warm tones moving more towards yellow and then to neutrals. So you know it kind of keeps things a little bit organized while I paint and I just wanted you guys to get a general idea of what I'm using. I may add a few more and believe it or not there will be a little bit of green in this. Actually there already is I added some green right down in here. We know warm colors move forward and in the reference photo can you see? Can you see something that looks maybe a little similar to some greens in here? Not a lot in a lot of other places in the painting, but but I do see that kind of in here. It's a muted more neutral green, but I think that's going to bring this water forward. It actually already has. Now getting started from the very beginning of this painting, I'm going to talk about a few products here. I'm showing the Ink Tense Blocks made by Derwent. I use those as a little underpainting. I'll talk about it as I use them, but they're awesome. I had never used it on this piece of type of pastel paper called pastel matte pastel paper. I'm going to show you the pad that I used. There it is. It comes in a pad like this various sizes. I like it because it has a lot of different colors and I need to order more. I'm almost out, but this is the charcoal or the darkest color in it and if it looks a little bit dirty it's because I repurposed it. You can literally wash the stuff off. I had a painting I had done for a demo and I just wanted to use it. I didn't really love the other painting. It was kind of an example, so I brushed off most of the pastel with a stiff brush. Then I literally washed it in my sink and let it dry. Now I was looking to who to give credit for the reference photo and I realized it's my reference photo. It's actually when my husband and I went to St. Pete Beach and oh I missed the beach. I really need to take a break and go see the ocean and just smell that salt air. But anyway I'm going to get started here. I'm going to describe a lot of my techniques. You'll get a lot of information in this Monet cafe free video that I provide all of the content on Monet cafe for free. I will have a little more footage on my Patreon page patreon.com slash Susan Jenkins. A lot of you guys have asked you know should I become a patron? Will I get more content? It is more content and I have more interaction with you guys and also I have it geared kind of fun like around school. We have story time, I have PE day, Patreon education on Fridays, you have homework over the weekend. But on that note a lot of you if you're you know just really conscious of your budget and everything you can get so much right here on Monet cafe and a lot of people support my Patreon page to get the extra content because they're really wanting to you know get better as artists. But also a lot of people bless your hearts just support this channel and it literally has helped make Monet cafe better. So God bless you patrons who have helped. There's uh it's five dollars a month. I have two levels five dollars and ten dollars a month and really the ten dollars is just because some of you wanted to give more in that suite. They both have the same content regardless of which level you pick. So anyway that's a little bit to answer some of y'all's questions and I thank every single one of you and my Monet cafe family. I will always keep providing free content here. So on that note my patrons will get a little bit more. I will speed up some of these sections for the Monet cafe channel. But let me talk a little bit about what I'm doing here. These are the Inktense Durwent Inktense pastel I'm sorry not pastel Inktense blocks they're made out of ink and again I had never used these on pastel matte paper. I'm really loving this pastel matte paper. It's not quite as gritty as you art sanded paper. I love you art too. As a matter of fact it's not really gritty at all. It's got almost like a velvety feel to it but the pastels hold to it quite nicely. So if you're not a real fan of super sanded pastel papers then this might be a really good paper for you. And if you don't know what sanded papers are at all. If you're brand new to pastels it's really just neat that pastels get more. You can get more layering effect on papers that are sanded and you art happens. It's the letter you art happens to be a really great sanded surface. But you can get a lot of great results on unsanded papers too. So that's a common question. Oh please ignore. I had no idea my hair was all over the place when I started this. I think when I started it was maybe early in the morning and sometimes we artists just want to jump up and get to our easel. Don't even look in the mirror right? So anyway you can see what I'm what I did here. This is what you would call an underpainting with local color. The word local color means oh I'm showing my I'll come back to local color. This is my new Chinese brush. I have seen these on different watercolor channels and I really love the effects because they hold a lot of water in the brush and a lot of paint. But I'm just using water now. These intense intense blocks and the pastel matte paper are water-friendly. So you literally you put your I'm just showing how I dipped it in the water and I I let a little of the water come off. This is literally the first time I was using this brush. So I realized I need a little more water. But what I was saying is both are water-friendly and I work