 Hello artists and welcome to Monet cafe. I'm artist Susan Jenkins and this tutorial should be a lot of fun and educational We're gonna explore with color grab some pastels You don't often use and before we get started I'd really appreciate it if you would like this video click the thumbs up Subscribe to this channel and if you hit that little bell icon that's next to the subscribe button You will be notified when I upload future videos and for those of you who would like to support this channel It's only five dollars a month on my patreon page and if you're a patron of mine, you also get extra goodies I'll share some of what those things are in this tutorial now I only had 20 minutes to paint and you're gonna hear my intro right now I've got 20 minutes to try to paint something before a zoom meeting. So Let's see if I can do it. We've got to maximize every spare minute to paint, right? The reference image is from unsplash.com and the photographer is Andreas fickle It's a great place for copyright free reference images. Let me talk about my products the surface. I'll be using is pastel matte I love these pads that have different colors. This one is on Amazon and it's on sale. It's $29 basically now It says 24 by 30 centimeters. I think that's like 9 by 11 and You get 12 sheets. So this is a really good buy I love the colors in this particular pad and I found that it's a good price on Amazon The one on Dick Blick is $40 basically now. I don't know why the size is a little different It's nine and a half by 12 on Dick Blick. So it seems like a good deal. Surfaces can get expensive now Speaking of my Amazon shop. Here it is now you have options to go to videos and I have some product review videos The second one in is Sennelier soft pastels. These are the pastels I'll be using almost exclusively for this little Mountain Meadow painting and you can watch my product review. You can learn a lot about these pastels It is still a good price on Amazon right now, but it's actually it's still better than almost anywhere But it was only $126 for this set I think it's 142 now and what I'm doing here is I make color notes after my paintings This is one of the perks for being a patron of mine I snap a shot of my color notes Sometimes I do a little video like this and my patrons will get not only the colors But I will give the different brands that I use also I'm trying to come up with a system where I can actually share the color numbers now Here's my little piece of I think it's five inches by four inches. I had cut one of the larger sheets of pastel matte For some other purpose. I can't remember so I saved my other little little sizes So like I said, I had 20 minutes to paint. I had a zoom meeting and it was a zoom meeting for something exciting I think I can go ahead and share now I have been asked to be one of the guest artists on pastel live It is an awesome pastel educational event I'll share dates and I'll show share everything soon But there are so many pastel artists of amazing levels that you can learn from I was just I was honored to even be Asked to do this. So and I'll be teaching a beginner lesson focusing on color So I'll be sure to share more of that. So that was my zoom meeting So I knew I had 20 minutes till I had to be at my computer and I thought let's see what I can do now Let me actually talk about this. This is real time I am using just the Sennelier pastels so far and I have gotten in the basic shape of the sky a Background mountain and a mountain that's in the front and I've just used three colors so far. This is a dark green It's kind of a pretty foresty green in the Sennelier Paris collection set now for evergreen trees. I often just make zigzaggy shapes often We get overwhelmed as artists and feel like we have to paint every leaf or branch or flower and our brains are amazing We can just suggest things and often it looks more painterly and beautiful when we suggest rather than spell everything out so I'm just giving indications of these trees and Miraculously our brains will say oh, that's a that's an evergreen tree without a lot of information God made our minds so Amazing and wonderful and as you can see, I'm just kind of following the reference image as a guideline I I did like pretty much the composition to everything in this so I just used it as a Rough guide to get creative and have some fun with this little piece now. I decided to Focus a little bit with this tutorial on using creative color getting creative with color and grabbing some of those colors you don't normally use have you ever noticed that as artists we get kind of Preconditioned to certain colors we grab. I know I do I can tell when I look at my palette of colors I'm like oh my gosh, this is some of the same colors I use all the time So I decided I was going to grab some colors out of the Sennelier set. I don't use a lot of oranges I mean, I know they're fall colors, but you can use them really anytime especially for underlying grasses You know because the earth and the dirt is More of a warm tone especially like in North Georgia You've got red clay and so I thought I'd grab some of the oranges out of the set And there were also some really interesting greens in that photo Not that I copied them exactly, but I thought this would be a fun experiment So that's if you're a patron of mine, that's gonna be one of the goals you can recreate from this painting also a perk of a patron is You get to share your homework from my lessons in our patreon group I have a homework album and a special Facebook group for my patron So I'll get to see what you do, but you can also if you're a patron of mine you can Use a whole different color