 Welcome to Monet Cafe. I'm artist Susan Jacobson. Can you tell I'm enjoying this winter theme? Today we're gonna have some fun. Just relax and we're gonna paint an adorable snowman. I did this again on some black paper. I'm gonna show you how to do that and I let my patrons from my Patreon page vote on whether or not I should add snow to Mr. Frosty here and they pretty much all of them overwhelmingly said yes give him some snow so I'll teach you how to do that. Also I've been loving painting snowmen for years. This is one that I did last year as a tutorial here on the channel. Snowmen are always fun to paint and if you haven't subscribed I hope you'll do that right now. We have a lot of fun here. Also if you'd like to support this channel on my Patreon page I would appreciate it. It's how I can keep these free videos coming to all of you and here's the reference image. It's from unsplash.com and this photographer, Kristen Tarzi, I like he said I'm a flawless creative and hard working guy except when I see a dog then I have to go play with him. Sorry for that. So just a shout out to Christian for that lovely photo. Now here I am once again using the Arteza black paper that's made for acrylic and for oil paints and what's this white stuff I'm putting on here? Well it's not going to stay white. This is clear gesso, not regular gesso. It dries clear and it has little bits of sand in it. I know that sounds weird if you've never done any pastel painting or seen any of my do-it-yourself pastel papers. You can even see a little bit of the sand after I blow it dry. See how it dried clear and that little some of those sand pieces just brush right off. But this paper because it's water-friendly receives the clear gesso so well and it gives just an extra little sandy surface so that I can get more pastel layers and get more vibrant color. You can work on it unsanded but I really like giving it a little bit of grit and texture. You can also do the same tutorial with whatever you have. You can do this in other mediums if you want. The point of this is to have some fun, enjoy the holidays, celebrate our risen Savior. I don't like to just say Jesus was born but that he was resurrected and he's alive and he's saved a sinner like me. Okay I'll quit preaching now. I know some of you guys have a hard time with that. Back to art Susan. I'll try to contain myself. Alright I'm just doing some general shapes. This is super basic right? I just made a horizon line in the back and by the way this is a new pastel. They're little sticks or long kind of rectangular sticks of pastel that are a little bit harder than most pastels so they're they're great for sketching and they're also great for under paintings and I happen to really like my new pastels. I use them a lot. They don't get the glory that the real softy pastels do. Many of the soft pastels have the most vibrant color. I need to do a video one day just describing how pastels are made and what makes pastels different hardness and softness. It's also interesting. Alright so I got a little shape in of the snowman. Now there's a hill behind him in this reference image and there's really no sky showing in this and the hill is a little bit well it is I'm gonna make it purposely more subdued but with anything's far away you can break out your artistic license and give it more of a or increase your focal point which is the snowman by decreasing the amount of detail in a background and just making it more subtle. So that's what I have in my mind and I'm just using such a light touch to get in my big shapes and values and I think that was probably one of the things that I struggled with early on in my pastel art journey. Well my art journey period pastels are one of the first mediums I I tried and got a little bit more serious with it and one of the mistakes I made was I thought I had to create too much too soon. I thought it had to start looking like something you know worthwhile before they really do and you end up working on one area over working it you're painting by the end loses that impressionistic painterly effect that's one of the questions I get all the time too is how do you keep your work loose and painterly by working the whole and by not being afraid to let it not look like much until it all comes together and if you're new at this don't feel bad I mean I think everybody has to kind of go through the same journey you know but with perseverance and a positive attitude you can do it. Sometimes I'll use my finger to blend a little bit and but but not a lot I'm gonna bring out another blending tool right here other than my finger. It's called pipe foam insulation you can get it at a hardware store literally the stuff you use to insulate pipes. I don't know what artist originally came up with this I've seen artist Karen Margulis use this a lot and it works quite well for softening things and but I stress don't over blend especially when we get to the final layers we want to keep that crisp bright color that's inherent to soft pastels especially in our focal point area. Now you see how the snow in the foreground or where the snowman is is lighter that background hill seems like it's in shadow and that brings me to a point of we're going