 You guys ready to have some fun in Monet Cafe Studio? Have you ever tried the 10 minute painting game? Well it is an easy and fun way to loosen up your work. It's also a great way to discover new subject matter and paint things you may have never painted before. Beginners are going to love this tutorial. The products are very affordable. Alright, are you ready? Come on into the studio and let's go. But first, just a quick little celebration to say thank you subscribers. Monet Cafe just reached 100,000 plus subscribers. God bless you all. So here's the rules. I'm calling this game reference image roulette. And the reason I'm calling it that is because we're going to randomly choose reference images to paint from and then give ourselves only 10 minutes to paint them. Or 15. I did 10. But I've already made it easy for you. I have gathered a collection of reference images from unsplash.com. I made an album. I'll have a link in the description of this video. You can of course follow along with the paintings that I'm doing in this. But if you want to try it yourself, what you're going to do is you're going to use something or any way to randomly choose a number. I use something called a random number generator. I'll have a link for that in the description too. And there's 81 images in this album. And you just use the random number generator. It picks a number for you and you count down to that image. Now they're kind of hard to count because they're not right across from each other. So just do your best. And no matter what the image is, even if it's something you're not comfortable with, give it a try. And this is not a goal to have this fabulous painting. It's to get you to loosen up. And I had so much fun with these. I've done it before with not these parameters. But this is really great. I think it's going to help you grow as an artist and give yourself a timer and just go for it. Now, if you're a patron of mine on my Patreon page, I know you're going to share your results in the homework album. So I cannot wait to see what you do with these fun, crazy fast paintings that are sketchy and loose. All right. Let me talk about the products now. Here's some great news about these products. They're very affordable and a great way for beginners to get started. I like using this Kansan XL Sand Grain Surface. It comes in other colors as well. Now it's not a sanded surface. If you're familiar with pastel surfaces, it's a sand grain. It has a little texture to it. But I find it's perfect for studies and exercises like this. The pastels that I chose for this lesson are Prismacolor New Pastels. Again, very affordable for the beginner pastel artist. One of the reasons I chose them is because, you know, I just have them loosely arranged by color. But I knew I needed to be able to grab a color fast and not go find pastels. I only have 10 minutes, right? So this was the perfect choice for me. I also like these because they're not as dusty if you're worried about pastel dust. And they're great for traveling and taking along with you for painting as well. I've already made it very easy for you to find reference images. I created an album with an unsplash.com. I called the album Sketchy Style. It is the theme this month. And I have 81 photos in this album. And I may have to go back and paint those lovebirds. They're so cute. But let me show you how I chose my images randomly. I use this random number generator online. Put in one to 81 because that's how many photos there are. And then you click Generate. And whatever number you get, you just count in the album until you get to that particular photo. And the first time I did it for this particular first painting, it was number 81, which happens to be this cute little hamster at the very tail end of the album, which made me very happy. I love hamsters. And then set a timer for 10 minutes. Whatever timer you have, I used one on the computer that made an alarm. And now it's time to paint my little guy. I named him Chester. I don't know why. I'm going to talk you through my little 10 minute sketch. And this very first one will be all real time. You're going to see the real 10 minutes. So I like to, especially when doing animals, is just to get a basic form. I'm trying to just get the feeling of the form of the animal. And he is almost a circle. So I got my circle in first that was kind of his head and his body. And then I was just getting in general shapes of some of his legs. And I redefined things as I sketch. And if you want to get good at sketching, you know what you have to do. I'm going to tell you the trick. Sketch a lot. Okay. That sounds like, oh, I didn't want that answer, but it really is the only way to get better. And I'll say that for me, one of the strongest things you can learn when it comes to sketching is learning to identify proportions and spatial relationships. For example, consider his ears. And if you look at the reference image and you come down all the way down to his feet, you can see that to our left, his foot on the left, is a little outside of where that ear is just outside of it. And on the right, the foot is almost underneath the ear. And with respect to the little hands, they are, both of them are a little closer to the foot on the right. I just learned to constantly compare and contrast where things are in relation to other things on the hamster's body or whatever you're painting. So I got in a little nose. I think that's where it's going to be. And I keep everything really loose to begin with. And I got things pretty much in the right spot to begin with, with this hamster. But notice his hands. I sketched them in with the gray pastel just like as little, almost like little squares. And I didn't bother with painting his little teeny fingers. You don't want to get caught up on all that detail and hamster's hands and feet are so delicate. So I'm just giving it a little shape and I'll just kind of suggest that at the end. And one of the things that this 10 minute sketching game will do for you is it will force you to keep it pretty simple. I mean I am taking a little bit of time getting some of the elements features right on the hamster. But if I got over detailed with painting in those fingers and