 Welcome subscribers newcomers and friends. Hey, let's go to the beach today. That's the awesome thing about being an artist We can escape to our own worlds. I'm still here in frigid, Mississippi But I was dreaming of my studio back home near Tampa, Florida with beautiful beaches And I decided to create this beach scene that I'm gonna share with you today. Oh, and if you haven't subscribed yet I hope you will to become part of the Monet Cafe family There is certainly beauty everywhere in the world But I have to admit smelling the salt air and feeling the breeze of the beach. Wow, there's nothing like it This was a trip my husband and I took to St. Pete Beach near Tampa, Florida And here I am in frigid, Mississippi in the middle of a big winter storm. You can see the snow outside I've packed my supplies that you see here really into medium-sized boxes to bring with us to take care of my mother-in-law who Unfortunately has terminal cancer and we're bringing her back home with us this week And she's actually very happy about that now This is proof you can paint on the go and I've gotten much better at it over the years through various trials But I know many of you can understand those situations and art can certainly be like good medicine for the soul Now I'm doing a preliminary sketch something I often like to do I'm using charcoal pencil and a little sketchbook This is a reference image of my own that I took while at the beach and there will be a lot of real time in this video Even though I'm speeding up this sketch portion I like to be able to use my finger to blend to get a little value study And now I'll recreate that sketch since I was happy with the composition on a piece of pastel matte This is a pastel paper that I really like I've lately been enjoying working on the white pastel matte because it's water-friendly and I can tone it or do an underpainting And by the way the products that I've been mentioning lately in my videos can typically be found in my Amazon shop I have a shop with many of the supplies and materials that I use Conveniently organized for you to find now also too if you go in a particular category You can do like I'm doing here and just hover over the little caption And I'll give you my input into some of these surfaces paint products I even have various studio tools that I use such as the ring light you may have seen earlier in the video So it's a really neat and organized way for you to find things that I am using in my own videos Now keep in mind sometimes you can find these products cheaper I happen to find this pastel matte on Dick Blick Com cheaper than on Amazon. So make sure you check that out I like Amazon because I get the free shipping and sometimes that's a better deal So again, I'm duplicating the sketch just to give me a roadmap for my next application For this underpainting, which is a product. I like a lot But I need something to put it in once again. I'm away from my studio. So I'm just finding things I found this pretty little cup and what am I going to be using? Hmm. It's going to be the dailer roundy acrylic inks that I love so much. This color is indian yellow I'll be using two other colors that I'll share with you as well Once again, these are in the amazon shop if you just need to find these products So I'm just I know I don't need much of it. So kind of like a dropper full maybe another one No, just one and here is my selection of brushes. I chose to bring with me when I travel I knew I wasn't going to be painting very large Oh, and I had my little visitor Jackson. He hopped up in my lap Which did make it kind of hard to paint. No, I really had to put him down So I'm grabbing the largest brush that I brought to do this under painting I'm basically doing a little tonal study. I did need some water I'll be diluting certain sections of this You may notice like I said, the pastel matte is water friendly last or a few videos back I literally did a watercolor under painting on this pastel matte It receives watercolor and these acrylic inks so beautifully. I added some water to it at that point I wanted to do kind of a gradient of this pretty golden color coming down and also A little bit of that color in the sand But once again doing a bit of a kind of a tonal value study with some of these warm colors I wanted there to be a warmth underneath the sand and in the sky Even though I'll be adding some cooler colors on top. Now. Here's the other acrylic ink color It's called fluorescent pink. I happen to love you got a little glimpse of it there Adding this color to the indian yellow. You see what a pretty golden color that makes it makes it a little bit darker I use that to get the grasses in and again, like I said, you notice how this is becoming a value study I got my lightest lights in first which was the sky and that little bit of the background of the beach And now I'm getting in the darker grasses I'm keeping my strokes loose and painterly at the stage and trying to keep a gestural quality That's one thing I was trying to Create in doing the initial sketch was to have movement and energy And I probably should have taken the yellow down further I think I stopped because I thought that was where the water was but I end up Bringing the horizon line down a little bit So you'll see later how I make the sky a little bit more of the composition But it ended up working and now