palette like I said try to make it a goal to look at your colors that you have now I know if you're a beginner some of you just don't have many colors. I hear you. I was there I totally remember and we always want more right, but try to look at some of the colors You don't often use and just do a little Experimentation and you can do that a lot more easily when you're doing a small painting That's why last month's theme was tiny treasures. Oh my goodness my patrons you guys rocked that You did so great and I literally saw there were some of you who painted every day of the month a tiny painting and I saw your Improvement I was like. Oh my goodness a particular artist. I was like look at how she grew. It's awesome. All right, so That's a color. I never used that kind of brownish orange And I thought it would be kind of fun to lay it down in a little bit of the foreground Let me share a little bit with those background trees though that I've already painted now or part of it I put down the dark first and that you see how there's a little bit of a lighter green on the trees That's the beautiful Aspect of layering and that's why I often put down a dark first because it provides a background for a lighter color to be laid down to create color interest and Contrast and your painting is going to be so much more interesting if you layer those colors You're kind of creating new colors if you don't have a really hard Pressure or hard touch There's an expression. I think it's from artist Karen Margulis a light touch is the right touch and it took me a long time to Focus on Having a light touch while I focused on it. I didn't do it very well And now it's kind of just I do it unconsciously So try to keep a light touch and it is okay if little bits of the paper are peeking through for a long time I really loved this color too. It was kind of a Neutral gray teal and I thought it looked nice on those mountains now I just had a conversation with a few of the artist in the Monet cafe art group on Facebook that's a group anybody can ask to join and Some of the artists had bought the senel a lot of artists bought the senel a Paris collection set I shared the product review video and I think a lot of artists were like wow This was great price. I'm gonna get it and quite a few of you made the observation that I have made many pastel sets I don't have a lot of purples and it's the same with this set It did have one purple and one lavender that was the color I put down in the sky now That was a color. I thought would be kind of fun to use that lavender in the sky so I just kind of combined some lavender some blue and Kind of some teal and a lighter blue for the sky now I'm grabbing one of those interesting orangey colors again. These are colors. I don't often grab Anytime you have a pastel that's got a round shape to it You can really create some neat grasses by rolling the pastel or using the edge of it Oh, this is the green in this a gorgeous color. Why have I never used this color? I guess because I just don't think of seeing it in nature But it's it's in between a green and a yellow and I thought oh my goodness. This is so beautiful This is another color. I I don't think I've used a lot in this particular set And I thought it would be the perfect color. Here's a perfect example of layering. I'm layering over The blue mountains that I laid down originally. You see how that already made it look like there was some light shining on that mountain Here's another green. I don't use very often. This is kind of a weird green, but I like it and I Think I lean more towards the real earthy greens They're more yellowy greens and this is more of that just that grass green color And here's a darker green. I do I use this color. I think Figurally often you kind of tell how I've worn the pastel down a little bit And I'm using it just to create some little grassy shapes again I'm following the reference image just as a guide, but the more you paint the more you'll be able to branch out on your own and Just get real creative with your composition and your layout of things and elements in your painting Isn't this a beautiful green? It's such a neutral soft green. I'm layering it over some of the other colors just creating some little Interesting color a playing of color colors play around with each other as you lay them down And so the more layers that I add the more interesting it's becoming now You want to be careful not to overlay or you know You can create your painting or get it muddy looking and you can actually crush the pastels to where they don't have the same vibrancy Pastel mat is a surface you can get quite a bit of layering if you're working on an unsanded surface You're really limited with your layering, but you can still create nice art pieces on unsanded paper I have quite a few videos on that. This is not of the Sennelier set. You can tell by the shape It is rectangular. I think I've broken this one in half. That was a Terry Ludwig purple I was using now. This is back to a Sennelier pastel I put the dark Terry Ludwig purple down again for contrast and I'm layering these pink flowers on the tops so it's like the purple is the base the dark purple and The pink is the top where the sunlight would be shining and so I'm just giving them some little neat shapes to these flowers and Popping in a few more that are just the little pinks that are smaller in other places This was a pretty blue I thought I'd add a little bit of that to that background matte Mountain just a little bit more more color back there and I'm using it to kind of negatively Paint in between some of the trees. You'll see me do that a little bit more Maybe with this