 Welcome to Monet Cafe Studio and we're going to discover are these the hottest pink pastels ever? I think they are. I'm calling this painting Soul Fire and I think you'll see why. Whether you're an experienced soft pastel artist or you're just excited about trying soft pastels for the first time, I think you're going to love this tutorial and be sure to keep watching. I'm going to share something fascinating about this reference image. I am just so excited about this and now let's talk about these products. I was on a quest to find some really vibrant pinks and I found this set of Jack Richardson hand rolled soft pastels. There's so much I love about these. I'm going to talk about them more in the lesson and it's a set that's just called Reds and it's 40 pastels of reds, oranges, fluorescent pinks and the surface that I'll be using it's called pastel board BORD and it's made by Ampersand. I like the white. It's actually a board it's sturdy. I like the white because I can tone it myself but for this painting I actually used the color gray. They have different colors, different sizes and this is a 12 by 16 size. Here is where I'm choosing additional pastels for this painting and you can see the reference image here. Okay there is something fascinating about this reference image. I actually created it with AI technology. Some of you may know I lean a little on the techie side. I majored in graphic design and I love this stuff. I've been learning and playing with a program called Adobe Firefly. It is still a beta version. I'm not sure everyone can even get it but it is a wonderful way for me to paint with words and create reference images that I see in my mind. I also gave it the prompt to create the images in my style. It seems I have enough content in the cyber world for AI to draw from because of my YouTube channel and it's just fun, fascinating and a wonderful way for me to create reference images with verbal prompts using my imagination. I go into more about how I do this in my Patreon version of this video. I also share a bit more about some of the ethical concerns with this and why the method I'm using I feel is very kosher to use for creating original paintings. And speaking of painting let's get to it right now. By the way if you would like the additional content it's real easy become a patron of mine on my Patreon page. It's only $5 a month. You get hundreds of lessons. You get to share your work and become part of my beautiful Patreon community. And while we're at it I would love it if you would go ahead and like this video. Leave me a comment, let me know your thoughts and also please subscribe to this channel and become part of the Monet Cafe family. Alright here we go. This is my setup. I have my initial pastels and my beautiful Richardson reds and pinks and I do add a few more pastels as I work. And because my painting surface the Ampersand pastel board is a little heavy I have a technique where I use a large paint stick. I tape it to my painting board with artist tape and hey so far so good. I've never had it fall off yet. This is a white Derwent charcoal pencil because the surface is gray I just decided to use a white charcoal pencil to go ahead and get in an initial sketch. All I'm doing is getting my large flower shapes and just a very basic composition with my horizon line and a few of the tree line shapes in the distance. So I like to just keep it simple at this stage and the looser and more gestural you keep things the more your painting is going to lean towards that painterly and impressionistic style. And that's really just about it. Now it's time to paint. And initially it's best to do something called blocking in. This is a very loose beginning stage with pastel painting actually with many mediums where you're basically covering the surface with its initial layer of value and color. And you'll notice that I'm just getting in kind of a dark value. This pastel this is not one of the Richardson pastels. It's a really beautiful magenta kind of a neutral magenta Terry Ludwig pastel. It's kind of a square shape. Normally it's rectangular but I break mine in half. Oh and that's one of the things I love about Jack Richardson pastels when you see me use them. They're the perfect size. I always say it's like Goldilocks. You know she was like oh this one's too hot this one's too cold and this one's just right. Well there's some pastels that just are too big and chunky and I often break them but the Jack Richardson's are this perfect workable size for me. I just love them. So I am blocking in just some of the shapes of the flowers. I'm using a color that I know is one of the darker values and colors in the flowers. And notice how loose this is. Now when I first started pastel painting I had no idea what I was doing. This is why I started the Monet Cafe YouTube channel because I had to search and find ways to do things and I thought I'm gonna help other people so it's not quite so hard for them. Now I am speeding this up a bit more. I've got all my flowers in and I'm still doing the blocking in. I'm just getting the basic colors and values to begin the painting. And again when I was first starting out with pastels I felt like I needed to go ahead with each little item almost like a paint by number and give each flower make it perfect before I moved on to something else. And when you work that way you're going to lose that painterly style where it looks like a beautiful dream you know. If you like that style you probably do if you're hanging out on this channel because that is totally how I love to paint. So embrace this I call it an adolescent stage of a painting because it is really the foundation that's going to create an impressionistic painting. So I'm really just getting in colors that I see in general in the reference image and I know that the process of layering is going to allow me to develop those colors and values as I work. And