 Well, hello beautiful artistic people and welcome to Monet cafe. I'm artist Susan Jenkins and in today's pastel painting Demonstration, I'll be painting from a photo. I took when my husband and I were on a trip I was a passenger and I snapped a shot of some cars and this semi truck in front of us and the sky was just Magnificent it is still cloud month in Monet cafe. So I'll be painting a glorious sky But I'll also be sharing a little tip and technique I use for creating Lights that will really shine and look brilliant when it's either a night scene or dusk and before we get started with this free Tutorial, I'd appreciate it if you would like this video comment and also Subscribe to this channel if you haven't already click that little bell icon to be notified of future videos If you'd like a little more or you just like to support this channel It's only five dollars a month to become a patron of mine on my patreon page. And yes, you get extra content So here we go. I am once again using a piece of pastel matte I love the surface it comes in these pads and this particular one had a color called light blue It really looks gray. I love the surface. It receives pastel so nicely and I'm using this black artist tape This is one half inch artist tape. I decided for many of my sky painting tutorials this month that I would do them small So this is a rather small painting It's only four inches by four inches and here I'm choosing an image from my own reference photos That's a Google album if you're a patron of mine You have access to all of my sky photos in this album and even though you see this particular set of pastels sitting next to Me right here. It's a shminka 120 half-stick set they don't offer this set anymore. I love shminka pastels However, I didn't really use many for this particular painting of shminka pastels I used mostly the Sennelier pastels from this Paris collection The price is really great on Amazon Prime for 120 half-stick colors. It's really awesome This reference image was snapped when I was a passenger my husband and I were traveling it may have been When we were going to pick up his mama who was in Mississippi She was in medical need and I just thought the sky Was glorious and I love the lights on the cars and here you can see where I've actually Already created two of the sky paintings prior to this one And I'm just putting down a sheet of tracing paper to protect them while I start the next painting And now time for the sketch. I'm using a piece of vine charcoal. I like these sticks of charcoal I think it helps me to keep a gestural feel to my work. So I'm just getting in the big shapes I quickly realized my Rectangular shape for the back of the truck in the car. The first one was a little too large and since my drawing Surface is blocked off to a 4 inch by 4 inch square and I cropped my image to a square It makes it so much easier for Judging proportional relationships and spatial relationships. So if you're a newbie at sketching sometimes, it's really good to have the same ratio of Reference image to surface that helps you really just kind of see where things are and block them off easier And I really felt this was a pretty simple Sketch to do because I could see the big shape so easily the road was an easy shape Just kind of going up almost into a triangle that was you know cropped off at the top the big shapes for the trees and The cars and their positioning So try not to freak out over drawing and when you can just really start to See where things are and stop thinking about what they are I think it will make your sketching a lot easier now. This is back to The big shape concept not only are you sketching in the big shapes and the general shapes You're also blocking in big shapes with values I'm I really focus on the value meaning the lightness or the darkness Over the color look how dark the the trees are Vertical elements are almost always darker in a painting By the way, some of this will be real time and some of it will be sped up But when I get to the lights on the trucks and the cars, I'm gonna really slow it down to real time Just to talk about it more now look at this wouldn't you think that truck is probably a white truck So why would I have taken this? kind of periwinkle blue And lavender colors for the truck. Well, if you look at it, the value is close. It's it's not white In reality, it probably is if you shine the bright light on it, but with this lighting, it's not white It's more of a gray. So that's my point about keeping your values accurate Really start to analyze the lights and the darks. For example, I said the darkest thing are those trees What's the lightest thing? Well, of course, it's gonna be some of those light highlights in the upper sky on the right Also the lights on the truck, but especially those white lights of the oncoming car now Notice this mountain range in the distance. I'm purposely creating it a little darker at first I wanted to get this this value was a nice value It's a hint darker because I know I'm gonna create my own kind of purpley distant mountain bluish purple mountains tend to Blue out in the distance. So I added a little bit of a lighter blue on top of that and it created a neat play of color And now I'm just kind of blocking in some of these shapes I'm not getting hung up on the fact that oh my gosh, this is a sky and these are clouds That's the theme this month is clouds and I think often with clouds We over analyze it or over detail clouds when it's really the same principles I've been saying in this tutorial already is it's really just shapes and values and colors kind of in that order so just try to simplify things as much as possible and Block things in overall. Don't get hung up on any one area Even if you're like, oh, this isn't perfect. Let me just keep working on it and get it just right just move on and overall get your sketch or your general blocking in stage done with your pastels and I'm loosely