 Welcome, artists. I'm so glad you're here with me for a painting experience I truly enjoy. The topic for this tutorial is why would you choose a blue underpainting? One of the most common questions I get is how do you make your underpainting selections? Which colors should I use? So this video should help you if you have that question. And by the way, this is the Monet Cafe version with limited content but still a lot of great material for the full video tutorial. Feel free to become a patron of mine for only $5 a month and help support this channel. Now let's get started with the lesson. While we've been in this crazy time in our world with the coronavirus, I've been trying to get a little exercise by running along the neighbor's cow pasture and I spotted these lovely little flowers and I snapped a photo and it became the inspiration for this painting. Now I had called this painting Morning Devotion. I really don't like titling my paintings. So I did something neat. I decided to post a picture of it in our community tab on this YouTube channel Monet Cafe. I gave you guys the opportunity to give me title ideas and I chose the one from Moon 9505 called In This Moment and it was the perfect title for me because that's exactly what it was for me. It was this moment I wanted to remember. It was a misty day. I'm running. I'm actually just praising the Lord for just being in nature. I'm gonna kind of come up with the color palette and the materials that I'm gonna use. One of the most common questions that I get from other artists is my decision process or in art. You know what do you how do you start? What do you do? What surface? What underpainting? And sometimes you just let the reference image and your mood determine where you go with it. That's how I roll anyway. So anyway let's get going on this. I'm gonna let you follow me around while I pick out my materials and paint this lovely painting hopefully. Anyway so I still have little pastels all over the place but what I thought I would do is show you why I would make certain color choices and again it's kind of based on the reference image. Again I've got this little reference image. The day sorry for my studio lights. The day was very misty and gray and even though these little flowers feel kind of happy I kind of wanted to keep that that mood of how I was feeling that day. Actually it was a blessed day. It was a little cooler here in Florida than it normally is. So it was a nicer time to run and that's trust me that's good because I don't love running. I do it just because it's good for me. So anyway I wanted to keep that feeling and you know I've got my choices over here. I have this little place where I keep a lot of my papers. I have more papers in some other places but this is where I have like my Sennelier. I've got little scraps and things too. I've got Sennelier pastel card I could choose from. I've got under here UART papers. I've got some color fix papers and of course I've got all kinds of different watercolors and all of my things that I use to create my own pastel surfaces if I want to create my own. And also what I already pulled out that I had over there was this pastel mat. I've recently become a fan of pastel mat. I can't believe it took me so long to use it. But I happened to remember that I had learned something and I have not done it yet. I don't usually work on white paper with any pastel paper other than watercolor paper. I like of course it's white but I like to tone it or do a watercolor under painting but I knew that the pastel mat was water-friendly and I had heard of other artists using it for watercolor paintings under paintings. So I thought what I would do is do an under painting on this white pastel mat. I'm just going to keep it this size and obviously it's a horizontal format. And so what I'm going to do is think about what under painting would give it that moody calming kind of gray feeling. I don't want to use gray as the under painting because I think I'm going to use some neutrals and some subtle. That's the word I'm looking for, some subtle colors. And I don't really want to use, I often love under paintings more in this color family, you know, because we use a lot of greens and a lot of blues in the sky. And a complimentary under painting is usually just beautiful for that. It's like the earth, you know. And so I didn't want that because that's going to be a little bit too contrasty, complimentary, and warm. So I decided I'm going to do a cooler under painting. I'm just going to tone this with this Dayla Rowney. This one is the turquoise color of their acrylic inks. I love it. It's really bright. I've never used it on here. But just so you know, if you don't have that, if you want to follow along with this painting lesson and you don't have this acrylic ink stuff, you can do the same thing by just finding a pastel. If you have a harder pastel, that's a little bit better to use as an under painting. It doesn't take as up as much of the tooth, even though pastel matte doesn't seem to have a lot of tooth because it's not really sanded like you are, but it does fill up if you use the real softies first. So if you have something like this or even a new pastel, that's a nice color there. I know my lighting's not super