 Hello my sweet sweet friends in Monet Cafe. I am so thankful to be able to bring you this video because so many of you have been asking how everything is going. Many of you who are subscribers know that my studio and my home has been flooded because of Hurricane Irma. Way too much to go into here but I know many of you have asked how things are going. I was able to save many of my art supplies. I can't get to them right now. Some things were lost and many things in our home were lost but you know what as Americans we have way too much stuff anyway. So we are living in a travel trailer now and we're actually restoring another property that we had. It was an old home that we were kind of doing like the fixer-upper show trying to renovate it and it's coming along. It's going to be a little while but the process of restoration of our home that flooded is going to take a while. Again a lot lost but you know our home is in heaven so we are going to be just fine and the thing I miss the most are the spiritual things not the physical things the things that I love the painting. It's not about the actual painting is about the process and of course sharing with all of you and communicating with you actually now in our Facebook group. I miss that. I mean I log in and I see the beautiful paintings but I'm not able to share my videos anymore for the moment so that's why the title of this video is Monet Cafe Lives On. We will get things recovered and be able to I already have ideas for the next studio. I think it will probably be just a few months before I'm able to start making videos again. So that's my hope and my prayer and the great thing is Monet Cafe is not flooded away by the floodwaters it lives on through all of you and I'm so thankful that it is about it's about us it's not about me and we have a beautiful group of people learning and growing together. Please join the Facebook group if you haven't already if you're seeing this video for the first time please subscribe to this channel because again Monet Cafe is coming back stronger than ever and it's because of all of you. So anyway without further ado I think it's appropriate this final painting that I did before the flood was of this lion. It's a very spiritual image for me. The Bible speaks of the Lion of the tribe of Judah where our creator will come back and restore all things to the beauty and the perfection that it was intended to be and so wow is that just like so poetic or what and very appropriate with the situation I'm in. So enjoy this I am going to do a voiceover and give a lot of instruction on how to approach this painting not just painting animals painting people with using a lot of colors that you wouldn't normally think if you're a beginning artist you wouldn't think oh I can't use purples and greens in in the in faces or in animals and for fur but there's some really nice little things you can use strategies of color that you can use that will make your painting pop with color and and stand out as art rather than just a reproduction of a photograph. So relax enjoy and I'm so glad to be bringing you this video and I'm so thankful I recorded this before the flood. Anyway love all of you and here we go. Okay so at this point you can see I have in my sketch I think I actually did use just regular pencil you know kind of lightly to do the the the drawing and now I don't use pastel pencils often unless as in this case I need to get into a really small area and I'm going to be focusing a lot on getting this eye correct in portrait work whether it's people or animals it is so crucial to anatomically get things correct especially that eye you know they say the eye is the window of a soul of the soul and I believe that is true and it's true in art that you know for your work to look professional there's some things that are worth taking the time to measure and get correct and even though I have the pencil sketch at this point you can see with my hand there I'm I'm constantly measuring still you know because I want to get even my values and my shading and everything accurate and in the correct places so here I am using a medium to dark value purple and what I'm doing is basically getting in a value study I talk about value studies all the time in my other videos and so the same thing applies when you're working on any type of portrait work you've got to basically just get in the darks and the lights and then start a carving out I always think I'm like carving as much as I'm painting with pastels I just love this medium but also notice too that I use what I call I don't know if it's the correct term but just directional strokes that's one of the tips that I like to give with with portrait work or really anything landscapes you want your your strokes to go in the direction that they would in in real life and so whenever I'm doing like the fur you want to lay those values in directionally you know how it's falling how it's how it is laying on the face and so you may notice that that's how I try to maneuver the pastels now I'm using a dark I believe it's a Terry Ludwig dark might be even the eggplant because the darkest area the darkest value in this in the face of this lion if you look at the reference image you can see it's the nose most definitely especially that left lower side of the nose and the creases in the mouth you know where it joins the bottom jaw there and also the eye there's some dark shading on that crease of the eye and also up in the ear that you can't see where I've cropped it off here so I'm just once again you've got to establish the darkest darks so that the rest of your values will be cohesive and an accurate so now I'm getting in some of those lighter values I noticed down actually under the chin now you can't see because I'm using this I'm getting the reds in the nose there but I saw some pinks even in that fur underneath the chin so I just got in a lighter pink just to kind of not just establish value but a establish my color palette I'm praying right there and praising the Lord in fast motion there so again I'm I'm looking now to always at where is my light source and it's usually pretty easy to find it you just look where the light is highlighting