well with water. The paper and the Derwent intense blocks. Now I will get back to the local color thing. But I noticed with this again first time I was doing this. Notice how dark this is. Well it's literally just the water on the paper making it look dark. When the paper dries you do still see some of the original color that I put down. But it's softer. It's more of a wash because of the water. Would I do the intense blocks on pastel matte that is this dark? Again probably not. You're kind of working a little a little blind. But but I did like how it made it feel like a wash. You know like a watercolor wash. You'll see when I dry it. I dry it with a blow dryer. So you're getting a lot of first time things for me from me in this video. But I was really happy with this painting. I enjoyed the process a lot. So and that's kind of what art is. It's a lot of fun and experimentation. Don't be too hard on yourself. Make sure you practice and don't try to make something so serious right away. I do lots of practice pieces. Way more practice and fun things than I do really serious pieces. But especially do that at the beginning of your art career. Now I was talking about local color. Local color means you're painting the color you see in the scene. As opposed to like a an underpainting like this is that is a complementary underpainting. It means you literally use the compliment to what's what you see on the color wheel. So I talk about that in a lot of videos. Now you can see how I'm blowing it dry. And it actually doesn't look a whole lot different than when I put the pastels. I mean the the ink tense blocks down. But uh but it did kind of wash it a little bit. So again it was an experiment but it ended up you know working out well anyway. Now you can also do the same thing with under paintings with pastels. You can do it with watercolor. As long as you're using a water friendly paper to begin with you can use watercolor for an underpainting pastels. And literally you can wet the pastels after you do it just like these intense blocks. You can use water. You can use alcohol. I have so many videos talking about the different varieties and techniques that you can use. All right now I'm actually beginning painting. This what I'm doing right now is I'm kind of just solidifying my composition a little bit. I didn't notice I didn't really do any drawing or anything. I literally just used the sides of the Derwent ink tense blocks to kind of block in the shapes of things. And now I'm getting a little bit more specific as to where things are. What I'm doing I'm making some little notes to myself. I'm not going to do a super specific drawing but I'm looking at the waves and using this little the pastel I have here is called a new pastel in you pastel made by Prismacolor. I love these. They're great. They're not the softies that always get so much fanfare and attention. But they are really, I use them a lot for sketching even for blending later in the painting. So the new pastels are really great harder pastels. That's why they're good for sketching. They're a little bit harder. Still consider it a soft pastel but they're a little bit harder than you know a lot of the other soft pastel varieties. And again these are my my sketching notes and once I get these in then I'm kind of start painting. So I'm going to speed up the section just a little bit but I'm going to keep talking to you guys and still getting in some sketches. I think I do, I did speed up the section where I add a little bit of a pretty like purple violet down here at the bottom right now. That actually really gives that neat a feeling of wet sand. And I really want to get my values right in this so you see me using a little value scale here that I'll talk about in a minute. And now I'm going to slow it down a little bit again. But anyway I have the reference photo available where you guys can see it on the iPad right here. But just so you know that's another thing that often I have available on the Patreon pages. A lot of times in these videos here on Linnecafe I'll I'll put the reference photo up where you can see it but you can see it pretty good here next to me. But again my Patreon page I often provide the reference photo for my patrons to to be able to use and to reference while they're painting if they try to recreate this painting. We also on the Patreon page have a homework album where my patrons turn in their assignments and there's a monthly drawing and a prize a gift card for some art supplies for whoever wins the drawing and your chances are better the more homework you do and lessons you submit. But every patron also has a chance to win. I have two drawings each month and patrons who don't even do any painting at all have a chance to win as well. So anyway that's another fun thing that we do. Now I'm getting in values right now. You saw me a minute ago just using my little value finder. I don't often use it after your painting a while. You don't need to refer to it as much. But sometimes in a painting like this I just want to be accurate. It's going to be really well I was going to say really all about value with this painting but it's really all about value with every painting. Value is just the difference between lights and darks and I'm going to talk about that again in a second. But right now when I share with you I discovered that this little chamois cloth you know that you dry your cars