color. This is that really neat gray teal color again and those places that I I wasn't real Um Detailed about getting down in that mountain but now I can go in and negatively paint kind of between some of the tree shapes and I love negative painting. I think it gives a real painterly look I thought I'd brighten up the sky a little bit with a little bit more of that light blue and Often just so you know Typically with skies your darker values are at the upper heavens and it gets lighter as you come down to the horizon Or to in this case behind the mountain it also gets a little bit warmer in color Typically now I'm adding another pretty color just to give a little bit more color interest to that middle mountain I'm blending a little bit with my finger. I don't over blend with my fingers, but sometimes I soften it up Now here's where I was at the point of the zoom meeting and yes, I started that meeting with that pastel on my nose. I Literally said to the people running the meeting. I was like, oh my gosh. I have pastel on my face But I decided to work a little bit. I didn't work for the whole 20 minutes. You can see now Well, we're about 13 minutes into this video on the YouTube video I'm making here, but I think I had worked, you know, I've chopped this up a little bit I think I had worked about 15 minutes. So I went back. This was a really interesting color It was from a Schminke pastel set. I wasn't sure I liked it. It was about kind of like a red pink But it was vibrant definitely vibrant now. Here's another one of those neat things about round pastels I'm making some stems to some of the flowers. I often like to use To me the thinner you go with these stems the better they look really More delicate and I like to use you'll see me later use a prismacolor new pastel They're harder. They're actually a really great pastel to have in your your palette of pastels and they're they're more affordable They're harder and longer and skinnier. Here's that pretty. This is a different one. This is not as neutral as the other Teal gray color I had and it's a little more blue. Now. Why would I do that a little darker a little more color? Well, we're getting closer. So the mountains get things in the foreground get a little darker They're also down kind of in the shadows of the mountains. So I just went a hint More saturation and color and just a hint darker in value And you see how it gave depth to that middle ground mountain and now the other mountain is further away Lighter in value because things far away get lighter in value and cooler in color temperature So these little rules I often say Painting isn't hard once you know the rules That's something I plan to share a lot on my pastel live session That I have on color. I'm gonna share some really simple rules And hopefully give you some tools to make it easier to paint. This is that pretty blue again I often like to pull a color that I've used somewhere else in the painting Incorporate it in other places. It brings color harmony. It connects the painting and Also, too often in deep grasses. We do get some cooling off of color temperatures We don't usually have really warm greens in deeper grasses. We can have purples and cool blues Now here's a brown. I don't think I've ever used. I thought it would be neat to add some Little flower heads and things that were you know, there's a lot of times in grasses We'd love to paint flowers that are freshly bloomed But we often have little things that are are at the tail end of their life. They're dead and dying and Bless their hearts. We need to add them too. It is all part of nature Now I did decide to make these a little highlight on them They almost look kind of like little hay or you know these little types of wispy grasses that grow up that look like wheat Wheat is what I'm thinking of so I'm just playing around with shapes You don't have to have them all exact. I had tried a yellow on that I didn't have it included in this video clip, but it was just too bright. It stood out too much So that's why I grabbed that color and again, this is a color I don't think I've ever used it in the Sennelier set and it's really interesting So it turned out to be a mountain meadow That almost looked a little bit more fallish, but it just had a Neat color palette to it. I really liked it So I definitely am encouraging you guys to grab some of those colors that you don't often use and Just play I think that's what we forget as artists often is to play like kids with coloring books and crayons You don't see them getting all crazy and fussy Well, especially you know young kids they just go for it. So play around now I'm using this darker. This is part of the Sennelier set darker really pretty dark green It's kind of like a cool dark green and I shaped up some of the trees a little better Ooh, this is that pretty green again. I just had it for a second. This is once again another Terry Ludwig pastel you see the rectangular shape. It had such a neat magenta rosy color I thought that would make some interesting little flower heads and And once again if you're a patron, I'm gonna share my patron color notes with you guys And if you have the set you'll be able to create recreate most of this painting just from the set with maybe just a Couple of other colors thought I'd add a little bit of that into sometimes these flowers They had a few other little Pedals coming off that were not just the bright pink. Here's another color. I don't know if I've ever used isn't that a gorgeous orange Mustardy kind of like a turmeric. You guys know what turmeric is. It's supposed to be really healthy for you I drink it. I don't know why it's healthy for for me, but but