on something and in this case in the reference photo you can see the light source is on from the the right side you can see it on the nose on the the bottom of the chin and so I'm constantly look at my face looks funny there I'm squinting I always give that a suggestion squint you know squint your eyes really tightly and look at your reference image and you'll be able to see the lightest values so again now I got in the dark values now I got in those light values where the where the sunlight is shining on the nose and the chin now again I'm establishing more of the the color values now see how I grabbed that green again like I said you can use green and purples and colors that you wouldn't normally think are in a face but they are so many times we think that faces like a human face is tan or different shades of brown but depending on the light in the room or the light from the Sun there are so many colors that are in in shadows and and in the light and what's a great thing to do as an artist is to train yourself to see these colors not in real life you know in your everyday life is to constantly study you know even if you're just looking at someone or something and and just ask yourself what colors are in this I get asked all the time is how do you know to pick up that green or and I think it just comes from being a student of the world and also to one thing I will say that has helped me in knowing what types of colors I can use is working in Photoshop I have been able to use Photoshop to basically just get a little sample of a color somewhere in a reference photo and I will see that when it does the color picker it's called if you're familiar with Photoshop you'll know what that is then you can see what the color is and often it's not what you think it is so that that really helps a lot that might be a little advanced but but anyway going to continue to work here for a bit and add some commentary so now you can see I am beginning to sketch in the background still keeping it very loose nothing very detailed or descriptive at this point I did happen to like in this photo the reference photo how the background was very blurry that's a wonderful technique that you can use which is actually correct with with good art is that our distant images get less value less color and less detail and it's just a great illusion that we can do to create that sense of depth now I apologize here I had some camera problems I didn't realize somehow my camera was not recording so you can see it jumped ahead into the painting but you know you can see now here I am working on getting that I and again it is so crucial for me to get that it's it's like an emotion I want to capture with his eye I want it to be confident and fierce yet loving at the same time if that can be accomplished again I think of the biblical reference of the line of the tribe of Judah which represents Christ and at his return there will be some fierceness to make things right again and but it is all in love he is love and so that is what I'm trying to get accomplished in in this eye and I often pray while I'm painting and I did end up liking the finished expression that was accomplished after this painting so you can see now I mean it's just more than you think when you're trying to get the values right around the eye I had to add that that white underneath the eye also to not just studying what you see but studying your subject matter in general is always a good idea for example get online or wherever and start studying lions look at how their facial structure is of their bone structure look at how their markings are and I know typically that the lions do have that white kind of around the bottom of their eye and and around their nose and of course on their chin too so you know just constantly analyzing and learning art is never ending and it's a wonderful thing we can continue forever and never exhaust the things we can learn as artists so I apologize sometimes if you hear noise on this video I'm trying to help that as much as possible to make the audio clear but where we're staying now until we can get a home renovated is in a travel trailer that happens to be kind of near a road it's pretty good right now but sometimes it gets rather noisy but anyway so I'm gonna continue to just let you guys enjoy the painting process and I may pop back in here every so often now you can see I'm further establishing the background I did like how when I had just blocked it in before how those trees in the background almost looked like the three crosses on the hill you know at Calvary but I thought that might be a little too cliche so I thought it's probably best just to have it a subdued forest so again I'm working on getting that pushed back so that it's believable as distant trees again you don't want sharp edges you don't want a lot of detail you don't want dark values or bold color in background distant things you know whether it's forest or mountains or whatever and so I'm getting the warmer grasses towards the front and cooler greens and blues in the background also too I wasn't quite sure on in the reference image you see that log that's like looks like he's standing near a big log or a tree can't really tell what it is and I was praising the Lord again it wasn't clear on whether or not I wasn't clear on whether or not I should leave that in in there so that's why I'm kind of avoiding it and if you've seen the final painting you can see I decided it was a bit of a distraction I decided just to make it more like a non-descript grasses or whatever in the background so that the main focal point is him and that's one neat trick you can do as an artist too is you control what the viewer focuses on by what you give more detail less detail more value less value and in this case I want it to be the lion of course then I want the eye to play around in the image a little bit and meander through the painting so then I can kind of get an idea of where I want the focal points to be so that's something you just get better at in time and you know anybody can learn to do this some people do have more of an artistic gift than others the Lord gives everybody their own gifts and so you know don't