 Hello and welcome to Monet Café. Subscribers, newcomers, friends, I'm artist Susan Jenkins. We're gonna have some fun today painting some lovely sunflowers. And if you haven't subscribed yet, I hope you will so you have more videos coming your way. This lesson was previously available on Monet Café only as a speed version, but now I'm releasing from my Patreon page the full real-time step-by-step tutorial so you can follow along with all of my commentary. Now this is a lovely photo from a friend. I'll share a little bit more about the photo at the end, but you can also find a clickable link to access this photo in the description of this video. I recommend painting small when doing studies like this. And I also created this surface myself. And I do have a video on how to create your own pastel surfaces in eight different ways. This particular piece of pastel paper I made myself using Art Spectrum Color Fix Primer. It comes in various colors. I coated mine in this particular example with a foam roller to get a very smooth surface. Now you may be familiar that Color Fix is also a pastel paper. So you can buy the papers or you can create them yourself if you like the way I've done here. And you can put it on various surfaces. It can be mat board, gator board. I may have even used the smooth side of a piece of watercolor paper for this particular example. So now this is all going to be real time. And I kind of wanted to talk you through my process and how I'm actually, you notice I'm not drawing anything out. I'm working more with shapes. That kind of seems to be my method of operation when painting is painting shapes rather than individual things. You know, I just, I see the big shapes first and then I gradually narrow it down after that. Now the most identifiable shapes I could find to kind of get things laid out correctly were those centers of the sunflowers. If you squint your eyes you can see kind of where they are. And I, of course you can see that very large one in the front there. But they gradually recede and they get smaller. And you know, I'm not getting so fussy about getting a perfect circle. And you know, again a most common question I get is how to create a painterly effect, loose and oppressionistic. And this is one way to do it. Don't get so fussy. You can create just general shapes and it's amazing how the human brain puts it together. And that's, again, that's a good way to keep loose and painterly and get that kind of chunky, almost geometric feel to your work. Okay, so again, I'm just looking at kind of general positioning of those centers and using just kind of a medium dark value purple and kind of working from there. I wanted to say here too before I paint too much that the piece of paper that I coated with the art spectrum, I did it on a much larger piece of paper and then cut it down. So instead of cutting up your all your paper and doing each paper like that, each size, you can do it the other way. So either way that works for you. Now I know those centers are darker. I do like to get in the dark values first. Just had a video recently about working dark to light and some of the reasonings why we do that in pastel painting. I also like to try to think of, now I even got a darker, I think that's the Terry Ludwig Eggplant. Everybody talks about what's that really dark, dark that you have. I don't like using black, black's kind of dead. Why not use a dark, rich color instead? It's going to make your artwork just vibrant. Now you probably can't notice here, but I, as I'm working, I am paying attention to the positioning of these flower heads. Notice that some of them are turned like the one at the bottom that's turned kind of facing down. The one that's up higher, the highest one in the front is facing almost forward but turning a little bit to the viewer's right and the one behind it down low is facing down. So that is also going to make your painting look more believable because that's really what happens in nature. I mean there are some rare times when, not rare, I think it's common for sunflowers for all of them to be facing the sun and that's kind of neat but I really love it when you get the spontaneity. So my point here is that pay attention to the fact that nature has its own little musical positioning and that is definitely going to make your artwork look a little bit more painterly and interesting. Now I just decided, again I know I only have about 15 minutes so instead of getting too fussy on the sky, I just picked a pretty blue that I liked. I just thought this was a really really beautiful blue. It's a little, it leans a little bit more towards the cyan rather than the more of a purpley blue. I'd say it's a warmer blue and I know in the background I'm going to have some distant leaves or mountains or trees and I decide, I think I decide later to use a teal, a deeper teal to create that. So I'm just going to paint here for a little bit but I want you to pay attention to the fact that I'm just getting in shapes. I do want to say right, yeah right here, I want to go ahead and say something here. First of all I'm using this medium value orange. Now I know there's all kinds of different colors in those petals of these sunflowers but I'm using the medium value to get in my petal shapes of all the flowers. I'm going to go in over this and change. Notice some of them are in shadow. I will come back and talk about that. Some of them have more sunlight hitting them but for this right here, again I know I've got to work fast so I'm just using this medium value orange to get in the sizes, the positioning and the general idea of where these flower petals are. Alright so watch a little bit longer and I will jump back in when I have some more things to add. You can see that I did in those background sunflowers. I want it done to appear further back and I know things lighten and value as they recede so I went ahead and did those petals as light and now I'm just taking that lighter, orangey yellow and applying it to the places where the sun is hitting the petals and that's a great thing to keep in mind every time you paint. Pay attention to where is the sun. If you notice look at the tall sunflower facing more towards the viewer and you can see that the upper left is more where the sunlight is coming through those petals. The lower right underneath is more in shadow so and that's pretty much the same with all of the flowers. So for now I haven't gotten any of the shadows. I'm just working on some of these lighter values on the tips of the sunflowers. Again knowing that I don't have very long to work here and I said I did this for 15 minutes. It may have been a little longer than 15 minutes but it was it was pretty darn close because I again I had to go with my mom and have to. I wanted to take my mom to radiation like I do every morning for six weeks and so I'm going to focus on doing these little studies in the mornings before I leave. I will recommend if you're going to be doing this go ahead and get your paper ready. It would be good to work on a consistent paper. Commit maybe and I want to do this in our Patreon group to where