 Welcome to Monet Café. Join me in this pastel painting tutorial where I will paint a beautiful owl in a night scene and give you many tips and techniques for painting feathers and more. The reference image is from unsplash.com, a beautiful photo from photographer Jesse Cason. Now I put the photo into Photoshop and had a little fun creating a little bit of whimsy. I added some stars, made it a night scene. And by the way, the butterflies were fun, but I don't include them in the final painting. And if you're a patron of mine on my Patreon page, you will get this image as well in the Patreon post. Here is my basic setup and let's talk about these products that I use for this painting. Here I am in my Amazon shop, which is a great place for you to find many of the products that I use in my lessons. I categorize things and very easy to find. They're called idea lists. Right now you're seeing everything. I also have product review videos, but if you click idea lists, one of the categories that I recommend for beginner pastel artists is this one that says beginner basics for pastel artists. And in it I have the products that I'm using in this lesson. Well, not all of them, but I'm using pan pastels. Now this is their 20 set. This would be considered like a starter set for pan pastels. And this is the pure color set. I just found and added to my Amazon shop their 20 landscape color set, which has some really nice colors. The great thing about pan pastels is you can mix them. And also I am using these soft tools. These are the little applicators that you can get to apply the pan pastels with. They work great. It feels very much like you're painting with a paintbrush, which is really, really neat. Now the surface that I'll be using is pastel matte. I believe I have it in this. Yes, it's made by Clear Fontaine. And pastel matte is such a wonderful surface for pastel painting. If you've been painting much with soft pastels, you may have heard that the professional sanded surfaces are the way to go because you can get so many layers, which is true. What's interesting about pastel matte though is it's not really sanded and yet you can still get lots of layers. This was my first time using pan pastels with pastel matte and I got to say I loved it. I'll definitely do it again. I'll talk more about the products as I'm painting, but the color that I used is the dark blue and that one right there. And the pad that I have is one larger than the one that you see here. This one's 24 by 30 centimeters. The one that I used is 30 by 40 centimeters. And you can find all these products on other art retail sites, but this is just an easy way for you to find things. I created a basic sketch using a white charcoal pencil and I painted it freehand, but I did want to make sure I got the accuracy for the owl and the feathers. And before we get started, I'd love to ask that if you've been enjoying this channel and the hundreds of free lessons, please like this video, subscribe to this channel, and you can hit that bell icon to be notified of future videos. And a big shout out to all of my subscribers who helped Monet Café hit the 80,000 subscriber mark. Thank you guys. Also, if you'd like to get access to the full version of this tutorial, including extra commentary, it's over on my Patreon page. My Patreon family is a wonderful place to grow, learn more about pastel painting, and to support Monet Café so I can keep these free lessons coming to hungry artists all over the world. And here's this lesson's subscriber spotlight. It's Ed Olson. He says, I'm 77, and I have taken everything from math to lit in college, and your video, Susan, was one of the most informative I've ever seen. Thank you so much, Ed. That blesses me more than you know. I'm showing you my basic setup here, but I want to just make it known that you do not have to have pan pastels to create this painting tutorial. Just use what you have, matching colors and values as best as you can. You can even follow my tutorials with different mediums. But I did love how Pan Pastels has these palette trays, and I can literally put the little round compacts into the palette tray while it's attached to my board. And it's a great way for you to be able to see the colors that I'm using, and it's a really neat and convenient way for me to just use them. Like literally, like I'm painting with a paintbrush by using the applicators. So this surface, again, is the pastel matte. It's the, I think it's called Midnight Blue, and it's such a great surface for layering soft pastels. And the pan pastels, one beautiful thing about them is they get these nice soft effects for backgrounds and feathers. So I just have my surface taped to my board with some black artist tape. Also, the board that I have it on is a DIY, do-it-yourself board. I have a video on how I made it. I used to use black foam core board, and I got tired of the expense. So this board is nice and hard. And it's actually a chalkboard, like sticky thing that you can put on a board. So that's, oh, and I've got my, all of my pan pastel applicator applicators back here with the clean tips. You can reuse them a lot, but when they get really worn out, you really should put a new tip on it to keep it fresh. And all my other applicators back here. So that should be great. I might add some pastel pencils to this towards the end, perhaps with some linear strokes. So I'm just going to have fun. I hope you guys learn a lot and let's get started. At this point in the video is where I will have on my Patreon version of this lesson, a much slower version, more commentary. And I show many of the colors and include all of my color notes for the painting. Now I'm using the pan pastels with this little applicator to get in the basic form of the tree. A lot of this was from imagination because I kind of invented the image myself other than the