 Welcome to Monet Café. Subscribers and first time visitors, I think you're going to enjoy this lesson on how to simplify your painting. Often a reference image can have a lot of information. So join me with these simple tips as I create not just this one, but two paintings. Oh, and I hope you'll subscribe to keep more free art lessons like this coming your way. Hello, artists, friends who've been here for a while and newcomers. Welcome to Monet Café. I'm artist Susan Jenkins and I'm bringing you another step-by-step tutorial that should be very easy to follow. Now I wanted to use something with some yellow. I was cleaning my pastels and kind of reorganizing for the new year. And I noticed I have an overabundance of yellow pastels and I realized, you know, I've done some paintings with yellow flowers and things. But I thought I really wanted to focus on that. So many sets come with a lot of yellows. So we're going to make it happy and fun. And I'm excited to bring you this lesson. The reference image for this painting is some beautiful yellow flowers. And I really liked how these flowers had this purple around them. It had a nice sense of depth. And for this lesson, I'm going to talk specifically about how to simplify a subject. I get so many questions from artists and wannabe artists who are frustrated that their work looks too detailed or too tight. And when we learn to simplify our reference images and identify a focal point, it's going to really make a big difference. The reference image I used is from Paint My Photo. It's now called pmp-art.com. It's a great place to find copyright-free reference material. And I will share the actual image with my patrons on my Patreon page. But you guys can find the same photo by signing up for a free pmp account. And I'll provide the link to that photo in the about section of this video. Now the product I'll be using to create this painting is a product I haven't used in a while. And it's because I literally forgot. I had ordered some of this months ago and just forgot to pull it out. I've been wanting to use it again. It's a pastel surface that I used early on in my pastel career and I loved it. So why I haven't been using it that much? I don't know. It's made by Ampersand and it's called Pastel Board, B-O-R-D. It comes in multiple colors and sizes. But what I love about it is that it has such a nice sanded surface. It's not too gritty. You can get a lot of layers. But keep in mind, you don't have to have this surface to do this tutorial. Throughout the video, I'm going to give you other options and things you might can do. I had to hobble along early on in my art learning because I couldn't afford literally some of these products. So you can always learn something even if you don't have the products and I'll try to give you options. Also too, I'm very excited. I shared it in my last video. This is something very new. I have an Amazon store because of the success of Monet Cafe. Amazon has awarded me to be able to be an Amazon influencer and have a store. Now what that means, I'm literally not just trying to market products to you. I'm trying to make an convenient and easy way for you to find products that I have in my videos. So just check it out. I always have the link to that in the about section of this video. And sometimes I'll mention it as I show certain products. One more thing and I don't want to sound like an infomercial. I am wearing my love and faith t-shirt. I love these t-shirts. I know a lot of you do too. I know you bought some from the videos. I just love that they have messages of hope and love in these trying times. So be the light. All right. So that's what we do in Monet Cafe. We try to keep it happy and light-hearted. Also too, you can always skip through all of these intros. If you get tired of hearing me talk at the beginning, I have chapter divisions usually in my videos where you can skip ahead if you need to, or you get tired of hearing me talk. All right. It's time to get painting. Let's do it. Here I'm opening up the Ampersand pastel board. And this does come in different sizes, different colors, but listen to the sandiness of the surface. I really love it. And because this is an actual board, it is obviously heavier than regular paper. So I am using a system of some clips that I have to hold it. And fortunately it did hold. I was a little concerned that my clips might not be strong enough. So keep that in mind when using this product. But the great thing is it's sturdy and ready to be shipped to your client when complete. And for the watercolor painting, I'm just using some Kansan 140-pound cold-pressed watercolor paper. I'm going to try to give an example on the watercolor paper simultaneously, maybe before. Also too, I'm going to use a product to tone this board. Now, the reason I've never done the white Ampersand board before, I really like working on colored surfaces. But if I want to create my own underpainting or tone my paper, I often like to work on white so I can give it the colors that I want. I just did this in the video previous to this one of the moon scene over the field where I worked on white pastel matte. The same thing could be done on watercolor paper. And in that video, I used regular