getting in some of the The colors and the shapes right now of the sky They may not be perfect, but I'm gonna come in and hone them in and fine-tune them a little bit more After I get most of the surface of this pastel matte covered and I think I was drawn to this photo for multiple reasons, of course the Drama in the sky. I believe it was a sunset and Also just the color But I also just loved this composition. There's something called the rule of thirds, which is a good general compositional rule And the truck was in the lower third right quadrant and I liked how that road Perspectively just pulled you in there was that little interesting element of the oncoming lights of the car And I felt like my eye just came in from the lower right up Around to the car and back around and kind of an S-shaped curve back up to the sky So it was just a really pleasing composition. I love roads too I think roads are just hopeful and mysterious in a way now I'm getting in kind of a blue. Notice this blue is not really the the color I would say of the blue in the photograph It's a little bit more neutral and muted in the photo But I'm just getting in some values that I think will work and later I can come back and neutralize them I believe I do that by adding kind of a neutral purple and just softening it up a bit And that's one of the beautiful things about soft pastels many times People think you can't mix soft pastels and you can't really The same way that you can with oil and acrylic and watercolor, but they do mix on your Surface whatever surface you're using so uniquely by just gently layering them If you use a light touch, they play upon each other the colors and they kind of create new colors and Color excitement so it really is fun And if you're a beginner Don't stress out over your work looking like some of the work you see a lot of times it won't not just because of your skill level But because of the materials you're using I was so frustrated as a beginner artist because I Was not producing the results that I was seeing and a lot of it was because I was using cheaper materials I didn't have the money to buy some of these expensive Pastels and some of these surfaces I have you know since over the years been able to accumulate pastels that are Professional brand of pastels and it really does make a difference now There are times you can kind of fudge on your surface a little bit I have multiple videos that will help those on a budget and One of those ways is to make your own surface you can do it with watercolor paper and clear liquid gesso and you can make your own kind of sanded pastel surface and get the Ability to do a lot of layering or a decent amount of layering now this pastel matte surface. I'm using it's not cheap It's water friendly. I love that I can put down a water medium first or I can even Water my pastels Liquify them with a little water or alcohol so it's very versatile and fun But don't my message here is just to the beginner don't stress I would say just do lots of studies lots of practice have some fun You're gonna go through a little bit of a awkward and wonky stage at first But it all does start to come together So don't don't be too hard on yourselves now did add a little bit of a shadow I felt like there was a little of a darker value on the road in certain areas that added a little bit to the Dimension and the depth also things are typically a little darker in value in the foreground and they get a little lighter in value as They go into the distance and again value just means the lightness or darkness of something on a scale you know like from really dark to really light and Now I just used a pasta. Oh, I'm sorry a charcoal pencil to get in a little bit more of the shape of this car Think of it as a shape just forget that it's a car It's just a shape and I apologize for my horse voice I've been helping my son and daughter-in-law With a property project they have my husband and I do a lot of things like that and we were talking a lot yesterday So my voice is a little bit raspy Now I just got in a general idea of some of the lines in the road Avoid the tendency to over detail these lines Okay, we're just suggesting and many of you might know in drawing when you were young the perspective Of just things getting smaller and closer together as they recede into the distance just like the lines on this road now This is a little Blending tool. It's a pan pastel blender. It looks just like a little eye applicator I eyeshadow applicator that I don't use very much because I hate makeup, but it you could use an actual applicator for eye shadow and It's just really nice for blending when you have real little areas on a teeny painting like this one at this phase I would say my block in is complete and now I'm gonna go in and like I said just kind of Develop this painting fine-tuning some things you can see I'm using a more neutral blue here I felt like the blue that was in the sky. You might just see it as kind of a gray But I could sense a little bit of a I don't know a greenish blue That's why I use kind of a little bit more of a teal blue in here Notice how it really just toned down that previous blue that looks so bright I'm seeing a little influence of some pinks and I could tell the sky I mean the Sun was setting probably to my right and a little bit further down and those Yellow highlights you're seeing are the sky's light kind of just shining up and reflecting up But as it gets higher in the sky Some of those clouds are gonna get pinker because they're moving further away from the light and just consider your source of light always in a landscape painting and when you're doing anything with clouds, of course Anything nearer to the Sun is going to be warmer and as things get further away They're going to cool off. So a warmer color would obviously be yellows and reds and As they get further away, you're going to move more towards cooler reds, which is more like pinks