 Welcome to Monet Café, your very own virtual art studio where you can learn about pastel painting and more. Beginners, you're gonna love this lesson. Hello, artists, and welcome to Monet Café. I'm artist Susan Jenkins and I'm glad you've joined me here in the studio today because I'm gonna be focusing on a painting lesson that is beginner focused and I know that many of my beginner lessons get a lot of attention and I think that's because many people visit this channel, thank you Lord, that are brand new to art, especially pastel painting. And so I think beginners are hungry to get some of the basics and this lesson should give you that and also as always we'll have lots of fun. So grab yourself a cup of coffee, get in your painting zone, and let's get started right now. The reference image I'll be using will be accessible to you from pmp-art.com. It's a great site for copyright free reference images and the theme this month in Monet Café and on my Patreon page is Nocturne paintings or night paintings. Let's talk about the products in this lesson and I tried to keep all the products budget friendly with beginners in mind. I'll be using the Strathmore toned gray paper. I like a gray surface because I can use white and the charcoal pencils I'm using for my sketch are by Derwent. I have a light, a medium, a dark, and a white. Also if you're looking for a great way to sharpen pastel or charcoal pencils this brass pencil sharpener is excellent by Mobius and Rupert. I'll share a link in the description. I also recommend you get the replacement blades keeping them sharp is important. Now I love to use these pre-cut mats like for frames. I've just flipped it over here. They're great for getting standard sizes. The inside of this is 5 by 7 and the outside is 8 by 10. You'll see me using the outside dimensions as well. I'll be using a very affordable and a new to me set of soft pastels. These are 48 soft pastels made by Artix and thank you to Artix for donating this set for my product review video. I must say I was quite pleased and also very pleased with the price. As of the making of this video it was a great deal on Amazon. I used this set exclusively for the painting tutorial except for two other colors and for the final pastel painting the surface I'll be using is made by Art Spectrum. It's called Color Fix. They have a cool pack and a warm pack and they sell individual sheets as well but I love these packs. I decided to use a warm color believe it or not. The reference image is a night very cool scene and I thought a warm color would make a nice complementary color to serve kind of as an underpainting of sorts for the beautiful cool colors to rest upon. This is the color I chose. I'd really appreciate it if you would go ahead and like this video. Also subscribe to this channel. I notice 66% of you are continuously watching my videos and you haven't yet subscribed so go ahead and click that button right now. I'd also love it if you would support this channel over on my Patreon page. It's only $5 a month. You can cancel it anytime and you get the extended real-time footage of many of my videos plus extra goodies. There will be three stages to this painting process. The first is a value study. It's so important. We're just using limited values to create a little study. I can't tell you what a great foundation this is for beginning a painting. This content is sped up a bit. This is an example of what I was saying for my patrons on my Patreon page. They will have the real-time full version with extra commentary but you're still going to get a lot here. Don't worry about that. For this value study I basically just sketched in my big shapes. That's really just the large shapes that you see. You want to keep this so simple at this point. I'm using my medium value charcoal pencil. You could also do this with markers, regular pencil and you can get different values by just pressing harder. The reason I'm using the middle value is I want to get everything other than the darkest darks and the lightest lights. Now I'm just using my finger to blend in a bit and those are what I would say are my middle values. Now I'm going to use my dark charcoal pencil to get in my darkest values and almost always in a landscape painting your vertical elements such as your trees are going to have dark values and in this scene it was really dark anyway. I lightened it up and changed some of the colors but it looked like it was mostly just trees and the reflections on a river. I decided to make it more like a meandering river or a marge scene and I actually gave it banks of land on the sides so I just broke out my artistic license and changed the composition a bit but here you can see I've gotten in most of my darker shapes. I decided to add a few little elements. They're kind of in the photo anyway. Just to lead the eye in not too much just a hint. You don't want to get the viewer too hung up on the entryway of the painting but just give them a nice little lead in. So those are my darkest darks. I added a little bit more dark to the upper part of the sky there and this is my lightest charcoal pencil. I'm just using it to kind of connect the sky and now I have one more value right because I'm using this gray paper I can use white. That's one of the advantages of using gray paper. If I was using white paper this wouldn't even show up. So I changed the position of the moon and the reason is because I wanted to get it in the reflection of the water and with my newly designed composition I wanted it to fall kind of where that water was in the lower left corner. So now I've got in my value study. The great thing about a value study is you've already really gotten practice one time. I'm giving a little bit of a design to the edge of the waterway. You want to avoid curves in water and roads. I added a few stars and there it is my little value study that I'll actually use for other paintings. So hang on to those value studies and you can reuse them for future pieces. And now stage two is a color study and this helps you to determine your color palette. Now I'm going to use the outside edge of this mat that I used before. The inside edge was 5 by 7. The outside edge is 8 by 10 and I'm going to create my color study also on this Strathmore gray tones paper. Now you've already seen me do the sketch once so I'm really speeding this one up and then I will start adding some pastels. Alright there it is a very simple sketch, simple composition and we're ready to add some