owl. And in hindsight, I should have used the large, it's like a sponge applicator for pan pastels. This portion of the painting, I don't know what I was thinking. It took me so much longer by using these little tools, but I was really just trying to shape this tree and kind of conceptually work it out. But if you are using pan pastels, I suggest you use the large round applicator or it's oval shaped. You'll see me using it when I get to the sky. It applies things much more quickly. And also, if you're using regular stick pastels, you know, you can just lay them on their side and do what's called blocking in. Like I said, that's what I now would do in the future for large areas like this is just use that larger applicator because this little one just took me forever. The great thing about pan pastels is they have the numbers right on the back so I can share which exact colors I'm using. That's not the same with regular pastels. They don't have the number like imprinted on them. And like I said at the beginning, the butterflies was a neat idea, I thought. But because I was making it a night painting, I think the butterflies would be more for a day painting. So I decided just to make it a starry sky with some fireflies. And they kind of all meld into each other, the stars and the fireflies. And I really did, I enjoyed painting this. It was very relaxing. This style is a bit of a departure for me. I love impressionism. And I would say it's still impressionistic, but it's a bit more whimsical and mysterious. And I do give more detail than I normally do. I'll pay no attention to that old lady's face there. I don't know who she is, but she jumped into my painting somehow. Just kidding. So I also just used, you saw me use a paintbrush. You can brush and soften things up with soft pastel by just using a paintbrush. I loved this pretty turquoise color. I think this one is phthalo blue. And I just love it. And again, I love the fact that we can mix and blend pan pastels. And you can with regular stick pastels as well. You just layer one color on top of another. But I do love how with pan pastels, I can put two colors on my applicator and kind of mix them right there on the surface. Like I said, I'm still in the blocking end stage, but you can see I'm combining some colors and I'm using some purples. A little bit more in the upper portion of the sky and kind of carving it into the tree area. Yay, I'm finally using this round sponge applicator or oval shaped and it blends so well. And that's when I had my aha moment. Why was I not using this to begin with? I could have created this background so much faster. Okay, now I'm back to the applicator and I'm just still working this composition. Again, I didn't have a lot to go on in the background, but I decided to create a main tree. That's my tree on the left there. I'm going to be adding some regular pastels soon, you'll see. And I'm going to really work on getting those values a little bit more contrast, a little more richness to it. But I have the main foreground tree on the left there. Then I have a mass of trees behind the owl. Here we go with the stick pastels. I used a combination of some purples, the dark Terry Ludwig color. It's called Eggplant and these other blues and purples. So here's where I am just darkening some things. It sounds crazy to say I'm darkening them so that I can lighten them. But the reason for that is it's going to create that contrast. And then you'll later see me go in and add other colors on top like now I'm adding some greens on top. But what it does is it creates these layers of values and colors. And that's what's going to give your painting form and that feeling of three-dimension so it doesn't feel flat. I always say it's so neat. We're creating an illusion. We're creating a three-dimensional feeling on a two-dimensional plane. So now I just added more dark in the foreground. And the reason is a good concept for a painting is to almost have any lips. You know, a little area of darker values kind of framing it in almost as an oval or a circle. Now here's my strategy for the stars. I got one of these applicators of the Pan Pastels. It's almost like an eye makeup applicator. They have some with long handles and some with short ones. But what I do is I put down my darker value first, like there, and then I go in and add a lighter value to the centers of the stars. Here's where I'm adding a little feeling of some wispy clouds. Look how beautifully these Pan Pastels blend. I literally just put a little bit of light on the Pan Pastel and it created that feeling of just this almost see-through wispy clouds. Now this is the Terry Ludwig Eggplant color. Pardon my crazy hair. I sometimes forget to really pull it back. And the eyes look very flat right now, you can see, but you're going to see them really take form as I add some highlights in the eyes. Now I'm using these tools and really the tools are very affordable. But just by the pack that has all of the different applicator tips, because you'll find that some of them work better for a particular subject matter, I found that for some of the feathers, you'll see later on the top of his head, I use the applicator that has the almost like a rounded top to it. And then for some of the feathers, I use the triangular shaped one that has more of a pointy tip to it. So it's kind of like you just play around with them, see what makes the best marks for your subject matter. And you can see I'm creating the face rather dark. It's always a good idea at the beginning of a painting to consider your light source. Where's your light coming from? And I didn't have any clear light source with this because I invented the background, but I imagined it as being kind of behind him. Like it's the sky is brighter behind him. And so that's why I'm keeping him a little darker than the owl in the reference