watercolor for the underpainting. So you could do that here too. I'm going to use this product though that I love. I haven't used it in a while either. It's called the Neo Color Water Soluble Wax Pastels. Now, I got these on Amazon. I do have, I think, all of these products I showed you in my Amazon store if you want to know what they are. I'm not saying you have to buy them there, but it's a convenient way to find them. Just so you know, I also have this lesson here on the Monet Cafe channel also on using wax pastels. I love these things. They look like crayons, like Crayola crayons. But surprisingly, when you apply them, they still don't look all that exciting when you first put them on. But then when you add water, it's like magic. So it's a lot of fun. So I'm going to be using these to do a loose beginning similar to the last video, but then this time with the wax pastels. And so what was the point about this video? It's on how to simplify things to make your end result more painterly and impressionistic and also to I'm going to talk about focal points. So let me show you what I do often before I start a painting. Now, sometimes I will use technology in my favor when I'm beginning a painting. You don't have to have these abilities, but I'm going to share with you what I do and ways that you can do it yourself. I often will put my reference image not all the time in Photoshop and I'll give it different filters. There are little apps you can get on your phone now. I'll share some of those. I'll try to put it in here that you can get for free. That will give you similar effects. But you can also just squint and analyze your image too. But I'm going to show you some of the things that I did to simplify the image so that I can get an end result that doesn't have detail everywhere and identify a focal point in areas where I want to enhance. Here are some examples of the filters. This is the cutout filter and you can actually choose what degree of simplification you want. And this next one is called paint dogs. Now, I know not everybody has Photoshop, but once again, there's a lot of free apps you can get to do these techniques and you can also just squint to really simplify your image. So what I'm going to do is because I want to keep this sort of lyrical, whimsical quality about these daisies or whatever flowers they are, I'm going to go ahead and sketch them in in a gestural way on both surfaces with a piece of willow charcoal or vine charcoal. This is also on the Amazon store in the, I think it's pastel painting products, something like that. Also, hoping the method that I amper stand board, okay, the pastel board is heavy. So if I tried to use tape, I think I have in the past and taped it all the way around. You know, it might hold, but I use these clamps and I'm probably going to have to kind of move them around as I work. So hopefully I won't have a disaster. I will be speeding up parts of this video because obviously doing two paintings in the same video is going to make it very long. So I wanted to talk about the sketching process. What I'm doing because of the cutout filter, it has simplified some of the flowers and I'm also trying to create a composition that leads the viewer into the painting by the positioning of the flowers, some bigger ones at the front and then cascading them back in an S-shaped curve. And now I'm sketching on the ampersand pastel board and wow, you can tell such a noticeable difference with how just the charcoal even applies and most definitely the pastels. But once again, I like to, I had this crazy idea, I guess, to do the watercolor paper just for those people who were like me often when I just couldn't afford some of these products. So I hope doing both of these will be beneficial and let you realize you can use cheaper products when you're first getting started. Now in this image, I am going back to the main reference photo because I really wanted to see the colors. Notice how the cutout filter, it even simplifies colors. It kind of neutralized them. But I really like some of these colors in here and I want to keep it super loose and impressionistic. So I'm just going to refer to that. I'm not doing what I normally call like a complementary underpainting where you use compliments to colors underneath. I'm going to do it more like local color. And once again, I'm using these neocolor wax pastels. I'll try to kind of show you, let me get a little something to put up here so I can show you the colors I use. Just remember too, this is an underpainting pastel is going to go on top of this. So this is to set the mood, kind of like it did in my last video with the watercolor. So what I'm going to do is I think I will use, it's going to be lighter back here than foreground. I'm going to play around with this too as I paint. It's not going to be just like this. But I kind of like in this teal color right here or it's kind of a turquoisey color. So let's take a look at that here. All right. Yeah, I like that. Now I'm going to be adding like purples on top of it with the pastel. So this might be a neat color to use here. Once again, I apologize for speeding it up in portions. But I know you guys probably won't sit through a two hour video to