 Welcome to Monet Café! I'm artist Susan Jenkins bringing you a pastel painting tutorial on painting easy, yes very easy, autumn trees. Autumn is the focus this month in Monet Café so come join the fun. By the way, this is a beginner friendly tutorial. Before diving in I would really love it if you would like this video. I think you really will like it. Comment! I'd love to hear what you have to say and please subscribe if you haven't already and click that little bell icon to be notified of future videos. I would also love it if you would consider becoming a patron of mine on my Patreon page. This is a place where you can get extra content for many of my lessons plus you support this channel to keep the free lessons coming. The surface I'll be using for this easy autumn tree tutorial is an unsanded pastel paper made by Kansen. It's called Kansen Métince pastel paper. This is called the Earth tones pad. It's just kind of a nice beige color and when we start with creating an autumn tree or really any tree is by creating it from the inside out and I like to say let's first start with those inner parts of the tree that are going to be darker. So we're really just taking a darker pastel and we are forming the shape. Notice only linear strokes I'm doing here is really for the tree trunks and branches and I'm just getting them very suggestive and loose and also I'm using the front side of the Kansen paper. If you notice that little bit of a honeycomb pattern some people don't like that but if you flip the paper over it is a little more smooth on the backside. So we are starting with a dark value. This first tree is going to be a beautiful orangey red autumn tree. So I'm working with two darks. These by the way many of these pastels I'm using are Terry Ludwig pastels. They're rectangular and I break them in half to make them a little bit smaller. So I have two dark colors kind of a dark purple kind of a dull purple and a dark burgundy. Those are my darks. Now I'm going to gradually add a middle value. I'm bringing in some of those oranges and notice I'm not covering every single branch or leaf. I'm just thinking of those outer branches that may be catching a little bit of light. Now I decided to add a little bit more of this red that's kind of a dull cool red and so I'm just getting some autumn colors in working dark value to light value. I'm bringing in another red that's a little bit brighter and you don't even have to have this many colors but basically dark values and gradually working middle values to light values. You'll see the tree come to life as I create it. Now again see this is a little bit brighter. It's maybe just a tad lighter in value but mostly this is just a brighter color and I'm trying not to put these brighter leaves everywhere. And notice I'm not even painting leaves. I'm just making little shapes. And by the way this is only sped up slightly but if you're a patron of mine you will be getting all of the real-time content for these tree studies. Now I'm going to just add another pretty bright red and then finally get those lightest lights of some pretty orangey red final touches. Again look at all these Terry Ludwig pastels. You don't have to have Terry Ludwig pastels or even use all these colors. Again dark middle and light values. Now I'm looking for one that's a little brighter. I want to keep this tree kind of in the red orange family. So my final highlights on this autumn tree will be a nice bright orange. I think this is a maybe a unison that broke. One time I had the wind blow all my pastels over when I was working outside but I keep all those little scraps and remnants. And now you can see I'm just adding little shapes of the brighter color on top. And look at that. We have built us an autumn tree from the inside out. And now I'm just really just gently putting in a little bit more suggestions of some of those inner branches. Notice how loose and impressionistic this is with no real detail as to leaves. I thought I'd sprinkle a few leaves on the ground, little suggestions of maybe some of those leaves falling and a little bit more of that a little branch at the bottom with maybe some red leaves growing out. The next autumn tree will have more of those golden tones to it. And again, I'm just using a darker pastel to suggest really loosely some trunk and branches growing up and keep these strokes very gestural. You don't want them tight. I'm beginning, well, I started to begin with a darker color. I was looking for something that was a little bit more brownish, but that one was a little too dead in color. So I grabbed my burgundy darker pastel again and just giving some forms. And you've probably noticed I'm not using a reference image here. I'm just giving the general shapes of trees. I'm also keeping my pressure very light and it helps the branches and the suggestion of leaves feel very light and airy. Now I'm adding another dark. This one does have a little, a bit of a purple undertone to it, even though it's looks kind of like a dark gray. And I know that purple and yellows