to consider the source of light we always want to do that when painting and in this particular case the light seemed like it was coming from the upper right maybe a little bit behind that hill somehow it's not hitting the hill quite as much but it's hitting the snowman on his right or his left side our right side of his head body and bottom section there so that's going to be something that I develop later you'll see me first work working my darker values first middle to dark values now the paper is already dark so I don't have to put in a lot of dark colors with this that's the neat thing about working on a black surface and once again you can use whatever you want the same principles apply if you're working on a white surface but you might have to add some more darks because your paper is going to be lighter I like working on black surfaces so you won't see me adding a lot of darks but I'm going to reserve the layering of lighter pastels until probably more mid midway to the towards the end of this video you'll see that snowman come to life he's going to look dark for a little while I've just scumbled in some shapes of trees these trees are far away they look almost like weeds in the background and I'm just making myself some little notes as to where they are I'll go in later and I'll give a little bit more shadow and highlights to that hill and carve in some of the shapes of the trees a little bit more I try to resist the urge to keep working on any one area just get it in and move on because that way once again your paintings going to feel whole and it's going to make more sense as a whole and it's not going to be so tight and overworked by the way this is all real time and because it was just a small fun painting I think it was about 30 minutes long and I wanted you guys to be able to just relax maybe you can even do this during Christmas time you know I know Christmas is busy usually with family and eating and all of that but usually there's some fun downtime if you've got family members or kids or grandkids and you want to do a little fun project this one might be fun and if you don't have pastels and you have some watercolor laying around I also have a Christmas watercolor tutorial that I uploaded a week or so ago and that one is super basic and fun you can even buy the little templates it's only five dollars for 12 templates that you can use it you know this is super easy beginner type of watercolor fun lessons so I'll try to include that yes I'll do that I'll try to include that as the link at the end of this video or maybe I'll even put it up here I have this way I can put little cards for information up at the top right corner so that's a really good and fun one to do around the holidays as well so now I've worked a lot of the the blue and teal areas I love blues teals and purples for snow it just is so much more interesting than grays you know and so the area that I did in the pink and the lavender that's a little bit more of the area where the sun is hitting now why do you think it would be more pink and lavender rather than blue and teal well pink is a warmer tone and lavender is a warmer tone than blue and the sun has warmth so I always say you know it's really not all that hard when you really just think about the logic of it all wherever the sun is it's going to be brighter and it's going to be warmer and if you don't know what warm and cool colors are get a color wheel get a pocket color wheel I have all these little tools I use I have an Amazon store in my videos always have a link to my Amazon store and I have things categorized to make it easy for you to find things you don't have to buy them on the Amazon store I get a teeny kick back but it doesn't cost you anything it's the same cost for you but it just makes it easier for you to find some of these things and the one with the color wheel is studio tools I think it's called and I have a grayscale finder on there it's really cheap it's like a dollar a couple bucks something like that so these little tools will help you to understand more about color theory I think often color theory people get afraid of it all like it's so difficult and gosh the more I've learned about it I'm like well it's really it's common sense you know so I love making things simple like that now you can see I'm adding think of these like spheres you know have you ever done the a sphere a circle and you consider where your light is and that's where your highlight is then you've got your mid values then you've got your darker values kind on the backside then you've got a little shadow we've got your cast shadow got a little bit of light popping back up on one area so that's all I'm doing here these are literally just three balls that I'm giving the values to and this is I would say my middle middle value blue and this by the way this pastel I have in my hand is a mount vision pastel this one too and they are from a set that's called thunderstorm gray I love this set because it has neutrals in it that obviously are nice for thunderstorm type of painting but they're just this is another one they're just nice neutrals they still have color they're not the the pastels that have the most brilliant or high saturation but