before I go to my darkest dark I'm actually going to use just this fluorescent pink with just a tad Of the next color, which is a color. I love it's the dale rownie Purple lake and this combination is going to give me a third value and even more warmth I'm just adding it. I think just one little drop to this just to make it a little bit darker And I'll use this color to warm up the sky a bit and add even more warmth to the grasses Isn't this fun? I love playing around with these acrylic inks And I have the question so many times about why to do an underpainting And I hope this will help others to understand Some of the benefits to an underpainting by creating these warm tones underneath the painting It really is going to influence the colors Not only because bits of the underpainting will be peeking through But also because the colors actually look different applied on these warm tones versus Just applying them on the white paper. Now you can see what I was talking about where down below where I added that pink Just above where I'm going to have the water and then also I added more of that in the upper sky So I'm working some of the pink with a little bit of the purple Down in the areas where it's going to be a bit more shadowy And um, also it works to just darken the value a little bit in areas and warm things up So just like the sketch was a bit of a roadmap This underpainting is also a nice roadmap and a beautiful beginning To the colors and the mood that I'm trying to create I know you can't see my full setup here But I keep paper towels folded right underneath where I'm working usually because sometimes I'll rinse my brush or I'll dab off Some of the ink that I'm working with now for the purple lake alone Just a little bit of half a dropper full maybe and um, now this is going to be my darkest dark Isn't that just gorgeous? So I'll use this for the darkest values Oh, I did a little no-no there because this is too dark to put in the sky I won't have any of this in the sky. Also notice how I'm working with my right hand If you noticed before I'm left-handed primarily But uh, I have found over the years that the more that you can Gain the ability to work with your non-dominant hand. There are advantages sometimes just it's easier to get to from a certain side For me personally, it's because I'm filming a lot of times if I put my left hand over I'm covering up more of the painting Um, but the other reason I think is the primary reason is that often you can get a bit more Gestural and a neat feel when you work with your non-dominant hands. Sometimes it just feels um, you could make strokes that have more freedom And uh energy and movement. So um, so that's kind of a neat thing if you want to try that now sometimes if you're a lefty You know, it's a little easier when you're a lefty to work with your non-dominant hand It's because I often say we're in a right-handed world And often we just have to learn to do certain things with our right hands All right, so the pink in the background there now I'm reminded after watching this again Is where the water is going to be that little white band you see there. That's where I had said originally Kind of wish I had brought the sky down all the way But I work with it and get it rectified. Um, I think I was thinking one of the lines that I had Oh, I remember what I did. I Decided to move the horizon line down. Um, I thought it was too high before So with this darkest color you can see where I've added the darkest shadows that are in the grasses And I'm also kind of working them down to create the shadows that are being cast and by the way I know you can't see the whole reference image here. The sun is coming from the upper right So therefore that's why that one bank of grasses on the right hand side has all those shadows at the bottom and those Pinks that I've made are the shadows the long shadows reaching out now. You see what I did there I actually decided to add a lighter pink to the bottom part of the sky And I end up blending it to not have that line there When I add the pastels, okay It is pastel time. Yay, of course, I have let this dry once again using my right hand here Just because it's more convenient with the filming and the way I'm sitting And this is an example again of what I was saying about an underpainting and the benefit of an underpainting I purposely left the sky. I didn't over blend it. I wanted that golden color showing through Even though in the reference image the sky is blue And the golden color and all these warm tones is definitely going to influence the warmth of the painting So what I'm doing here is I'm doing kind of a gradation kind of like with the little golden value study I did going kind of from darker in the heavens getting a little lighter down towards the horizon line I have a video about maybe three videos back now talking about color temperature I was so happy with a lot of your comments I some of you said about having an aha moment and you did you it's like you could totally understand color temperature So thank you so much for those comments that lets me know that my efforts and the things I'm trying to teach Are working and it's helping you so I love to hear from you guys So definitely comment. Let me know what you think about these videos So now you can see just how gently I've glazed over this and also like I said in another video I