image. And I want to focus a lot in this lesson and in the description of this video. You'll see my tips for creating feathers. And the good news is it's not a lot different than some of the other techniques for painting subject matter. We're going to work dark to light, layering your deepest darkest values first and then layering your lighter values on top. So the way I like to think of it, I'll get back to that thought. Notice while I'm painting this, the owl has almost like a heart around his face. It like frames it out with a little bit of a darker rim. So that is kind of something neat to keep in mind when painting this type of barn owl. But we're layering dark to light. Think of it as laying a foundation where your shadowy areas are underneath. And then the feathers as they gradually layer on top until you finally get to the final top layer, they're going to lighten up. In other words, the feathers underneath of course are going to be darker. They're going to be more in shadow. So we're creating the foundation first with our darkest values and we're layering. Think of it as building a building on top. And now you can see I'm using that little pointy one and I'm layering on top of that kind of purple gray that I had put down. Let me slow this up a bit. So you can see that it's beginning to take form and have a sense of depth because I put my darker layers down first. And as I layer the lighter feathers on top, you really get a feeling of depth and dimension. And you're going to see me doing that throughout this painting for the remaining feathers on the body. It's the same strategy of dark to light. And now I'm going to slow it down a little bit more again so that I can show you adding that little highlight in the eye. And instantly the eye feels spherical. I'm just using kind of that gray purple. I think I'm mixing a purple with another color and all of a sudden those eyes feel like they have depth and form to them. I'm using the Terry Ludwig Eggplant color. I think the color is V100 to create some depth behind his beak and his nose. His nose felt a little flat before and our noses and animals noses kind of come out from the face. So we're going to have that little shadow kind of underneath the nose. Now here's where I'm using that applicator I mentioned with the rounded tip. And it was great for his feathers on top of his head. And you can see once again, working light to dark. Now I did have a feeling of some backlighting, meaning the lights behind him. So that's why some of the outer feathers, almost like the halo around him, are going to be lighter. But you can see right here how because I laid down the darker orange first and then I gradually layer the other colors on top. It really gives that illusion of feathers. I added a little purple halo around the face as well, that little heart area to frame it out. And this was so fun. I haven't done, I never done feathers with pan pastels before. So that was interesting. And I love painting birds, but I've painted just a few owls. So I was really enjoying this. Now I add a little bit more of this pretty neutral blue. This is just where I have fun with color. I get that question a lot is how did you know to add that color when you didn't see it in the reference image? And it's really just a couple of simple rules. If you get the value right, the color doesn't have to be exact. As long as it's the correct lightness or darkness of a color and then just keep color temperature in mind as well. Now here is where I'm going to add some pastel pencils. Another thing that I don't do often, but I wanted to really get in that feeling of his feathers and I thought these pencils would work great. You can see I'm still getting quite a bit of layering. This pastel matte surface is great for that. Another thing that's great is pan pastels don't take up a lot of tooth of the paper. So you still have a lot of layering ability once you lay down your background with pan pastels. This is definitely more detailed than I normally work, but it was fun. My favorite is still impressionism. I just I love to suggest things rather than spell it out or photo realism. I am impressed so much with artists who do photo realism. I think I just don't have the patience for it, but this one was fun. Definitely got a little more detailed with this. And the pastel pencils really added that neat detail for the feathers. Look at my pinky here. I use my pinky as a stabilization device. I just set it down. I clean it off. You can't see me, but often I'm wiping my pinky off when I move it to another area. So as not to contaminate the colors in the painting. But there is a device you can use. It's like a wooden dowel. I can't remember the name of it for some reason. You guys probably know what I'm talking about. That you can rest on your easel and it works the same way. But my pinky technique has worked for years. Now here's the same strategy again. Once laying down darker colors and then the lighter, darker values and then layering the lighter values on top with directional strokes. I can't stress that enough for your strokes to emulate the motion of the feather. And they're overlapping each other. That's the thing that I think works best when painting feathers is realizing. We're not just painting by number. You know those paint by number sets? Like you see how I have the feathers drawn out here? I could just fill each one in with a color. But I know that each feather has more dimension than just one color. So what I'm doing here is I'm painting in the form of the feather. Notice how I have multiple kind of dark values in there. I also know that there's one wing you'll see in the reference photo where there's a shadow underneath it. It's like there's some of the feathers that are raised up. So that's why I made that dark kind of line underneath that one area going down his back a little