I drink it I make a turmeric tea This is a pretty blue that I've definitely used this blue before but it's just so pretty This is the purple that's in the Sennelier set. It's what I would call the only real purple It's kind of in between a purple and blue. It's a really pretty color this is once again that color that I don't ever use and You know, I'm not gonna do too much more to this I get to the point to where I need to obey my own Instruction, which is to walk away Sometimes I'm just having fun and I overwork my painting just because I don't want to stop I usually have on some either classical music. I love the cellist celloist. How do you say it? He plays the cello his name's house or h a u s e r Wow, his music is fantastic. He's not hard on the eyes either ladies and he looks like my youngest son I can't help but love him. He looks so much like my son But anyway, so now I I knew there were like these little golden rods. I think that's what they're called and So I put down a little bit of an interesting green and then added some of this pretty yellow green to it Isn't that a neat color? Why have I not been using some of these colors? I don't know But this was a good exercise for me and I hope it will be for you too. This is a real pretty green Changed my mind. Obviously. Oh, no, I'm adding I'm putting it down like I always say for a little bit of dark value to add the lighter on top for contrast It usually just shows up so much better when you put that darker value down There's another example of it right there and Now here are the Prismacolor new pastels. You see they're longer. They're thinner. They're harder They're still considered soft pastels, but they're harder than a lot of the really soft pastels They're not quite as expensive now. None of the good pastels. I'd say professional grade pastels are really cheap So if you don't scrimp on your pastels and if you're just starting out as a beginner You probably have to do like I did if you're have to watch your budget like I did and still do is the Rembrandt's I also did a product review video. You can find it on my Amazon shop for Rembrandt micro sets. They're these little five piece. Are they five or six piece? I can't remember but they're little sets that are according to color family and value and You can really create some nice little paintings with these. They're much more affordable it's kind of a neat way to start and Rembrandt's were my first set of serious pastels now I bought the Pastels not knowing what to do like a lot of you guys have probably done I went to like Joanns or Michaels craft store and I bought one of the well I'm not gonna name brands because I don't want to I don't want to hurt a company or whatever But there are brands in those places that are They're just mostly binder. They're not a lot of color So that's why they look so flat in color a whole lot of binder not a lot of color Wasn't this a pretty color? It was kind of like a little pink purple now What I'm doing here, it was a little light on the base I like my foreground to be a little bit darker. So I covered up the top and I'm spraying low odor fixative It's a company Blair. The product is Blair low odor fixative now. It looks crazy right now I kind of like the little splotches, but you see it dried But mainly what this is going to do is it gives you a little bit more grit to your paper It allows you to get another layer in where it sort of sets what you already have in place So it kind of set those grasses. So now I can layer with this purple I thought adding just a glaze of purple over some of those foreground grasses Would give it just a nice moody feel and make the grasses feel a little bit deeper so that's just a neat trick you can do with fixative and I'll stress here a question. I get probably one of the most popular questions I get How do you protect your final painting? Do you spray fixative on it? I never spray fixative on my final painting because it does just what you saw it will darken the painting and I Really pastel paintings don't need to be fixed if you protect them correctly I use clear bags that I get from clear bags calm. I have a video I think it's called storage solutions or something Let me see if I can remember to put a little link up here where I'm at 22 minutes into the video I'll make me a note. I'll put a little card up in the top corner It's a it'll show you a lot about how to store your pastel paintings. I store them in little Sketch pads sometimes I use a black sketch pad sometimes I use a white sketch pad And I protect the pastels on the pages with tracing paper So I have all of that in that video So here is the final painting sometimes it looks better on my easel sometimes getting a good photo is hard to do But it was a fun and carefree mountain meadow. Oh, and I often forget to mention. I do have a Monet cafe art store It's Accessible at the bottom of every video you can just look down to the bottom of this video on your screen and see the products I just added this new Monet cafe live love paint coffee mug I designed this one to where it wraps all the way around the cup. I really like that So it's $12, but you know the shipping is probably like $5 where I live anyway So if you got to have it, it's cool. You can have art and coffee together I have a few other fun products on there one of them is my van go t-shirt. It says I designed this it says Van Go van going van gone anyway, so I'm just having fun with my art store I hope you guys learned a lot with that if you're a patron of mine You know what to do recreate from this share in the homework album have fun You guys are awesome, and I love all you guys happy painting and God bless