great here. You can basically just lightly glaze over your surface and use some water or alcohol to just tone the whole surface. So I'm just trying to give you an alternate way to do this. Another way to do it, I'm going to put my pastel away, is watercolor. If you've got yourself a little watercolor set, you can find you a nice lighter. I would say don't get this too dark of a value because we're gonna let the pastels do that, but in here we've got this this blue in here and this green in here. They might make for a nice combination for that cool under painting I'm looking for. Okay, so there's one answer to a question I get is how do you determine what under painting you're going to do? Well, it has a lot to do with the mood and a lot to do with the kind of the direction of where you want the painting to go. So that's my goal with that. This is a portion that is actually part of my full version in my Patreon group. So I actually go over all of my pastels and the reasoning for the color selections. Okay, now back to the under painting. Okay, I have my pastel matte taped up here. I've described all the time how I tape it. You put a piece of tape on the back of it facing forward and then another piece on the front so that you can paint and all the way to the edges. I used to put tape bordered it on my paper, but this way you've got the whole painting surface to work on or paper surface to work on. I've made some notes for myself. I purposely want to try to keep a light touch. I am a little heavy-handed and I just want to remember that. So I'm gonna keep referring to that hopefully. I also wanted to remember the misty moody feel of the scene and I'm trying to keep a neutral palette. Did a quick little value study here just to kind of keep me on track. Time to get started with the Dayla Rowney acrylic ink. Now this is going to maybe seem a little bit bold in color when it goes down, but it will, well we should have moved that over more because I like to make some color notes. I've got a little room down here to do that because it will it will look bold going on, but by the time we lay the pastels on it, I didn't want it to be totally dead. Okay, I know it was a misty moody day, but I felt like this underneath color would give it some life and cool it off a bit rather than the warm palettes that I use usually or underpainting. Now this is just a little tray. You can see I use it a lot and it's just nice for dropping in your acrylic inks. If you use acrylic inks, shake them really good because they do settle on the bottom. I'm gonna give it a couple of drops. I may need more. Actually, you know, I think I'm gonna get a little glass of water. Sometimes I like to apply it a little bit watered down and not full strength, so let me get that and whatever. Okay, I have a little dish of water. Actually, that's kind of a big dish for this, what I'm doing. And a couple of paint brushes and a paper towel. And paper towel, I only use that just to dry my brush off if I've got a little bit too much on it. That's curling up a bit. Pastel matte paper in human climates will curl up a bit like you art paper, but I haven't found it to be as bad as you are. Now this may look like a crazy brush, but I actually like this brush. It gives a lot of texture, so I'm, because my little thingy here is so small, I'll probably dip it out with this brush and then I'll probably use, I will use this one to apply. So this is fun to me. This is actually part of the awesome relaxing element of painting. Now what I just did, I put water on my brush, I dipped it into this and added it with the water over here. See how that's a little lighter already? Not quite as dark, so I just dulled it a little bit with the water toned it down. Okay, you see how bold that is and bright? But it's just beautiful. A little more water. Okay, one more of this. So here's what I'm going to do. Now I'm wetting the other brush with some water, drying it a little bit with the brush and I'm just having fun here. Look at that. Isn't that neat? You know, and this is going to get covered up with pastel, so that's okay. I don't want to get my iPad. A little more water on this brush because the water helps to just blend it. I'm working with both hands. Actually, are there any other lefties out there? Holler at me in the comments if you're a lefty because we're in our right minds, right? So anyway, oh, my point with that is we can work with both hands. I didn't need more water to get it to blend better. Now we're talking. Look at that. Now I'm going to go ahead and utilize the fact that I know that values are darker down here in the foreground. So I'm just going to go. It's probably all going to end up being the same color, but no, it's a little bit darker in the foreground there. And dry it off a little bit. A little more of the lighter one. And there you have it. Just kind of a nice, loose. I can tell I'm going to have to move my iPad when I apply the pastels. I don't want to work. All right, there we go. We've got our little really cool blue underpainting. And I don't know. I'm just kind of excited about that. Oh, and you may have noticed too, I had already drawn off an 8 by 10 area. I have these little mats that I prefer the ones where the thing is in the middle, but I