bit. And lo and behold, it creates that illusion of some feathers kind of curving over top. Now here's where I switched to the oval brush or applicator I should say. The larger one. The reason is because the feathers are larger. I realized I needed a little bit more dark in some areas. So you can see how I've added some dark. That's another area that's kind of in shadow where the wing is overlapping. There's kind of two of those. Another area that has a little bit of darker values is that area where his wings kind of come together. It makes a little V shape on his back. So that's why I got a little darker value in that crevice. And you can just see how I am putting down the darker values using color as a guide. You know, I'm not sticking to the colors of the owl. I'm giving him a little bit more richness. But I'm using value as my priority and just getting creative with color. So now you can see I've added some of the lighter values on top of those feathers there. Now I decided to add the fireflies and even a little bit of whimsical kind of markmaking around the stars. You certainly don't have to do this if you want yours to feel more realistic. So, you know, make it your own, whatever you want to do. Now I'm speeding this up a bit. You can see the whole painting took nearly four hours. I mean, this was a lot of little markmaking. It probably wouldn't have taken me that long if I'd have used that large applicator in the beginning, like I mentioned, for the blocking end stage. But you can see now it's starting to take some depth and have that form and just a rich feeling. And I'm continuing to work the feather layering. So I'm coming back in now with my kind of my middle values. And I think you'll start to see how you really can feel that depth underneath the feathers where one wing and feathers is overlapping the other. I did go in and create some of the little identifiable marks of this particular species of owl. There's little black marks in some places I used a pastel pencil and then even the Terry Ludwig pastel as well. You'll see me do that more. You can see a little bit of it now around the face, but I add more of that as I work. Now I'm going in to give a little bit of depth and division between a few of these feathers. There were some larger feathers and then we're kind of all blending together. So I just put a little dark shadow under some of them to delineate them for separation a bit. Now pastel pencils again, still using my pinky technique. And I really loved the soft effect of these feathers. They felt believable to me as an owl feather. Now here's how I typically like to think of painting items subject matter like this. I want to, of course, anatomically get things pretty accurate, but they don't have to be exact as long as you suggest elements with the directional strokes. In other words, I'm not trying to paint every feather exactly like I see it on the owl. I didn't measure, I didn't count. I just looked at how they were forming over the owl, the general direction and size of the feathers. And that's really all you need. And it's a much more carefree way of painting too. And I think it's more painterly when you paint that way. Here's where I'm adding some of the little black marks. This is the same strategy. I don't need to have them all in the exact location that they are. I just kind of squint my eyes and see where the general motion, how they're laying on the owl and the pattern, I should say. In general, not overly complicated or detailed. And once again, this is a way more detailed painting than I normally do, but I like it. I had fun with it. All right, I'm going to add some peaceful music for you to continue to watch my process. Don't go away. Keep watching. I will be back at the end also too. If you recreate from this tutorial, I would love if you would share it and tag me. If you do on Instagram, you can tag me at Susan Jenkins artist that way I get to see it. And if you're on Facebook, find me on my art page is the art of Susan Jenkins and follow me and also tag me at the art of Susan Jenkins. If you share on Facebook that way I get to see it. And that's really good artist etiquette too. If you share something, make sure you mention the artist if you recreated from a tutorial. So enjoy this lovely music is from a young girl. Her name is Hannah McFarland. A few years ago, she gave me permission to use her song in one of my videos. And she just creates the most beautiful piano worship music and she sings beautifully too. So enjoy and I'll be back in about four minutes. Here's where I'm going in and adding that final light highlight on the eye. I often talk about how that little light reflection on the eye is like the icing on the cake. But I'm going to tell you in this case I added it and then I took it away. They didn't feel believable for the scene often or all the time. You want to make sure your subject matter matches in the scene like this is a night scene. There wasn't a whole lot that would cause his light, the light in his eye to reflect that brightly. And it made him, I don't know, just it didn't have the right mood. So I got rid of the white and I end up adding back that little bit of a purple and blueish highlight to the eye. So that was just my own personal preference. You know, can do what you think looks best for your scene. So I will have this painting available for sale in my Etsy shop, the original. I already have prints and products of this available on my Fine Art America site. And this makes a beautiful print. They do a great job Fine Art America greeting card I have pillows. You can buy this and all kinds of things. So I hope you enjoyed this. I hope if you want more content, you'll become a patron of mine or just to support this channel to keep these free videos coming. I would appreciate it. And as always, God bless, beautiful artist and happy painting.