they're just a really nice set to get some nice easy neutral tones in and Mount Vision Pastels happens to be the manufacturing facility happens to be in the Tampa Bay area of Florida where I am and I went and did a tour and met the owner and he's such a neat guy Carl Kelly and he gave me a tour and I made a video so I think that one's called how pastels are made so I've got over 600 videos here on the Monet Cafe channel and it's been a labor of love and but I tell you I am so so grateful that I started my Patreon page I would not have been able to keep doing this guys because my husband and I we lost our jobs due to COVID and someone had asked and said would you start a Patreon page but people would like to support you and I was hesitant about doing it I thought man that's gonna be a lot of work and it's been work but I love it we have the greatest family of artists as my patrons and it's just really neat so I'm sorry if I sound like I talk about that all the time but it's a it's a great part of my life actually I love you guys so now you can see again where's the source of light remember I said to the upper right our right and if the Sun is casting a shadow or casting its light on that area that's why I gave it a little bit of a warmer tone and a pink and a mauve color is that now it's getting cooler it's still not a super dark value in the middle area it's the mid middle tones so I'm cooling it off a bit with that blue and again if you can keep that principle in mind and you don't have to really be confused about how color works it's like I always say we cool off in the shade so that's the same thing that happens with colors so I'm going to give you guys some Christmas music I've been making a lot of videos in December and labor of love of course I've got another one coming that's beginner focused the last two that I did I'd say we're more intermediate but this next series is gonna be really focused for the beginner we're gonna do four winter landscapes and keep it really simple on watercolor paper and I'll once again be using the clear gesso to give a little sanded surface so if you're a real beginner keep an eye out for that video again make sure you subscribe and hit the bell icon because then you get notified when I upload a new video okay so the music I'm gonna add I really love adding the music and you guys comment let me know it's fun for me I like I kind of like doing the videos as well even though they they're time consuming they take a lot of work but I do enjoy videography but the music is a fun part for me I'm a musician I sing and write songs I might even jump in and sing along with some of them maybe I shouldn't do that but I recently found another place where I can get some music I can share and not get a copyright issue so these are some a little fun jazzy Christmas songs enjoy put this in while you're having Christmas and listen to the songs while I paint a snowman and I'll be back when I add the snow oh here he is a little bit of a photo before I start adding some of the other highlights all right here's the music I'm done for now I'll be back and it's ending right at this point where I decided to put his arms which are like twigs and you know I was actually listening to some praise and worship music while I was painting and I just decided he's got to have his arms raised praise in the Lord and so you know Christmas is really a time it should be a time of family and love and celebrating like this happy snowman and as I mentioned at the beginning of the video I I love adding snow to paintings especially kind of whimsical paintings like this I kind of liked him without snow as well so I made a poll for my patrons on my patreon page and they overwhelmingly voted add snow and while there were some who felt a little like I did like why it looks good without the snow too so I decided to add some snow and I'm going to show you guys how to do that now I want to say I'm adding a little bit of this brown here once again the Sun is hitting him on that right side and so when if it's a stick you know it's going to be a little brown some warm tones so here he is praising the Lord and just like me and yes see I had to even make a little thing to put on my Instagram page but now I'm going to show you how to add snow now I did do this for Instagram and often when you make something on Instagram that's like a real you have to do it in a vertical format so pardon the vertical format but you're going to see real quickly all I do is get a cheese grater and some pastels I use not just white or light colored but sometimes I'll even use a little blue and I just scrape a little bit on there I put a piece of tracing paper on top because you know this would fall right off if you didn't do what I'm doing now then I get anything round I'm using a candle you could use a rolling pin or whatever press it in and it sticks into the surface so wasn't that fun and I may have gotten a little heavy-handed with the snow he looks like he's in a blizzard but he's happy and that's what counts and keep an eye out for those beginner winter scenes that I will be uploading hopefully within a week God bless you all thank you for making Monet cafe special and merry Christmas and happy painting