 Hello my Monet cafe artist friends and visitors this is Susan Jenkins and today I'm gonna be bringing you a little quick hopefully economical tip because pastel papers get very Expensive now. I found this when I was just at the dollar store. It's a little packet of 36 little squares. They are four and a half by five and a half Sizes so it's not really a standard size, but you know you could make it work I'm thinking these will be good for just a little practice pieces But the challenge is that as I talk about all the time you need with pastels to have a sanded surface So I've actually had a lot of our artist friends on Monet cafe art group on Facebook Share they've actually used real sandpaper But the challenge is that real sandpaper can be too coarse and it'll just eat up your very expensive pastels I'm gonna be using my pastel palette that I did from the last video Which was just such a blessing to realize I had I was trying to describe the color wheel And I happen to have this tray from Publix that was used as appetizers And it makes a neat little studio palette just to keep right here beside me when I work I have a very limited palette right here, but it works for what I'm doing today for sure And I wanted to show this The sandpaper here. This is the black and it is waterproof So if you want to add no, you can't add many paints to this Because it's black, but if you wanted to on some of the lighter colors, you know Maybe try a watercolor underpainting or you know something it is waterproof The problem like I'm trying to get at is that this is abrasive paper number 80 These are used I think to put in little belt sanders to sand furniture and things So this one 80 the lower the number the more course that one's very coarse That one's also 80, but you see you got black and then the regular color which is actually the color of you are paper It's almost exactly the same color, but then you finally get to where you get a hundred That's a little finer and finally 150. That's the finest grit that they have which is what I have up here on my board It's a little more coarse than The you are I usually use you art 400 grit But I happen to like the Sinelli a la carte paper that is very coarse And so I'm just about to try this and see what happens I'm going to be using a little reference photo from paint my photo of a cute little be with some flowers just something simple and Hopefully this paper will be something that we can use now. It's not archival quality, which is the quality that Artist that's the word that describes It is Going to last it's not going to yellow You know, it's an artist quality for if you're selling your paintings But it doesn't say it might last as long as the other stuff I don't know, but it's definitely great for practicing and a lot cheaper than some of the other papers So I'm going to just do a quick little painting. This is a quick video and hopefully we found something that can save us some money All right, let's get painting. All right. Yes, that music was getting a little annoying But I thought it was fun for the the fun painting of the bumblebee I've got some bluegrass roots and sometimes I like that a country bluegrass sound So anyway, but it was getting on my nerves a little bit, but I wanted to just share a little bit here I'm kind of purposely working on this Maybe overworking it a little bit. I'm kind of seeing how many layers I can get down on this sandpaper and So far it appears I can get a decent amount of layering on it Also, it's not eating at my pastels as much as I thought it might because this is still a pretty coarse piece of sandpaper It's the hundred and fifty grit like I mentioned at the beginning and I do notice a couple of things different about it With regard to comparing it to regular archival quality sand sanded papers for artists is that it is a little thinner you are paper is thicker I also noticed that while I was able it said waterproof on the back and indeed it was I was able to apply the Alcohol wash in this case I use that just because it dries faster and I think it behaves a little differently than water alone So it did receive the alcohol wash, you know fairly well and curled up on the edges a little bit But that does sometimes happen with you are paper as well, but again, this is more for if you're on a budget and You just want to play around a little bit or if you're not on a budget I mean who doesn't want to save money But you just want to play around a little bit and or practice something or do a preliminary painting before a bigger painting That is what I think that this paper would be good for and I'm gonna see we have like I said had some people in our Monet cafe art group on Facebook share that they too have used the sanded pastels and used more like a 400 grit maybe even a 500 grit I don't know my grits of hardware sandpaper hardware store sandpaper that well, but um it it's something else to explore So this was just like I said the one that I found at the dollar store this piece right here There's little five and a half by four and a half piece. I calculated it out and it's less than three cents So you could definitely can afford to make some mistakes on it also, too If you just want to play around with a technique or you're doing a demo from another artist You know, you're you're like wow, I want to play around with this and you're unsure of yourself This would be a great paper for that. So again, I would use it for practice for Just getting more experience. I would not use it for a permanent piece that you might be selling Or anything you want to be sure that it has longevity to it. So anyway, enjoy the rest of this painting I particularly liked The last part of the little buzzing bee that sort of made the painting, you know, right now This is just kind of like whatever a bunch of little lilacs. Is that what these are called? But the bee gave it life and So I think I'll call him buzzy. So I'll be quiet now, and I hope you've learned something here I know I sure did please please comment and tell me what you want in a lesson and Also, feel free to subscribe to this channel and join our group on Facebook called Monet cafe art group So happy painting everyone and I really enjoyed this little painting. Bye