or whatever. I just bought a big sheet of it at the dollar store. It works great on pastel matte and because I want this certain things in this painting to look soft especially the sand that is kind of that thin I should say the water and the sand. That little thin layer of water that comes over the sand when the waves come forward and then recede. I love that and it really just has this flat very glistening look to it. So I thought that chamois cloth using it to blend in certain areas would be nice. So anyway I'm still working on value. Again back to value being so important. I knew I didn't have that sand dark enough in the foreground. So again using the chamois cloth I don't like to over blend but if I can get the effect that I want through blending I like to go ahead and get that done early on and then layer on top of that. And just so you know I have a really in-depth video tutorial on value. I think it's like the featured video once you're a subscriber. I think it's at the top of the page. Now I'm getting in those lights. You know I've been focusing on some of the darker values. Now I want to create the lightest value. So I have a range. I kind of know where I'm at when I get my darks and my lights in. And you're also going to see me. I've sped this up just a little bit okay. So you can still see what I'm doing. But I'm making those notes at not notes those marks at the bottom with the pastel so you can kind of get an idea of the colors and the values that I'm using. I think that helps you guys when you can kind of see more about my color choices. And once again please ignore this crazy hair. I actually I think I remember now why it was crazy. I've been running on the treadmill for two miles each day since the gyms are closed. And I'm actually working out more now than I did when the gyms were open. I guess I just feel like I need to get out there and do something. So sometimes when I'm painting I have really literally just finished that and I don't even think to go and fix my hair. So sorry for that. So now I'm going to zoom in a little bit more here and talk a little bit more about this. Now I want to let you know this is the end of the slower content for Monet Café. My patrons are going to get more voice commentary and but from here forward on the Monet Café channel I'm going to speed it up just a bit and give you guys some music to listen to. But I hope you've gotten a lot of good commentary already and that you will try this you know. And also too if you haven't become a member of the Facebook group for Monet Café it's Monet Café Art Group on Facebook. You can get so many artists helping you out. It's a great community. There are artists of every level and you know I'm I'm not even commenting that much anymore because there's so many other artists on there that are helping each other out. And because I'm spending more time with my patrons on my Patreon page but that's another great free resource for you guys. So Monet Café I love this YouTube channel. I love you guys. If you're brand new hang in there it all gets better the more you practice. So whether you are Monet Café subscriber or my patron keep watching. And please like this video and subscribe to this channel. I always forget to say that. Feel free to leave a comment. I love it when you leave comments. I love to try to answer your questions. And also stay tuned to the end of the video. That helps my YouTube ranking and also you learn a lot by watching to the end. All right guys enjoy this to some nice music and do stay tuned. I have a neat invention I'm going to share with you. Oh I wanted to show you guys this little invention I made. I literally took a new pastel and I taped it to the end of a long handle paintbrush. I was talking there but I decided to do a voiceover and I'm showing there how sometimes I can't see that good when I'm up so close. So I love how when you have a long handle paintbrush you can literally get back from the painting and you can get more gestural strokes because your grip is looser. It's not so tight up on the pastel. I hope that makes sense there. It just has a nice gestural loose artistic feel. So hey you might want to try it. I really liked it. I'll definitely do that again. Of course you can't do that with all of your pastels but especially the big chunky Terry Ludwig. So I thought I'd show you guys my little invention. And here I think it was the beginning of a new day. So I'm coming in with my cup of coffee getting ready to start painting. And I actually was showing my little Monet Cafe Earth Colors bracelet. I know some of you guys have gotten them. I love it. I literally am not just sharing this just to sell bracelets. I love smelling essential oils while I paint. And when you have it right there on your hand the little lava rocks on this bracelet. The little rocks look like pastels. They literally just smell so good when you apply the essential oils. So anyway I'm just sharing that. I always have a clickable link in the description section of each video to be able to buy the bracelets. So anyway these are so cool. I love them. The Earth Colors. There's the Artist Series as well but these are the Earth Colors bracelets. I hope you guys enjoyed that and learned something. Both Monet Cafe, Art Family and my Patreon family. It always blesses me to think I may be helping someone with their own artistic aspirations and goals. So happy painting everyone.