 Welcome to Monet Café. I'm artist Susan Jenkins and I am so happy you've joined me for a very special painting tutorial presentation. Also, I hope you'll subscribe to this channel if you haven't already. And if you would like, you could support this channel on my Patreon page. For only $5 a month you keep these free videos coming. There's over 600 free videos on Monet Café. And this is a sneak peek of my Patreon page. You gain access to so much content behind the scenes information. And oh my goodness, too much to mention here because I want to get started with this video. But I also love the fact that I get to see your work. I have a special homework album for my patrons to submit their work from these videos and the videos from my Patreon page. And I just love our Patreon family. So if you're a patron of mine, God bless you. Thank you. You make Monet Café possible. Alright, let's get started. This painting began with a reference photo of the most beautiful arrangement of flowers. And these flowers were ones that I sent to my dad for my mama's birthday. Isn't she just as pretty as a flower herself? And the reason I sent these flowers to my dad, some of you may know that my mother passed away in May of this year pretty unexpectedly. It was such a shock to all of us. My dad absolutely loved the flowers and took this beautiful photo. And I knew I just had to paint them. And how perfect that I actually completed this painting while at my parents property, a beautiful place in northern Florida. I took my Hyleman box with me. If you haven't seen that video, I think it's the one right before this one. A wonderful travel box for soft pastels. And I set it up on their back porch and it was just so awesome. That is all natural lighting that I'm using to create this painting. I will be talking about all of my supplies in a minute, but I thought I'd show you my setup. I know some people are curious about how I film myself. I have used an arm like this before to hold my camera phone, but I recently got this new one. It works really great. I need to find it and share on my Amazon shop. Now these are the Neocolor Water-soluble Wax Pastels. They look like coloring crayons. And by the way, I'll have links to all of the products that I mentioned in this video in the description section of this particular video. I love using these Neocolor Wax Pastels for under paintings, but I had not used them yet on this particular surface. This surface is called Pastel Matte. And I love this surface for using with soft pastels. It is just wonderful. It holds a lot of layers. You can get it in a toned surface like this. It comes in colors. And it also comes in white. Often I buy Pastel Matte in white because I like to do watercolor under paintings. And watercolor shows up beautifully on white versus a colored paper. And here I'm just doing a preliminary sketch with one of the darker colors of the Neocolor Wax Pastels. And a preliminary sketch getting it fairly accurate. You still want it to be loose and painterly and impressionistic. That's my sister running around in the background. I know she wouldn't want to be in my video. But you want it impressionistic, but at the same time you still need a certain amount of accuracy if you want to represent these flowers, you know, close to what they really look like. So I'm speeding up the sketch portion. But by the way, my patrons, if you're a patron of mine, you will get a JPEG image of the actual sketch if you would like it for a reference. And there will be more real time coming up. I kind of alternate between speeding things up in real time so as to not make this video so long. And I think you guys can kind of get the idea when I speed things up. All right, so I was happy with the sketch. And now you're about to see the magic of these Neocolor Wax Pastels. And it truly happens when you add water to them. Here I'm just using a round watercolor brush. This is one of the labels ignored off. It's the Princeton Brush Company. And it's brush 4050, but you could just use whatever you have. Sometimes I use a flat brush, sometimes a round brush. Oh, and I put my water in a cup that has one of my paintings that my mama bought from my print and products site on FineArtAmerica.com. I thought that was appropriate. So you'll need some paper towels or I use them anyway just for controlling the amount of water on the brush. And I decided with this particular painting, like I said, I've never done the Neocolor Wax Pastels on this particular surface. I've used them on multiple other surfaces. But I decided with this to actually apply the Neocolor Wax Pastels in sections. In other words, don't put a whole bunch of color on there and then wet it. I'm doing one color at a time, in other words. Now, can you see how that color changed? It does look a little bit different when it's wet versus dry, but it really turned kind of a pretty teal color. But you can see how it it becomes like paint and the color gets more intense. Kind of similar to Derwent Intense Blocks. If you've ever used those before, I do think the Derwent are even more intense than the Wax Pastels, but very, very close. Also too, in some of the places I'm using it, and it'll almost look like I add a little bit of a pink color, but what you're seeing is just the wetness of the paper. It appears darker until it dries. And so I'm just looking at my reference image and I'm just looking at shapes and values right now. Getting the sketch in, as I said before, is important to get some degree of accuracy, but at the same time, I wanted these loose and impressionistic. So I'm not getting caught up in every little pedal or every little leaf. I'm just looking at some of the darkest values and the big shapes. And now I'll be adding some other colors. And notice I only wet the areas that were my darkest values. Kind of just getting a little idea of a value study. The rest just serves as, you know, the sketch to see where things are. Now why would I decide to use this like lavender colors, kind of a warm lavender, on the sunflowers and some of the yellow flowers? Well it is the complementary color to the warmer tones of yellow and orange. Also, especially that lower sunflower to the left there on the bottom. It is quite a bit in shadow and so I even add more shadowy colors later to that flower. But I thought this complement color would be nice to do the underpainting prior to adding the warmer tones of the yellows and golds and oranges and even reds in the sunflowers. So it's really just kind of a fun process. I explore and experiment almost with every painting and I think I learned something with every painting. And now I'll be adding water. I kind of wanted to see how these were going to behave and unfortunately I didn't do a test. You'll later see me. I test