color. And here is where I'm using for the first time Artix soft pastels. It's 48 colors. The colors are great. I thought they were awesome for a night scene and it's really neat. They have the color numbers and the name Artix embossed right there on the stick. I've never seen that before. That was so cool. It comes with a little color guide kind of like this little thin piece of paper here with all of the numbers and I'm just gonna tell you right away. I was really pleased with the quality of these pastels for the price. I think they're normally around $40 and for the set that's less than a dollar a stick. Wow. So now I'm just applying it to unsanded paper. If you've been painting with pastels long you know that. I brag a lot about sanded surfaces. You can get so many more layers on sanded surfaces. But unsanded papers are more affordable and they're great for color studies. I also like to create full, final pastel paintings on unsanded paper. I've learned more about how to use them, some techniques over the years. But this is great for this color study and what I'm doing now is I'm just experimenting with these pastels because I had never used them and I'm working out my color palette. And these three stages that I'm talking about in this video. Stage one, a value study. Stage two, a color study, eventually leading to stage three. Your final painting is truly going to make your final painting be a painting that you're way more pleased with than if you just jump in and don't have any precursory efforts. Every time I do this my paintings are always better. The final painting is always better. So I'm just getting in. It might seem weird that I put magenta for those trees but I wanted to get in a little bit of warmth underneath those big shapes and now I'll layer a darker value over these big tree shapes. This was one of the darker colors in the Artix set and as I mentioned I used two other pastels that are not in this set and they're both just darker pastels. One of them is the one you just saw me grab. It's a really dark blue and it's from the Paul Rubin's 40 set of soft pastels. Now I'm just blending with my finger here. You saw me earlier blend with a paper towel. Paper towels work great for blending on unsanded surfaces. Now this is sped up substantially for the Monet Café version. My patrons on my Patreon page will have slower speeds and additional commentary for this color study section but you should be able to get the idea here on Monet Café. I'm basically just working the colors and seeing kind of how I want to approach this and when I do a color study before a painting I find that I learn a lot. I in what I learned with this one was I liked the warm tones that it had in the reference image of kind of some orange and red colors in the distance but after creating this I liked it. When I went on to the final painting you'll see I choose a color palette that's even cooler. I just really wanted to embrace that night feeling so that's an advantage totally of doing a color study and again you've already created this now two times so you know your final is going to be better. So that was fun and it's nice and loose and when I go on to the final painting I keep my value study the one right there to the right I keep it next to me and I take this painting and I sit it on a shelf over to my right so that I can you can see it here so that I can see both of them while I paint and now the surface I'll be using is a pastel painting surface made by Art Spectrum. It's called Color Fix. It comes in individual sheets but I love these packs a cool pack and a warm pack and believe it or not even though my scene I told you I'm going to make it even cooler in color temperature I'm choosing a warm tone I almost used that red I just pointed at but I really loved this terracotta color I can't remember the exact name of it in the warm pack but it's really great to use these tone surfaces because you already have I don't like working on white white surfaces you already have a nice tone to begin with and it has an influence on your final painting so now I'm getting my sketch in again a third time so you know repetition is the mother of learning so when you do something over and over again you're obviously going to get better and better at it and now that I've worked the sketch now for the third time I know where my marshy banks are and keeping those little jagged edges to the water line and giving a bit more gesture now to my tree I liked how it was kind of curving backwards like it was looking at the moon and I just love to personify elements in my painting now I am adding this beautiful blue it's a darker blue that's in the artics soft pastel set and I'm doing a similar principle to what I did with the value study I'm just getting in my middle values and I know that I'm going to add my darkest values for that main tree of course I'm giving a little bit of this pretty teal or turquoisey blue to the sky and the water remember we want to reflect whatever's in the sky is going to reflect down into the water this is just a paper towel I needed to soften the first layer often when you're working on sanded surfaces it can be a bit textural and the pastels feel like they they rub off very easily but that tends to solve itself when you get a layer down and so that's why I often like to go ahead and blend the first layer now I'm using I mentioned that I used exclusively this artics artics 48 set of soft pastels with the exception of two other colors this is one of them it is the dark blue that's in the Paul Rubens 40 set of pastels it has a couple of nice darks in there the artics set had some darks but the darkest dark wasn't quite dark enough for a night scene and so you can see here how I'm just doing my same paper towel method getting it blended in those distant trees ended up being a little bit too light so you'll see me darken those in a little while now I'm just shaping this tree a little bit more I'm going to come back towards the end of the painting and carve out what's called the sky holes often with trees we paint negatively we instead of painting each branch and leaf as a positive shape we often like to carve the sky into those shapes it creates so much more of a painterly look you'll see me do some of that towards the end now down at the waterline where those grasses are it's often a little bit darker down closer to the water and especially on that curve right where I'm working now that's curving around the light source is the moon