get discouraged if these things don't come quickly to you because just like anybody can learn to play piano you know you can learn it there are rules you can follow some people just happen to have that beautiful gift and so if you love it you most likely have a gift and you may not have the same gifts others have you you don't actually nobody has the same gifts but you absolutely can learn it and as I always stress I want you to enjoy art not constantly comparing yourself to others or getting so frustrated see I'm talking to myself here because these are things I have done I don't do it as much anymore I really have learned to enjoy the process I got the greatest compliment from someone who commented on in a one of the comments on on one of my videos and they said I was like a female Bob Ross I loved that if you're as old as me you remember Bob Ross he was the gentleman who who had the crazy hair and would teach painting lessons I believe it was on public television and he didn't only teach painting but he encouraged and inspired and you just felt at peace when you watched him and so again that is the greatest compliment because I hope not just I'm giving art lessons but I hope I'm giving just some positive feelings as well now again you can see I'm still working on this and trying to figure out what I'm going to do with that log I think at this point but I've got a lot I really am happy with the the background trees and so now I'm gonna paint a little bit more and then I'm gonna add a few comments at the end when I show you what I do with the fixative I use some fixative and you'll see how I do that alright so enjoy until I comment again okay so this jumped ahead a little bit where I'd added some darker values usually down deep at the ground in the bottom of the grass is you're gonna have your dark colors that are like dirt colored and darker values and so I got those in it gave some richness and it also brought those grasses more to the foreground because of the warmth in color and their boldness pardon for the hopping around in the video here now I just I don't know I felt like I should have some purples in there too but I played around with this if I remember correctly and I actually felt like I wanted to get it even more loose so I ended up just blending it a bit I think I used my pipe foam insulation you may have noticed in some other videos just to blend because I was gonna use the technique which you'll see in a little while where I spray it with fixative I don't spray fixative to fix the painting at the end but I do use it to manipulate what I'm trying to accomplish as far as getting down more layers there I popped up the Blair there you see it really quick again I kind of took this from the wonderful artist Karen Margolis she uses the Blair fixative the low odor fixative in a way that I really love so I've emulated that and see how that allowed me you got the dark like ground and with the fixative on top I was able to take that pastel and just kind of hint at those grasses on top and it really gave more of an impressionistic look instead of just the pastels on the sanded paper by the way I failed to mention this is I believe the Sennelier Lecart paper it comes in a pad this particular sheet was I don't know if it's called tan or something but it has this pretty seagrass blue it has a dark it has some lights in the pad and I really love this paper I talk about you art paper a lot which I love but I love the Lecart Sennelier paper it's a little bit more coarse and for me it helps to keep that impressionistic style so lots of choices lots of things we can use and you can just learn so much from other artists now I am getting in these these whiskers I'm trying to get them correct they're not showing a whole lot on the back but I still want to hint at that and I'm using a harder pastel here a soft pastel is going to give you way too thick of a line for these whiskers and there are some artists who have better techniques for getting this people who do a lot of cat portraits and things but mine again is just giving a hint at it I want to make sure I get them again anatomically correct I mean they don't have to be perfect but you want to get it in in the way that whiskers typically grow I'm always amazed at how long whiskers are on cats and I've heard I don't know if this is true but their whiskers are kind of used as feelers to know how what they can fit through you know and just ways that they move and things that they go through and they they judge their sense of distance with their whiskers I don't know if that's true but it sounds really cool okay so same thing they have whiskers on their eyes as well I got that one a little long but you can just kind of blot it out with your finger and soften it pastels are very forgiving a lot of people think oh my goodness you can't paint over them and what do you do if you make a mistake but as you work with these you learn there are lots of little tricks you can do to correct things so I'm kind of getting this wrapped up here and I just wanted to say how much I miss all of you but I am confident that I will be back soon making videos our lives are just so busy right now that I literally have no time to paint and again all of my paint supplies are the ones that I saved are stored away they're very hard to get to right now they're packed away in an attic as far back with everything in front of them when we were trying to save stuff from the floodwaters but anyway I I'm looking forward to getting my new Monet cafe studio and don't unsubscribe to the channel stay tuned for more and please if you haven't already join the Monet cafe art group that's the name of the group on Facebook you will get so many suggestions advice you could you could see all the beautiful art that's on there and all of the other artists from every level beginning to advanced are so helpful so Monet cafe like the title of this video says lives on it lives on through you Monet cafe is not me it is all of us and so I'm just so happy that we are all part of a family together so anyway God bless all I hope you enjoyed this video and learn something from it and I'm gonna be back before you know it all right bye guys