did the one with the roses I used pastel matte for that painting with a watercolor underpainting and once again, you know This one was with the acrylic ink that one was with watercolor And this pastel matte takes all kinds of mediums wet mediums just so wonderfully So but like I was saying the neat thing about pastel matte is once you do the underpainting It's already a pastel surface You don't have to do anything else to add your pastels because it has It's interesting. It has a texture to it that doesn't feel gritty like a u-art paper Or a senelier or some of the other sanded pastel papers that literally are like hardware store sandpaper But they're just prepared better and they're archival. You don't have to worry about them yellowing over time Um, but this pastel matte doesn't feel that gritty It almost feels smooth and it's amazing to me that it takes the layers that it does with pastels And I really love pastel application on this I like lots of pastel papers and if you've been on my channel long You probably know I like making my own pastel surfaces by the way I have a video coming soon of a surface I've used that I've never had any success at before and it's another one of those questions that I get asked about all the time So that's coming soon. I'm so excited. I I really had some success with it now You saw me look at the two different color blues. I'm using a darker blue the one that you just saw That's going to be more of the the water line at the horizon line at the top now water Um, as the horizon line is always level you want to make sure You're going to get that water line level So I'm getting it by hand right now And you'll see a little trick that I do later to make sure I have it straight and level But water if you look at it in real life, there's almost always a little dark band now not too dark This I end up lightening it a bit as I add pastels Right at the edge of the horizon line just a little thin darker value at the Straight horizon line portion of the water and then it gradually gets a little lighter So I'm kind of I know this is going to have some negative painting in these grasses So I'm just very lightly a light touch working it in the grasses And now I got my little bit of a lighter value blue It's also kind of a neutral blue and I'm just gently it can you sort of see how gently I'm applying this Still the pink is kind of showing through it's giving that warmth underneath kind of like the golden sky Now you can see also in the sky how that little band that I missed Isn't affected because I I really blended the pastels over that area So I'm just gradually working this in and I'm trying not to totally cover up the golden parts of these grasses But uh, just give again like a little bit of negative painting because it would be peeking through in some areas Now I say this often in my videos I guess I just try to be efficient with my pastels But I try to use a pastel if I've got it in my hand and I just used it Where else can I use it in the painting not only is it efficient? But a time saver maybe you don't have to pick it up again But also I believe it creates a harmony in your painting where you have colors playing throughout the whole painting and If you don't do this, uh, you don't do it everywhere But a painting can feel a little segmented if you don't have some of the colors playing in other areas of your painting So I know too. I Think it was I was years ago. I can't remember how long ago But I remember some of you new artists may remember this I remember when I started painting an amazing thing that happens You start looking at the world you start studying how things look in real life And instead of just taking it for granted of what a color is or or not paying attention to what a color is You really start to analyze what's happening in nature and I remember At the beach one time I had I had just started painting and I was looking at some of the shadows The sun was going down and I was like look at the shadows They were the sand in other words It was blue kind of like a darker brilliant gorgeous blue And I had never really noticed that before that often our brains tell us sand is tan or brown or You know a gray if it's in the shadow But it was truly the most beautiful blue with my eyes and I was just like wow I'm going to remember that so a lot of times and we can't exaggerate these things too Even if it's not super blue But often sand in the shadows when it's cooled off in a shadowy area like this The sand can appear blue and purple So that's why you're going to see me use these colors in those shadows that are being cast from the grasses I'm going to just gradually continue adding my values and Working the whole painting and that's something I stress a lot Is try not to get hung up on any particular area Work the painting as a whole and your painting will have more consistency Your values will be more correct if you don't get hung up also I think you'll have more freedom And uh and a beautiful experience often we can get bogged down in an area when we feel it's not right And I really feel um sometimes it's best to move on instead of overworking an area Sometimes things fix themselves We're we're not seeing the whole painting and all the values working together So often we can feel like a value's not dark enough And keep working and make it darker and darker and then we're like later