and the sky is lighter in that area so that's another thing you want to keep in mind when you're painting now you saw how I dark into those background trees not quite as dark as the foreground tree keep in mind values get lighter as they go into the distance and colors get cooler the temperature gets cooler here you can see me doing that negative painting I mentioned with this pretty blue all right you see now how things are layering a little bit better because I blended in that first layer and what did I say whatever's in the sky is going to get reflected in the water so that's why I keep working back and forth from sky to water they need to be harmonious that's what happens in real life so here I go again if I put it in the sky I'm going to add it to the water isn't this a gorgeous color now like I often say I liked many stages of this I I typically like an unfinished stage usually about three quarters of the way into the painting but I I keep working and having fun I really do enjoy the painting process but I'm gonna try to limit myself in time with some of the videos I have coming in the future and keep that kind of unfinished look now you see how these blues are starting to work together adding a little bit of that pretty blue remember I said I was gonna lighten up the value of those trees just a little so they feel further away now I'm using my finger to pull down the dark areas in the grasses what that does is it causes a reflection that's what happens with reflections they typically just are kind of downward darker shapes and they look real moody so the finger method works great I loved adding some of this pretty kind of periwinkle blue it's in between a blue and a purple one of my favorite colors and they have a gorgeous this color in the set is a really beautiful periwinkle color again echoing the color from the sky into the water look at that gorgeous in between a purple and a magenta oh my goodness it's a warm a very warm purple same thing pulling it into the water and this is getting that nice night moody feel remember how I said in the color study I was able to determine that I wanted this to feel more like night and not have that warm glow coming behind those trees in the distance so instead I used magenta's and pinks those are not as warm as reds and yellows so it kept it kept that night feel and I really was happy with the color palette now back to the stages again the importance of stage one stage two and stage three hopefully you're getting the idea here which is stage one is so crucial establishing your values if you get your values correct you can get very creative with color you don't have to even use the colors that are in the reference image what's called local color the colors that you see oh I really liked this pretty kind of a neutral green really doled out green and I thought it was a great color to just give a hint of maybe the fact that they're you know these are green elements it just happens to be nighttime so we're not gonna have any bright or warm greens so again getting value right with stage one very crucial you know I I've just I know what my values are now and then getting the color study done for stage two just really helped me get an idea of where I wanted to take this painting with color and now I'm starting to have fun okay so another thing you'll notice here is because I'm working on the sanded surface the art spectrum color fix sanded paper literally if you're brand new to pastel it feels a little like sandpaper and that's what causes your pastels to get layers multiple layers and to cause those colors to interact with each other without getting muddy a witness a pretty blue added some of that down by the the grasses and in the cooler sides of the grasses so I was very pleased that well I've used this art spectrum color fix paper before I know it gets great layering but the artics pastels again this is the first time I'm using these pastels look how many layers I'm getting I would say it is a soft pastel maybe leaning a little more towards medium hardness I'm talking about the range of softness to hardness with different brands of pastels the softest pastels are like the Schminke Sennelier even Terry Ludwig pastels medium pastels are I would say more of the Rembrandt they're medium to hard I'd say medium to soft would be unison Jack Richardson and I would say these are these are soft leaning a little bit to the medium hardness so even though I'm saying this is a great starter set for beginners I'm just gonna say beginners you can't go wrong with the set it is archival meaning it's not gonna fade it's light fast you're gonna you're gonna be pleased with the layers you can get and here I'm doing a little more negative painting but you're really gonna be pleased with the price I know when you're first starting out with pastel painting these things can get expensive so yes two thumbs up for a beginner set but also whatever level you are I would buy the set I mean I got it donated to me but I totally buy this set they work great so now I'm just getting in I've done this before again twice a little little sliver of a moon I wanted the moon to be just barely there and again I moved to the moon because I wanted it to have a reflection in the water and it worked now with this composition if I to put it over to the other side I wouldn't have the reflection in the water so now's where I'm adding my brightest brights my highest contrast with my whites punching it up a little bit with color this is when I usually have fun I start going okay let's add my punchy color and my highest contrast with value and color color contrast as well so adding a little bit of that glimmer in the water and now I'm negatively painting amongst or in to the marshy grasses and towards the final stages you can actually do horizontal marks across the water and it really makes it feel flat I added a color I would typically not go so light behind those trees but I wanted a little bit of sparkle so I thought that was fun so here is the final and again it is sped up a bit on the Monet Cafe version if you want the real-time version consider becoming a patron it's only five dollars a month and that's how I'm able to keep these videos coming on the Monet Cafe channel so God bless you all subscribe if you haven't already become a patron and join the Monet Cafe art group on Facebook feel free to share your recreations on Facebook or Instagram and be sure to tag me so I see them all right everyone God bless and happy painting