watch the whole painting process. And I thought I could kind of talk you through this. This is kind of a pretty blue, one of the wax pastels that I'm putting on now. And I'm trying to even give the mark making some gesture. It works a lot better on the pastel board. The gestural marks just don't show up as much on the watercolor paper. But this is all going to get wet anyway. So, but look, notice how the wax pastels look rather dull right now. Okay. You can see some of the mark making I'm doing down there that, and by the way, my patrons, you are going to get copies of my color notes, the wax pastels, and the pastels. I have my little color cards that I make. And if any of you guys are like, what the heck is a patron? It's just a way people support this channel for $5 a month to get extra instruction. Well, sometimes just to support the channel. But they get a little bit extra. So that's one of the things they get are my color notes from the painting. So as you can see, I'm working with the combination of those cool colors, blues, teals. One of them was darker. You can kind of see on the little note card there, the one in the middle is darker. And I use those down in the depths of the flowers. Now here's a close-up you can see before the water. And you'll noticeably see the difference in the watercolor version. This paper is a bit more textural than the Ampersand board, and it noticeably shows. But this is all going to get wet anyway. So it really doesn't matter at this point. I often share that I like to use the largest brushes I can, especially for something like this. And it helps to keep you loose and impressionistic. Also, you'll need some water, of course. So I am just wetting this, and I'm letting the drips happen. One of the things that I think was probably the most challenging to learn is just the amount of water to add. I keep a paper towel handy. You don't want it too runny, and you don't want it too dry. So you just play around with it until you find the right consistency. And I am working in and around the flowers. It doesn't matter if they drip in the flowers some. Matter of fact, I thought at the end of this I had them too isolated and white. I could have done the wash over the whole thing, and still been able to see a little bit of the charcoal impression of the flowers. And it would have worked fine too. So I kind of work both ways sometimes. So now you can see how the color is actually brighter on the ampersand board. Can you see that? And it's just really so smooth. And like I said at the beginning of this video, I don't know why I always forget to use this surface. It is more expensive because it's a board, but it is such a nice finished product because, you know, you don't have to mount your pastel painting or anything. So I love that about the surface. Now this is the first time that I've used the white. And once again, I like using the white surfaces when I am going to do some sort of expressive, colorful or creative underpainting, which I love to do. But I have used the other colors as well and love them. Okay, I don't want to overwork that because what I don't want to happen is the colors to start blending together too much. The more you keep fussing with it, the more those colors are going to become one muted color rather than, I'm going to add a little bit of this in here while I've got it on here because that didn't come out quite as dark, right? And you could do the same thing. If you're working on watercolor paper, you can see how it does behave a little differently. The darts aren't as dark, so you could let it dry and then add more of the wax pastels or if you're using watercolor to do this, you know, whatever you have, you can use pastels on watercolor paper. I often use my little new pastels. This is my little baby ones. They're for travel. I broke them. But anyway, you can use these to do the same thing that I did with the wax pastels, add water or alcohol to blend them. These are like watercolors. They just have a different binder. So lots of options. All right, we will let this dry. Now, let me talk while this is drying about what are we going to do with the watercolor paper? Are we going to apply pastel right to this? No, actually, I am going to apply something that'll make it have texture like this board. So this board already has a sanded surface. It's going to be able to take the pastel beautifully. But this here, if you just use watercolor paper alone, you cannot get the layering that you need. The product that I use that works really quite well is Clear Gesso. And I have used this for so many years because once again, there were times when I couldn't afford all these papers. And so I would work on watercolor paper doing underpainting and apply Clear Gesso. You could also put some of the Clear Gesso in a little dish, tint it with some acrylic or acrylic ink, and just tone the whole watercolor paper and then paint from there. But it creates a nice sanded surface to be able to apply the pastel to and get some layering. So get Clear Gesso. Because it has, I don't know why, but it has a little bit of a sandiness to it that creates the grit. Regular Gesso does not have that. And also, Regular Gesso is white. You'd literally cover up your