and Corally colors peachy colors and that's you know, just how Yellows and reds kind of cool off as they move away from the Sun and now I'm just sort of reforming this shape of grass See how that's just a shape. It's just kind of a Band of grasses the median in the road and I'm using some purples to kind of make it feel a little bit more Like night because it's dusk. I would say is that what it is dusk at night Yes when the Sun setting and now this is real-time. It's when I'm going in and getting a little bit of the shape of the car and Really all it is is some glowing lights. There's no hard edges here. So here's my technique I'm gonna do the same thing on the lights for the truck I noticed there's a little glow around the lightest light So I'm not gonna try to draw or paint the lightest values first I'm creating that glow and it's a little bit of a larger circular area Around the brightest lights now. I'm using a dark. I realized I had my car a little too high So I'm using this darker pastel. Yes, it's large and chunky and this is not easy but I'm kind of negatively painting around the car shape and Carving in around where some of those lights are gonna be now I'm using my little pen pastel blending tool again. That dark is a little too dark right now It's a little it's further away than the band of trees on the right So it's not gonna be quite as dark, but I'm gonna neutralize that a bit now I'm going in and adding a lighter. I know you can't see what I'm doing and believe it or not I can't see what I'm doing. I learn and you will learn. It's feel your way is what I say like the What was that movie grease that song feel your way it was a song But anyway, I'm feeling where these go I put down the one that was a little bit darker in value and now I'm finally going to my lightest value and I did get it kind of in the wrong place So I'm gonna use my little blender and I'm gonna kind of just soften it up go back in Totally just kind of tapping and feeling and tapping and feeling where I think this should be and it's a It's a little bit of a finesse that you learn over the years But but if I can do it totally you can do it now you get that feeling of light So see how there's a glow around them. That's a little bit darker value than the lightest light So that's the same strategy. I'm gonna use on the truck lights. I'm gonna work with my darkest value first it's going to be this kind of a cranberry color and Then I'm gradually going to I think I use three values just like I did in the car lights the oncoming car it's going to be this darker cranberry and Then I'm going to use the a lighter kind of pink and then finally my lightest pink on top of that so once again totally just Tapping feeling often I'll tap and I'll pull my pastel back a little bit to see where it landed to get a better idea But the more you paint the better you will get at this and now here is where I have this nice pretty bright pink I do think this one might be a Schminke pastel and Schminke pastels by the way perform Beautifully on pastel matte. I recently discovered that with another little sky painting I did so now here is the lightest pink And when I add this one you'll see man those lights just it's like they just totally turned on But it's only because I have the little bit of a darker value surrounding it. It's creating contrast It's what it's doing Now I'm just kind of shaping there was a little bit more of a shadow under that truck I could tell and Just giving a little I'm grounding it basically making the truck feel like it's really sitting on that road I felt like There was a little bit of a another tire showing in the front of the truck Just barely a little shape in the front that I I don't think I actually developed. I kind of noticed that after the fact Reformed that that little road shape a little bit added kind of those little Darker areas that were kind of like those lines that are on the side of the road maybe where there's some ruts in the road and a little bit more texture to the road and then I'll finally go back in and add some more Bright highlights to the sky I'll fine-tune the truck just a little bit more to make it the main focal point and Getting pretty much close to done here And I consider these that I'm doing these little four by four paintings as studies and I highly recommend you do more studies and Limit yourself. I recently started a little series. It's called how to get out of an artistic rut Thanks for all the comments on that one. I was so Thrilled to hear that it was helpful for a lot of you that have gotten kind of in an artistic rut it can be for many reasons and the techniques that I use are also if you're having Burnout artistic burnout, which I get sometimes from just painting so much but my point with bringing that up is the fact that it's often good to limit yourself and That has to do with size. I've limited my size. It's not very big And also with your time I've limited my time these studies were you know around 30 minutes each now I've just got a pastel pencil. I don't use pastel pencils very often But I thought I don't really think I'm gonna be able to just get a little kind of a line to just give a tad of detail to This truck avoid the urge to give a lot of detail. You wouldn't see a lot of detail I was pretty far behind this truck now. I have to brag on my Mobius and Rupert Sharpener it is a brass pencil sharpener that is so awesome. It's made in Germany It's one of the best sharpeners for pastel pencils. This is literally just so I can sign it Because a big chunky pastel would have been hard with this So I hope you've enjoyed this tutorial another cloud painting with some bands of color in the evening sky But also creating some lights that really shine in a night or late evening scene All right guys, please like this video comment Let me know what you thought also subscribe become a patron if you'd like to support this channel and as always God bless and happy painting