We're like man, I've really made it too dark So that's one of the advantages of working the whole painting is you get things working together And they will be more correct and uh, I believe more beautiful as a painting And it's been one of my goals lately not to go too dark too soon So maybe I'm just preaching to myself I think now I'm going to grab one of these gorgeous brilliant blues by the way my pastel selections My there it is. Look at that blue. This is going to be some of the sand I will get back to my point about the pastels. This is going to be some of the sand I had kind of that neutral blue And and things do get more neutral as they go into the distance like those longer shadows reaching out onto the beachy area But this beautiful blue that's a little darker Is going to be perfect for some of the sand shadows in this shadow side of the grasses And you see when I apply it on top of that pink it almost creates a new color I'm not sure if you can see it from whatever device you're looking at But again back to the pastels. I'm using I had brought because I'm traveling And I had to pack pretty quickly this situation was with my mother-in-law Was just out of the blue. I mean we knew she had had cancer before two years ago, but We didn't know it had gotten as bad as it is now and Metastasized so I had to pack things up fairly quickly So I was thinking what's what's the best? Sets that I could bring and one of them was just literally the pastel I have a little workshop palette where I put on my pastels In between paintings before putting them back into my studio set And they usually have just the best assortment of dark values light values neutrals And you know in all the various colors So that's that's really a good travel set for me. So I brought that I brought some different I brought my unison 120 half sticks set that is an amazing set For almost any painting and I I've talked about it in a lot of videos that I've used If you're a beginner and you can afford it I mean these nicer pastels aren't cheap But if you're going to scrimp on something don't scrimp on the pastels They really do that make that much of a difference the professional brands Artist brands versus student grade You'll get so frustrated with some of the student grade pastels Especially if you buy them at like those craft stores I think one of the brands that's a student brand is called Reeves our evs And that one is definitely You know nothing against the company, but you know if you want some good results That's not the best brand to buy. I'm using some of the purples down here But again, so the 120 unison half stick set I Think it's probably around 300 dollars or something It was it was actually sold out of us some places for a while there Maybe I've been mentioning it so much people are buying out the unison Uh 120 half stick set, but that's a good set for beginners And I always recommend buying half sticks if you can because you know you get twice the color for your money I also brought a set of pastels. That's still a fairly new set for me. It's the senelier pastels also awesome pastels I love them. They're so soft and buttery And it's the 120 Paris set that I got. I've been using those For the last few paintings that I've done and I just love them So I know sometimes we can't always get what we want with these pastels. Goodness knows. I know that I've been juggling finances throughout my whole art career with life changes and you know, just things you don't expect So you have to budget But you know, you can buy sets that are smaller. I've been mentioning the 120 half stick sets But you can buy sets that are 20 and 60 and there's a little 40 senelier set that I really like a half stick set So you just do what you can and I also have some videos where I've created paintings with just 12 pastels So as long as you have a decent assortment of values And that that's key, you know, make sure you have a good range of values and you can really get creative with color Okay, look at all these crazy colors going on, right? Doesn't that look really crazy? And I'm always telling you guys embrace the yucky stage It is really what's going to keep your painting loose if you don't overwork things too quickly And I also often say I get the advantage of looking back at my Paintings as I'm creating them while I'm making these videos and so often I like some of these beginning stages. This this definitely needs some more work at this point But you know, you'll see probably As the painting progresses that there are some stages where it's just really loose and painterly and I You know might could have stopped even sooner. I was happy with this final painting though All right So I've been talking for a while and you know, you guys might just want to relax and watch this You can always turn the volume down But I'm going to add some of that Caribbean sounding music here and oh, let me say one more thing here right here what I'm working on I there's some other grasses in the reference image towards the back And they obviously have a shadow side to them too like the foreground grasses But what happens to value as things recede into the distance? Does the value get darker or lighter? You probably guessed it values get lighter. So Those little purple grasses I did back there I'm not going to make them any darker than that because if I did they wouldn't feel far away