everything, I know I can't do it. My 10 minutes are going to be up. So it forces you to paint and sketch in a way that's really going to strengthen your paintings when you go to create a more serious piece. This is how we're supposed to work anyway. We're supposed to keep it simple. We're supposed to block things in. And often when we start a serious painting, we get overly hung up on detail when it's really best to take this type of approach when initially getting in your sketch or initial stages of your painting. And one thing, a huge thing I find that this will do is it will cause your painting to have life and gesture and movement and energy. Which for me is the definition of beautiful art. You guys probably know I lean towards Impressionism. Now notice that I'm adding this pretty blue. It's not a bright blue. It's just kind of a soft, easy, a bit more neutral blue. And what I'm doing is I'm looking for the areas that perhaps are a little bit more in shadow. If you examine the reference image of the hamster, you can pretty quickly see, especially if you squint your eyes, where the light source is coming from. It's coming from the left side, which you can tell because the left side of his body is almost white. And the right side of his body is more in shadow. And notice I'm getting a light value now to kind of get that idea of light on the right side of his body, or left side, right side of his body, left side of our screen. And you may wonder why I would use blue. When I was first painting, I would have tried to find a darker brown. I would probably know, okay, that's in shadow, it's darker. Let me just use a brown like this for the whole side of his body. But I've learned over the years that what makes art exciting and beautiful is color. And we don't have to stay bound by the reference image when we're creating a painting. We can break out our artistic license and use it in ways that will really bring some color, energy, and life to what we're painting. And I find that blues and purples are great colors to use for shadows. I actually even like using greens for shadows sometimes, especially in portraits. And thank you guys, I've had quite a few of you asking if I would do some portrait tutorials. And whenever I've done them in the past, those are my videos that don't get as many views. I think we just have a lot of landscape nuts on this channel that really like landscape painting, which I do as well. But I happen to love portrait work. So leave me a comment if you would like to see maybe a few more portrait tutorials. I am going to be providing some for my patrons as well. Now I'm using some pinks. Notice here's another way I'm pushing the boundaries of color. Again, early on in my art career, I would have tried this. This hamster would have been brown, all different shades of brown. And I've learned over the years that I can take a color like a brown and I can use the same value that works, meaning the lightness or the darkness, but push it to one of the ends on the color wheel. Brown is orange basically, it's just a darker orange. But we could cool it off a bit by moving it a little towards the cooler pink side and choose pink values that work in the same area that we would have used that brown. And all of this, if it sounds confusing, it just gets easier the more you do it. That's what I found happened with me is that I didn't learn all of these things. I would hear a tutorial and get a little overwhelmed like that's so much to learn. Take one thing, like for example, maybe just start trying to use more blues or purples in the shadows of things. And that'll be that one thing that when you do it enough, it will become part of your repertoire and you don't even have to think about it anymore. It's just second nature. And that only comes with painting a lot, which is another point as to why these 10-minute studies are great. I think the value in these is just going to enhance your art and also you're going to have some fun, which isn't that what we like about art anyway? I always recommend to try to get back to how it was when we were a kid. When you were little, if you had some, I don't know if you were like I was, you probably were if you're on this channel, just so attracted to color. My favorite presence by far were art supplies for any birthday present. And I would just grab some art supplies or a coloring book and I didn't worry about the rules. I just started having fun. And so we have to remember to embrace that as well. Yes, there are some rules. So, you know, learn a few things, practice them, but just paint for the joy of it as well. I want to stress again that I only used Prismacolor new pastels for this little hamster. You can even see the color number there. I think it's 293 on this particular stick. And I did have the 96 set that I'm working from. However, they do have smaller sets of new pastels. I know that sometimes when you're getting started, you may not have the budget. That's how it was when I got started. That's still how it is to tell you the truth. I'm very blessed that I have some art manufacturers and retailers that offer me product to do product videos. Otherwise, I wouldn't be able to afford all of these pastel products that I have. So I do understand that. That's why I'm often trying to give you guys budget friendly supplies and tutorials. Oh, and by the way, thank you to so many of you who have made comments saying that you like my voice. Some of you have even said you relax to it. Put it on when you're going to sleep or resting or something. And I love that. I think it must be the mom and me, even though my boys, my three boys are men now. I was just the constant storyteller and I loved telling stories in a theatrical way. So thank you for those comments. I wonder sometimes if I'm just going on and on and on too much, but apparently you guys kind of like that. All right, little Chester's coming along. Now let me talk about these hands. Remember how I said I don't want to give him too much detail. I just made those little gray shapes to begin with to know where they were. Now I'm focusing more on the value than the individual fingers. There's some shadow in between his fingers and there's some shadow darker areas