by the way this version on the Monet Café channel the one you're watching here is sped up substantially. I'm still giving commentary but the addition of this lesson over on my Patreon page is barely sped up at all and I talk for the entire video so there's always a lot more content over on my Patreon page but you can still get lots of good free content here on the Monet Café channel. Now I'm getting a little bit of a darker value to the trees and some of these grasses. If you squint your eyes and look at the reference image you can see that's where the darks are. Definitely that tree line. Those two flowers on the left side there they're actually pretty dark. Again squint your eyes and you'll see what I'm saying and it's because they're backlit. The sun is you know in front of the flowers it's causing a shadow on the back side and the flowers that are the lightest are obviously going to be the ones in the direct path of the sunlight. I'm kind of painting around two little flower shapes. I didn't paint them in because I knew they were going to be really light. Again they were right in that direct path of the sun. You'll see me later develop those with a really light pink. So here I'm getting the darks in. You see the base of the flowers right where it meets the stem is is pretty dark and I wanted to get that magenta in the tree line as well. I know there's a little warmth there because the sun is shining behind it. I wanted to mention quickly that this AI image took some time to bring into existence. It's not like you just type it in and get what you want. I had to give it the right prompts and again struck it to create it in my style of painting which is really cool. It really is my style of painting. All right it's time for these beautiful red and pink and orange Jack Richardson pastels. Real quickly I just wanted to mention that I was just so happy to see a little bit more about Jack Richardson online on the about section on his website. His story is just beautiful and hopeful and it's a family affair. I'll try to remember to include a link so you can read it yourself. I just love this stuff. I've already mentioned how much I love this size of pastel. This is not a half stick. This is their full stick and for me it's the perfect size for painting. Now unfortunately a little bit of this footage coming up is out of focus. I held up that pastel. It focused on it and locked into it but this section isn't very long here. Here we go. So all I'm doing now I typically work from dark to light when doing flowers and other elements and always feel like I'm building them from the inside out. I like to look at the darkest deepest inner parts of the flower and see what those values are and then gradually build out from it to add the final highlights and the lightest values at the end. Now why would I be using this pretty purple? This is kind of a warm purple and it's because there is a shadow side to these flowers and it's cooler in the shadows so it really does add a little bit of spice to the flowers as well. Now look at this gorgeous pink. There are so many beautiful colors in this set and I totally love it. The next painting I'm going to do I think I'm going to focus on either the oranges or the reds in this set. I also want to share a little bit more about the concept of layering with soft pastels. Isn't that a beautiful fluorescent pink? I love it. This is something I didn't understand when I first started to paint. As I mentioned I would literally paint like a paint by number. I looked for that exact color in the reference image and I would try to find a color that looked much like that color and add it and what ends up happening is your painting doesn't have that lively color that vibrates and as a result my paintings looked rather flat with color if that makes sense. So I learned over the years that the layering technique allows for you to reproduce color much like it behaves in nature. In real life colors are always interacting with each other bouncing off of each other and by gently layering colors over each other keeping a light touch it's very important. You're not pressing really hard but you're allowing the pastels to peek through and interact with each other and we actually create new colors by gently layering colors over and next to each other. I had a tutorial not long ago where I created a painting of green apples using not one green pastel. I used blue and yellow what makes green. So we really can mix color right on the surface and that's good news because if you're a beginner pastel artist you can actually create some exciting color with a limited palette and it's a lot of fun. So if you're a brand new artist and just learning about pastels then you're gonna love the fact that I have lots of beginner videos. I have playlist of beginner videos and we also have a Monet cafe art group on Facebook. You can join that and if you want a little bit more of course you can become a patron of mine on my patreon page. I've slowed down this last part to real time and I'm letting you see my final marks. This is where it's fun for me. I've gotten in you know really pretty much everything but I get to add my little final marks that add a little bit of spice and focal point energy. I'm finishing up here and I must say I truly loved this set of Jack Richardson pastels. I love all of their pastels specifically their hand rolled pastels and I also loved working from this glorious reference image. I would love to hear thoughts from you guys. Again I am using it in a way where I'm working more from something that's like a photograph rather than having AI create a painting. So I find it's a neat way to make reference images out of your imagination. So I hope you guys enjoyed this. Here is the final thank you for being a part of Monet cafe. If you haven't subscribed yet I hope you will become a patron if you'd like and as always God bless and happy painting.