Now I'm adding a little bit of you know, not so bright of a green because colors get a bit more neutral in the distance Now I know I don't have any green in the foreground grasses yet, but I'm going to add those So that little purple and the little bit of green that I added will give the impression that they're far away Versus close up now. I'm going to start adding some greens to these grasses And you'll gradually see how I am keeping certain areas a little bit more neutral And a little bit cooler. I'm not going to use my warmest greens until a little closer to the end And I'm also making some real gestural strokes with the width of the pastel so as not to get too many Frons or blades of these grasses too early keep it loose resist the urge to add all that detail early on Okay, I know I said I was going to stop talking But I just thought about one of the points that I was going to make about my pastels I actually at the end of this painting made a little chart of all the colors that I used And uh, I'll share a picture of that here at the end But my patrons you guys will if you're patron and you're watching and if you're not sure what a patron is it's from my patreon page and uh, I really didn't even know much about patreon for a long time And I had some people asking if I'd make a patreon page But what it is it's a way that you guys people who watch this channel Can simply just support this channel for five dollars a month and trust me It has helped me to make better content and more content because of the the support And also it gives you some perks some benefits and extra things extra goodies More instruction and it's a great group. I get to know you guys better Oh, and I get to see your work when you work from these videos and you create a lesson I have you guys share it in homework albums and I get to See what you're creating give you some feedback and it's really awesome. You guys my patrons We're just such a happy artistic family So, uh, stay tuned and keep watching I will speed this up a bit towards the end or the video would be long the whole painting probably took About an hour and a half So I've sped up the last part of this, but I hope you're enjoying all this real time I'm trying to give you more real time lately. All right. I am really going to add this music So enjoy don't go away watch to the end and I will show you those pastels at the end I want to show you my technique for getting the water line level once again water Always seeks its own level. It's going to be straight. It's just the way water is it just lays flat So it's a good idea to get a straight edge and fortunately I brought my metal ruler with me. This metal ruler is old It's back from my graphic design days. Oh my goodness. When did I graduate 1987 from college? Um, also pardon my bed head I had gotten up in the morning to finish this painting and I did not get the primping gene somehow I just love to stay home and not have to fix up Does anybody else like that now? I have zoomed in here for you to be able to see but unfortunately the camera It keeps getting confused on whether to focus on my hand or my big old head So um, pardon the out of focus, but I wanted to mention here when I'm looking at I had to get close because I couldn't see Literally when I'm painting this water back here. It's another time where I say I turned my brain off I'm just focusing on the shapes. I'm trying to forget about them being waves and how waves work I'm literally just looking at shapes and colors and values and recreating them Um, because sometimes we can get a little bit confused or overwhelmed when we're trying to create a particular subject matter I always say our brains sometimes get in the way. Um, you don't always want to turn your brain off That might not be a good idea, but sometimes when painting shapes and things, um, it can actually be an advantage Okay, so the painting was pretty much done at this phase and I also here's the final I will show you the final again at the end of this, but I want to show you now My pastel selections like I promised I would I don't that first one I put down. I don't even think I used that one Um, but I'm doing them. I'm speeding it up because you can see it Then I'll show the photo at the end if you want to pause on the photo Um, but once again my patrons you guys are going to get a downloadable Attachment to your post and my patreon page, but I'm putting them kind of in color families purples blues teals And I usually I don't know those two were the same. That's why I put that little mark there Sometimes I accidentally duplicate a color Um, I usually do them when I lay them out like this and according according to value dark down to lightest They're not always in perfect order. Now. Here's some of the reds that I used. Yes I used reds and I didn't show it in the video, but I usually these are my neutrals Um, but I usually use a color for punch. There it is. Look at that punchy pink If you'll notice in the final there they are Um in the final painting you'll see in some of the grasses where I use that pink Can you see it and some of the pink from the underpainting is showing through? So I hope you guys enjoyed that little trip to the beach with me I will be back home soon in my studio And I am so grateful for all of your prayers all of your warm wishes And I hope you're learning a lot and as always happy painting