whole underpainting. This is clear, so it won't. So again, not to sound like a broken record. I do have this in my Amazon store. If you want to find it, you can find what it is. Go buy it on another site if you want. But it is in the section, I think, called pastel painting products. I think. So here I am applying the Clear Liquid Gesso, as I've done in so many videos. I know a lot of artists who've watched this channel have used this technique. And it is really easy and it works well. So now we have both surfaces ready for pastel. Wasn't that easy? Simple beginning. And again, I had to give some clear Gesso to the watercolor paper so that the pastels could adhere to it. Didn't need to do that with the Ampersand Pastel Ward because it's already a sanded surface. All right, here we go. I've chosen my pastels. Once again, I grabbed this box of yellows because I have an overabundance of yellows and I decided to keep them more of the warm yellows. A little bit more like sunflower colors. I love those colors. And once again, my patrons will get an image of my color notes and a picture of these pastels. I am beginning like I do often in getting my darks established. It is pretty typical in pastel painting. It's similar with oil and acrylic that we can work dark to light, getting our dark values down, and then gradually adding the lighter or brighter colors on top. Now, this is not the same as watercolor. With watercolor, we typically work light to dark. So I know that even though the reference image doesn't have any really dark values that you see, obviously, I know that usually down in between things and the depths of grasses and flowers and roots, usually they're going to be darker values and shadows. So I'm just kind of working those in and around. Now, like I said before, I actually realized my flowers were a little too white, especially on the amper sand board. You see how some of it dripped more on the watercolor paper. They actually were a little too white, so I had to kind of, I think I used the blending tool to kind of blend them a little bit. But, you know, if a flower is large, you can identify it early on, so you know where it's going to go. But a lot of times, if flowers are small, you don't have to worry about trying to draw them in or anything. You can just add them after the fact, after you've got your layers down. Now, I'm using a piece of chamois cloth, the kind that used to dry your cars. I've recently found this works really well with blending pastels. Now, I don't blend really at all at the end stages, but in the beginning, often you can use blending tools to kind of cover up the white and the little parts of the paper kind of peeking through that you want to subdue a little bit. I didn't have to do as much blending on the amper sand board because the pastels go on more smoothly. Notice when I'm adding pastels on the watercolor paper how bumpy it looks, so keep in mind if you're going to do any technique on watercolor paper, especially if you use the rough side. I think I might have used it. Usually they have two sides, but one side is rough and one side is a bit more smooth, so I think I have the rough side here. But it's fine because you can use the chamois cloth to blend. Now, I am starting to apply where I want the flowers to go. Now, you might be thinking, wow, those flowers are yellow, why are you putting that down? Often it's a good idea to go ahead with a darker value or a richer color, even with white flowers. You know, you put down something a little bit darker before you add the white. Otherwise, you're going to have no contrast. You're going to have nothing for the white to stand against or to give an impression upon. So, that's why I often use a darker color like this. Now, you see I did. I just put them in kind of some large, some small, doing the same thing with the ampersand board. Now, I realized, you know, I'm very honest with you guys on this channel even when I'm like, you know, might have not done things the way I wanted to. And my point of the video is simplification. I actually liked what I had as far as fewer flowers in the beginning stages and I end up adding a lot of flowers. Now, I did still keep them very simplified when it comes to detail. Most of them are more subdued and especially the ones as I gradually get to the background flowers which I'm still just working on the base stages now, the flower. But you'll notice as I work that I only have a few of them that are a bit larger and more detail and then they gradually start to get less detail as they recede into the distance. Maybe a few that might have a bit more contrast or detail but the goal is to have limited flowers in a flower painting or even in any painting, limited things that have the most focal point. Because if everything is competing for a focal point then there isn't a focal point and I do have a video that is, I think it's called Five Ways or Five Focal Point Techniques, something like that. And basically you want to take the area that you're going to have the focal point. To me it was some of the larger flowers kind of lower to the right there a little bit. And you want those to have, they don't have to have a ton of detail, but more detail than other elements