in between his toes. So I'm just getting a little bit of a darker magenta in the areas that look like it's a little darker. And I'm just adding a little lighter kind of a pink color to the tops where the light would be hitting. And a little bit more shadow underneath his body where his feet are. And that's pretty much all you need. I do give some highlights to the fingers as well. As I said in the intro, I'm really looking forward to see what my patrons do from my Patreon page. That's one of the beauties of my Patreon page to me is that I love seeing the work from my art family. But if you're not a patron and you want to recreate from this and share it, tag me. If you share on Facebook, tag me at the art of Susan Jenkins. And on Instagram, you can tag me at Susan Jenkins Artist. That way it'll pop up. I'll be able to see what you do. And now just a few little highlights on Sweet Little Chester's fingers. And I want to show you how I protect these. You can get a piece of tracing paper and some artist tape and just cover it up and then go on to the next page. Before moving on to painting number two, would you please like this video? Leave me a comment and by all means please subscribe. Also, if you'd like some of the extra content I'm always talking about on my Patreon page, it's easy to become a patron. It's only $5 a month. You can cancel at any time and you get all of the extra goodies. The remaining paintings will be sped up here on the Monet Cafe version. Full content again is over on my Patreon page. But I thought you might like to just see them. I again randomly chose one of the images. I happen to really like this yellow field of flowers, sunflowers. And it's the same concept as the first painting. I gave myself a 10 minute timer. I get in a really loose sketch to suggest the trees and the bands of rows that the sunflowers are growing in. Getting in some nice colors for the sky, the mountain, the background trees. And I add the darker elements to the deeper parts of the rows, keeping it really suggestive, especially as things move to the right. You notice as things get further away, they just get less descriptive and detailed. So the right side and the backside of that painting is just really going to be very loose. I wanted to get in a few suggestions of the foreground sunflowers. And because I had to work so fast, I don't have time to really paint sunflowers. So I just got some of the dark centers and gave a little indication of some of the highlights on the sunflowers and keeping it super energetic, loose and fun. Now I really want to go back and create a full, more serious piece of this particular image. These make for great references for future paintings, just your sketches. So this one was really fun. And now time to move on to the next one. Now this next subject matter happened to fall randomly on a subject I don't, I don't think I've ever painted any cactus before. And so I didn't cheat. I stayed with the rules of the game. But this time I did pre-choose some of my Prismacolor new pastels. It made it a lot easier to just move along with a subject matter that's a little more complicated like this. I wanted to give myself every advantage I could. So pre-choosing some of these colors really helped. Over on my Patreon page, I go over some of the reasoning as to why I chose these colors. Now unfortunately, I forgot to turn my camera on. That's why I was shaking my fist there. And I was close to my 10 minute mark already. So I decided just to go ahead and paint some more just so I could have some footage to share. But I'm glad I did. I got in some really nice cool and warm colors for the cactus. And now I've slowed it down to real time just to add these beautiful pink blooms. And you know, I'm a Florida girl. Well, my whole family's from the mountains of North Carolina. So I'm very familiar with the mountains, the Blue Ridge Mountains. And they don't look like these mountains, these red rock mountains with the cactus. And I have, I don't think I've ever painted a scene like this. So that is definitely one of the advantages of this game. And it made me realize I would love to paint more scenes like this. Probably never would have tried it if I had not played this reference image roulette. So in typical fashion, I like to add my darks in first often. And now I'm going to add some of the highlights onto the sides of these pink flowers. I felt like these cacti, it's hard for me to say the plural cacti are like an audience. Like they're looking out at the mountains in awe. And like they're literally like in a stadium looking out at a show of the beauty. This one was super fun for me and definitely a departure from my normal work. Now let's go on to painting number four. I randomly chose this beautiful red cardinal. And once again, I pre chose some pastels, but I did throw in a couple of reds you see there. These are Terry Ludwig pastels. They're very soft. And I went ahead and grabbed another little set. This is the Unison 30, I think it's the 30 half stick set. It had some nice reds in it as well. Now I know I am speeding it up for this version on the Monet Cafe channel. But I knew that I needed to get this bird right. And I was like, oh darn when this reference image came up. Again, I stayed with the rules. I didn't choose something else. I knew that the bird was going to take some time. And I wanted to get it right. I think I ended up spending about 15 minutes on this one. And I got my bird in. I got some beautiful reds and oranges. And one thing I loved about this exercise is it forced me to keep my background very loose. I find a loose background with a subject matter like this just adds to that painterly style. And it doesn't take away from the focal point, which is the bird. I wanted to add a little snow and my sweet little birdie is done. I hope you guys enjoyed this fast and furious reference image roulette. I hope you will try it again. If you're a patron of mine, I am really waiting anxiously to see what you do. So happy painting from me and sweet little Chester. And as always, God bless. Thank you again for all my subscribers hitting 100,000. It's truly a blessing and a goal that I had for a long time. All right. Goodbye. Love you guys.