we do we commit to I know people do the 30 paintings in 30 days. I know sometimes that's a little hard with life especially if you're working and outside if art is not your main thing. So I was thinking of maybe like a 10 or 20 challenge so I mean we could even start with like a seven a week challenge seven days of fast painting you know something like that but my point is that let's not make it harder on ourselves by having each time to make a surface or cut out or cut it up or get the right size go ahead and make multiple um it'd be neat if you did the same size five by sevens I mean make yourself 10 five by seven painting surfaces just get them ready maybe go ahead and pick out what reference photos you're going to do so that you're ready for the challenge then each time you sit down to paint you don't spend all this time hunting for a photo you guys I'm sure you can relate to that because I've done that so many times that now I've learned ways to just save reference images in little groupings so that it's easier for me to find now you can see I'm adding the shadowy sides to those flowers now I am going to come over the top of this with some other deeper oranges I believe but now you see if you squint your eyes you can see those shadows those flowers are starting to have some depth to them and and be more believable that's how that's how life is there's all kinds of different colors and shadows and coolness and warmth based on the lighting in the reference photo or in real life all right so I'm going to continue with more music and enjoy notice here that I'm adding a very rich orangey red and sometimes we don't think of those colors as being in sunflowers that's often when we're starting out in art when we're kind of a beginner artist we think of all these petals as being yellow and actually if you squint your eyes and look at that especially that biggest sunflower in the foreground you might can catch a little hint of what I'm talking about there are some deeper colors in that some more than just the yellow and reds you know just go ahead and punch it up a little bit don't exaggerate it and it that's another one of my rules I'm becoming or I'm developing rules that I suggest to get a more painterly loose effect in your art and that is one of them exaggerating color and I have quite a few other I need to get these all together and present them in a video or lesson just to help everyone with those strategies here is where I'm adding that rich darker little darker in value teal color that is a really great color for pushing back distant trees distant foliage distant mountains things like that and I just thought this color would work I had considered using purple purple's another great color to use to push back trees and things like that but I knew I was going to have purple shadows in the sunflowers and I just wanted another color that was going to be give more contrast to the painting in general I apologize here for my shoulder being in the way and kind of messing up the focus but I do move in just a minute I've got more of a medium to dark value green and I use this to give an indication of the stems of the flowers now I know there's a lot of bright sunlight shining on the leaves in various positioning of where the leaves are and again I got to keep in mind I've only got a few minutes so I'm only giving suggestions of things and once again that's the point of this lesson it helps us to stay loose and painterly we don't have a lot of time to get fussy now I know I've got some richer greens in the foreground typically I probably would have added more darks to indicate the roots of the flowers but I'm just going to let this one be very sketchily is that a word sketchy so again I'm just using warmer greens in the foreground to give the indication of the they have and sunflowers have these broad leaves they're kind of large leaves and they kind of lay out flat and so I'm just hinting at some of those of course we know in perspective things just get smaller as they go to the background so I've just gotten a suggestion of those leaves now I know there's bright sunlight shining so I get that really vibrant I kind of call this like a grass green just a hint at the sunlight just laying across those leaves and so I'm just looking I really zone out when I'm painting especially these quick studies like this I zone out and I just start forgetting what it is I'm painting and I'm just looking at where do I see those bright leaves or and I don't think of them as leaves where do I see those bright things in the painting and it causes you to truly paint what you see and not what you think you see that was one of the greatest things I think there's a book called that one of the greatest things I learned in an art class I had when I was in graphic design is to our brains want to force things sometimes as to what we think it is rather than us zoning out like I said and forgetting about what the thing is and what's really there it's it's not a yellow leaf or petal on every single petal we start to really focus on what is there what is in our plane of vision what colors what values what shapes instead of drawing flowers we're literally drawing shapes so I'll work a little bit more here enjoy this music and I'll be right back oh I'm adding some little a little bit more dark highlights just some little pizzazz and umph to to draw the eye to where the stems are maybe where some of the little shadows are and that's pretty much it I think I'm getting close to the 15 minute mark here and at this point was where I was like oh yep gotta go it's time to go so um my mom today had a very successful treatment well they're all very successful but um she had a little coughing fit yesterday and it was kind of hard because the radiations in her neck but um today we prayed and she was very still and it worked out great so anyway praise the lord look at these sunflowers don't they look like they're praising the lord all of nature looks like that to me how trees grow upward to the heavens now I'm speeding up this last little part here just because I want to show you something at the end that I've decided to do this photo that I got was from a a dear woman that I met only briefly you know how life just puts people in your path that you know it was meant to be and and um she's a precious person and she shared with me some of her beautiful photography uh giving me permission to paint it so here's what I decided to do I found this neat little window frame uh that was divided up into six different little frames each of them I'm fairly sure these are all five by I know they're all the same size but I think my painting was five by seven and you know you could choose to do these horizontally or vertically and I thought how neat if I took all of the reference images that this one woman let me use and put them all in this frame uh as a a little painting display here so I just thought I'd share that it was pretty inexpensive and uh it makes for a neat little presentation so I hope this inspired you you'll give it a try and if you haven't subscribed I hope you will and as always happy painting