are complementary colors. So I know that'll make a nice base for the inner parts of this tree. Now, often we still do have some green leaves, even when trees are turning all their beautiful fall colors. So I decided to use this earthy green for my next value. Again, we're building the tree from the inside out. Now yellow trees also to have a little hint of orange in it. And this orange that's a little bit lighter value will create a nice base for those yellows. I want to add a little bit more of a pretty yellowy green. This green is a little bit lighter in value and it's just got a pretty brightness. It's a little more intense with color. The other ones were a little more dull. And so this is adding some of that light and highlight to the tops of this tree. And now it's going to be time to turn this tree yellow. We've got our nice base again, building this tree from the inside out. You got to remember there's a lot of shadows going on in trees too. So if you go to grab those lightest lights first, it's not going to feel very believable. And here is my pretty yellow. It's still got a little hint of green, leans that way a little bit. And just adding it to places where I'm thinking the light might be hitting. In both of these, I was kind of imagining the light kind of coming from the top and hitting some of those outside reaching leaves and branches. And I am almost done. I'm going to reinforce the trunk a little bit more. And then I'm going to add one final bright yellow to really make this tree shine and say, look at me like so many autumn trees do. So let's grab that pretty bright yellow and add it just in some areas where the highlights will really make the tree feel three dimensional. Isn't that a pretty yellow? Again, another Terry Ludwig pastel. The beauty of pastels is there are many, there's many beautiful things about soft pastels, but one is their ability to layer color upon color. It's an opaque medium. So that's why we can work dark to light and create a form three dimensionality to the things we're creating. Oh, I was wrong. There's one more yellow. It's not as light as the other one that I just put on, but it had some pretty gold colors to it. So I sprinkled it in in some places for some color interest, put a few leaves on the ground and even added a little bit of those golden colors and a little bit of the greens on the ground as well. Now, another thing that you'll see me do here is often when I create a pastel painting, I like to add, you know, color palettes that work and keep things, you know, kind of believable, but I love to add a spice color or a punchy color is what I often call it. I'm just putting in a few more branches here and I know that a good punchy color to use often is a compliment. And what is the compliment again to yellow? Well, yellow and oranges really are kind of a purple-y color. So now I've grabbed this really pretty purple and I'm going to sneak it into some of the areas of the tree where there might be some shadows really lightly just sprinkling it in. You don't want this everywhere a little bit on the ground and you see how that just gave that tree a little bit more life. And once again, this is just on unsanded paper out of my imagination, but it shows you what can be done even as a beginner. Another punchy color that can work well with the orange-y red leaves and red autumn trees is kind of a magenta or a pink magenta. And that was pretty easy, right? In real time, this took probably about 25 minutes. Again, if you're a patron of mine, you'll get the real-time footage. And I encourage you beginners to give this a try. You may not have all of the colors that I used. I totally remember what it was like to be a beginner artist. But if you're a total beginner, I do have on my Amazon shop a list of items that are great for beginner pastel artists. I have these things called Idealist. I even have product review videos and I have a link to my Amazon shop in every video description. But this first one under the Idealist is called Beginner Basics for Pastel Artist. And I list a lot of products that I think are affordable and a good quality for beginner artists. I also have, if you click the little, it's like a little double, looks like a quote mark. If you just hover over that, it has little descriptions that I have given of what I think about the products. I start with mostly pastels that are affordable and then I move down to papers. So that's a great education and a way for beginners to find their way in the midst of so many products that are out there. I hope that was helpful. I hope you'll try it. Share it on the Monet Cafe Art Group on Facebook. Anyone can become a member. You just have to answer a few questions. Again, if you're a patron of mine, you will get the real-time content. And I can't wait to see what you do in our homework album. And if you've made it this far into the video, I really hope you will like the video. Leave me a comment. It really does help this video to get shared more by YouTube. Alright guys, as always, God bless and happy painting.