some of my neocolor wax pastels at the bottom. I like to often leave a little area at the bottom of my painting where I can test my colors before I actually apply them. But they're looking right now quite light. You see how it all of a sudden changed. It's because they're wet. You're seeing the wetness and a sheen that's making them look like when I add the water. They turn almost like white but they don't. You'll see when it dries it does dry a little bit more like the original color. And I'm just enjoying this. I really did enjoy this painting. I think I would like to do more flowers in a vase. I had this neat idea because these flowers were special to me and my dad. I thought you know what I bet there's a lot of other people who have a special flower arrangement. Whether it's from a birthday anniversary. Flowers from a special someone. Or even like the celebration of life we had for my mother where there was just so many beautiful flower arrangements. One in particular stands out in my mind. And of course when they're real flowers like this they only last so long. And of course we could take a photograph but I think a painting is so much more special. So I came up with this idea to perhaps capture the special floral arrangement for others who have something they would like to remember. And I thought I would call this of course do commission pieces and call it forever flowers. So that might be something I'll be doing. I think it's a neat concept and I really do like painting flowers. So it works for me. I'm definitely speeding up this last portion here because it's really the same idea. I'm just using some different colors every so often working my way around and getting in my shapes and values all while still trying to keep things very loose and painterly. And here is where you will see me using a little bit of a darker color. At the beginning I mentioned that that bottom sunflower the one I'm working on now was a bit more in shadow so I got a darker value and I even accentuate that more with the actual pastels. This is where I was saying I should and finally decided to test my pastels or these wax pastels at the bottom. Go ahead and apply water so I could get an idea of what they looked like wet before just haphazardly putting them down. So that was and is a good idea. I do recommend that and I decided on I think I think that was the teal the one in the middle that I decided on for the background. So I was coming up with the concept of what color palette I wanted and I had already thought that a teal or turquoise color would look really lovely with the golds and orange colors of the sunflowers. And plus it was a color once I get all of the flowers in and the leaves in they're going to be a little bit more warm green. I thought the turquoise was a kind of a color that pops and I was really happy with the color palette at the end and now I decided to move to a wider flat brush because the area I'm painting is a bit larger and I'm not having to get intricate flower pedals or anything and so I'm doing a bit of negative painting with real gestural strokes and just keeping that energy. I love to have the flowers we're just reaching out. And here you can see again how I mentioned it looks much lighter because of the wetness and the light reflecting on it but in just a minute you'll be able to see how it dries a little bit more of a matted finish you can see there. And now I'm working a little bit on this rose at the top getting in some of the other general flower shapes and applying some gestural marks for the leaves, expressing them, letting them feel alive as they're stretching out but at the same time keeping things fairly accurate to how the leaves and flowers really were growing. Now what I'm doing here I slowed it down why would I use this brown color all of a sudden? Well I knew there were some I guess they were like marigolds and they were a lot of them were kind of in shadow but really what I'm doing is I'm just trying to make some color notes to remember where they are so I don't lose the fact that those are marigolds just kind of keeping it in mind and I'll go in with pastels and develop them later. And speaking of pastels these are soft pastels various brands that I am getting from my Hyalmin box that you saw earlier in the video if you see these they look kind of cubicle these are actually Terry Ludwig pastels they're normally longer and more of a rectangle but for my little mini Hyalmin box I want to be able to get multiple colors in there so I chose not to have full sticks. I often try to buy half sticks whenever possible. Terry Ludwig doesn't sell a half stick there's a couple of brands that don't. Mount Vision doesn't sell a half stick I think Jero's don't sell a half stick so anyway I I broke my Terry Ludwig pastels and they actually are great for me this way because I prefer to work from a little kind of a shorter pastel anyway. Now why would I be choosing this particular color? I mean a lot of times you'd think those are yellow why is she painting that color and I find it very interesting that the color that's in my hand looks darker than what is getting applied to the actual surface here. I think it has to do with the lighting but sometimes it just has to do with the fact that color and value are both relative to what's around it so the color is behaving or giving a visual appearance based on the surrounding colors and values pretty neat but anyway back to the reason I would choose something a little darker is because often with something that you just give a general color to like a red poppy or a yellow sunflower usually there are darker areas in shadow areas that are increases of flowers and typically in a sunflower those areas are down when they get close to that dark center and then they gradually get lighter towards the edges depending on where the lighting is. I mentioned before the one on the the lower sunflower down there I'm going to actually darken that up towards the end of the painting. I realized it wasn't getting that effect of being a little bit more buried than that one at the top so I'll develop that a little bit more later and so now I'm just really glancing at where some of these golden colors are whether they're sunflowers or some of the other yellows. I'm just kind of zoning out. I know that might sound weird to say that but once you get a sketch in your value study or a general color palette you can really just start zoning out and focusing on the color the gesture the shape the value and I find it's a really therapeutic thing. Now look at this color I'm adding these it's kind of a red color that I'm adding also looking at the reference image and seeing where some of these petals might be a little bit darker because of their location or because of shadow and I must say