of the painting. And typically they're going to have more contrast. Contrast just means the difference between light and dark. So wherever your focal point is, it's typically going to have more contrast. Now I noticed when I was applying this to the watercolor paper, notice that blue I just put on how soft it looked. And there are definitely some advantages too, when you start working with the watercolor paper and you've got your gesso down, you've got a few layers of pastel down. The first layers feel very, oh my gosh what's happening, they're very rough and textural. But as you blend and as you add the layers, notice how it's getting that softness. So it really can, or you really can, achieve some nice pastel paintings on watercolor paper. So it's kind of neat doing them both like this at the same time. Because I'm immediately feeling the differences between the two papers. Now I'm starting to add some of those taller flowers that are smaller and in the distance. And I'm just kind of giving some gestural green stems going up in the back. Now I'm working a little bit more of the blue down into some of the upper flowers in the foreground. Same thing. I'm trying to do kind of the same thing on each painting so that we can see the obvious differences. I'm going to add some music at this point and let you guys enjoy the process. At one point though, I actually do start to work on, I think I just finished the watercolor painting and then I move on to the other painting. I realized I couldn't zoom enough while I had the both paintings within the camera frame so I decided to zoom in a little bit on each one and finish them out. But don't go away because I will share more techniques and commentary along with the final painting. Enjoy the music. Here I'm finishing up the watercolor version and now I'm going to move on to finishing the ampersand version and zoom in a bit. You can probably notice the difference in softness. That's pretty obvious and it has to do once again with the smoothness of the surface versus the texture of the watercolor paper. And I must admit it is a joy to work on and I definitely want to play with the surface more and get back to using it more often. I'm trying to brighten up the sky a little bit. It was still a little dark from some of my original applications of the wax pastels and the pastels so I'm bringing in a little bit of sunshine and carving it in kind of negatively through some of the background flowers. And as I stated before, the goal was to simplify and I felt that I could have simplified even more. But my strategy was to have some of the flowers in the foreground inviting the viewer in and to kind of dance around and follow the succession of flowers as they recede into the distance. Getting smaller in size and less detail. Also too towards the end is when I bury some of those daisies or whatever they are. They're more like black-eyed susans but I bury them a bit with some grasses. Right now they're all kind of sparse. And here I'm adding some of the final highlights and it's going to be on the petals that are more receiving the sunshine. Which the sunshine in this case was a little bit more towards the upper left. Now in order to add those grasses I am applying some workable fixative. This is Blair workable fixative. I'm using part of a pastel box as a shield to keep the fixative from getting another area. So I want to get it in that area where the roots are and where some of those flowers are going to be buried by other grasses. What this does is it allows you to strategically darken places. That's what fixative does. And by the way that's why I always answer no I don't fix my paintings at the end because it will darken the whole painting. But the other thing that it does is it allows you to darken in areas that you want darkened. It's going to dry a little lighter than this. It won't stay this dark. But it also adds a little bit of texture back to your surface. And that allows you to just glaze some grasses and color on top of it where it not only goes on easier but the color is going to be brighter than it was. Once you get a lot of layers down with pastel you lose the ability to get new fresh color applied. So when you add the workable fixative it acts as another layer really. But be careful using it. You want to make sure you only spray it in areas that you don't mind getting a little bit darker or areas that you want to kind of rework a little bit. So you can see that I am able to add those chunkier grasses and I'm focusing the ones that are down deep I used a bit more of a neutral and a cooler green rather than the more yellowy greens that are on some of the grasses that are more mid-painting and up towards the top. I enjoyed adding some beautiful teal turquoisey colors carving them into the back grasses and also I added a bit more punch of red to the tops of those flower centers and once again to simplify things I didn't do it to all of them but just a few that were catching the sunlight. Here is the final painting and I really hope you learned something about techniques and pastel products and this painting will be available in my Etsy shop, the original for sale. So come back, subscribe, make a comment and of course happy painting!