I was absolutely loving this natural light I don't have any light source on this painting or my easel here other than the natural light of the sun behind me and wow would I have a studio like that if I could you know just be like have a back porch where you know you just set up your studio and of course you'd have to paint in the day and when it's not raining and now I'm adding this is the Terry Ludwig soft pastel called the egg plant color it's a really great dark it gives the appearance of black but it's really like an eggplant an eggplant's not totally black it's kind of a really dark dark purple and it just has more life than using a black color. Looking back on this footage made me realize how much I liked the early stages of this painting which leads me to share something with you guys that I am constantly trying to keep in mind to not overwork your paintings and one of the reasons especially with soft pastels is because pastels are primarily pure pigment and pure pigments come from the earth and these pigments have little crystals in them that reflect and refract light and the more we layer and crush pastels by layering and blending and overworking pastels they lose that brilliant crystal quality and I think it's quite interesting that pastels as a dry medium have less binder in them than any other medium you know of course oil and acrylic you know some binder or liquid has to be added to the pigment which is dry like I said from the earth these pigments come and thus they lose a bit of their vibrancy so pastels I think that's why so many people fall in love with them is their vibrancy their beautiful color but I also love the fact that I get to hold them in my fingers like a big kid playing with these gorgeous sticks of color it's just I don't know something very special about soft pastels now I will talk a little bit about what I'm doing here this is kind of working a little bit of the rose and for now I'm just getting the general shape just an idea of where some of these petals are I'm trying hard not to overwork any of the flowers at this point and just getting in their gesture and their shape I'm also trying to keep in mind that I want the sunflowers to be the stars and I kind of realized this was kind of a bright yellow that might compete with that I do make the roses a bit more subtle as the painting progresses and soon I'll be adding some more of the sunflower colors the golds and the yellows and if you look at the photo and you squint your eyes you can see where those darks are in the sunflower is specifically the one at the lower left there you can just look deep within it and tell that the upper petals are creating a shadow on that center area of the sunflower so you want to make sure you notice these value changes and especially where your source of light is coming from in this case it's on the counter in my parents kitchen and so the source of light was pretty much from above kind of above and behind and you can also usually tell from shadows there were actually multiple lights on so you get shadows kind of going all over the place but now you can see I typically start with my darker values first with flowers and a lot of subject matter that I do but here's where I'm just getting some of these golds in and it's later that I think I might have even added even some deeper maybe purples in that center some of the petals going towards the center because right now it doesn't feel quite buried enough and now I will be adding some music for your listening pleasure I will be back towards the end but it's pretty much the same process of just working the whole painting being sure not to overwork any particular area now I'm working on some of my greens I usually work dark to light like I said even with my greens so enjoy this music I'm going to play a selection of songs from Akash Gandhi this is from the YouTube audio library and I'm specifically choosing songs that are sweet and beautiful because of my mama so I'll be back enjoy here's where I'm adding some of the final highlights or little touches at the end and is that called goldenrod maybe you guys are always helping me out with the names of flowers I should do my research for sure and I typically like these little final touches because they're like icing on the cake and back to the point that I made earlier about working the whole not getting too tied up in detail so I wouldn't have tried to even do these little fine marks until the very finish so they're like I said they're like icing on the cake and really fun to do as well and this painting is almost done I will add a few more little highlights and elements here and there you'll see me using some different pastels towards the end that are longer look like sticks they're prismacolor new pastels and they're really good for getting little linear marks notice the ferns to the right and to the left actually and how I'm not adding those little brights or lighter areas on them until the very end and you know like I said before I really liked some of the beginning or I'd say middle to 70 percent stages of this painting it had a very I don't know almost a van go feel to it that's how I felt and so I'm constantly analyzing my own work and looking at how I can get better and I think one thing I'm going to start doing and I suggest you guys do too is to give yourself a time limit I'm always saying this and never doing it give yourself a time limit and walk away from your painting for a while and maybe take a photo of it and look at it 30 minutes later an hour later and just let it sit for a bit often I find that I wish I had stopped sooner so that's my end of the painting advice I really hope you guys enjoyed this it was a special painting for me oh here I'm adding just some of those little center parts of the flower oh gosh some of you guys who are botanists will probably give me the names to what are those called I should have studied more also too these are cooler greens that I'm putting I decided not to put the bow in I thought it was a little much so I put some of those cooler greens for leaves that are kind of cascading over the rim of the vase thank you so much for joining me for this painting experience I was actually so pleasantly surprised and shocked that my dad loved this painting when I was done I showed it to him and he couldn't quit staring at it and he's kind of a manly man so it really surprised me I'm going to get him a large print of this painting and I'm actually going to be selling this one on my Etsy shop if you're interested and I'm going to be creating a larger one for myself let me know what you think about that idea of forever flowers or any other comment that you have I love hearing from you you guys bless me more than I can express and as always happy and blessed painting