knew the outside parameters of this was 8 by 10. So it just, it's so nice not to have to measure it, you know? So I usually paint outside the lines. Anyway, so and those little two dropper fulls of the ink was plenty. I still have more left. So you may not need that much. If you try that, just trying to save you guys on art supplies. Okay, this is the portion where I am speeding it up for the Monet Cafe channel. And the Patreon version has lots of real time. I'd say the majority real time in this little speed, but it also has a lot of commentary. You see me talking there, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But I always try to speed this up just a bit. It actually reduces the file size for uploading to YouTube and helps out with all of the time it would take to upload this video by shrinking it a bit. But I always try to speed it to a minimum. I mean, there's some speed videos you see that you literally can't even see the choices that they're making. But I am still going to give you guys some commentary while I'm working here. I'm getting my sketch in here and notice I'm drawing things a bit geometrically. I often find that I have a tendency towards doing things more circular. And we can actually kind of sketch a little bit more chunky and geometrically. And it gives it, oh, I don't know, more interesting edges than rounded shapes. And so I just thought I'd explain that a little bit. I'm also explaining there how you like to have your trees or your mountains going up on the edges rather than trailing off your painting. I think the analogy is to have them smiling rather than frowning. You don't want the viewer's eye to fall off or run out of the painting. So that kind of keeps it kind of trapped inside the painting. And I also wanted to share that I made some different color selections as I went along. I wanted to keep the feeling I was experiencing that day, which is why I chose the title suggestion in the moment. Because it was just this beautiful moment. It was a misty gray day. It was unusually cool for where I live in Florida. And I was on that little jog like you saw. And I was just appreciating everything and just kind of a little spiritual moment. And so I wanted to remember how everything was kind of muted and neutral in color. And so what I was saying about changing my color selections, as you notice right here, even though I thought these colors were quite neutral when I picked them out, not so bold, they were very warm when I got them onto this blue underpainting. And that's probably why, you know, color and values affected by what you put it on. And because the underpainting was blue or turquoise, you know, the warmth was showing up even more. So I and I and I actually also decided to change the flowers. In my little value sketch, I had drawn the flowers larger. And again, I wanted to remember the moment. And the flowers weren't large. There were these little flowers all popping up with just almost two infinity going off into the background. Right now you're seeing I'm blending. I wanted to mention I know I'm past it now. But what I was using for blending was a piece of chamois cloth that you dry your cars with. You can use this for blending. And it works quite well on pastel matte, this surface that I'm using pastel. I mean, you art paper, the chamois cloth does not work. You want to use a piece of pipe foam insulation for that. But the chamois cloth works great on the pastel mat. So now I'm just kind of reestablishing some of the darks and in a bit. And I'm making some visual trail of value just to keep the viewer's eye coming into the painting. I love creating depth in a painting, which is also why you see that if you just looked at the reference photo. And by the way, when I do these demonstrations, I always provide the reference photo as an attachment in my Patreon group. So they literally can download the reference photo and work from it. But in the reference photo, the trees I knew they had depth. I knew they had some layers of trees. But in the photo, you couldn't see that it looked literally like a band of trees just kind of going across the back. So it's to me always a good you see how green that is back to how this was too warm. I'll address it in a minute when I change it from this color palette. But I almost always try to increase the depth in my artwork by creating that sense of distance by value. And you can do that literally by making another layer of trees, make them smaller. I have a simple little lesson on Monet Café. I think it's under, by the way, I have play lists. I think I need to make sure you guys know that because there's over 200 videos here in Monet Café. And it would be so hard if you're like, I want to find one that she has on color theory or the color wheel. And you'd have to search through all 200 videos, 200 plus videos, that would be hard. Here, I'm sorry for jumping around. This is how I'm creating that sense of depth by cooling off some of the trees that are in the distance there. That really makes them look further away, which is my point here. I'm getting to, but back to the playlist. If you wanted to find something on composition or whatever, you literally can go to the tab up top. It'll say videos. And I think the next one is playlist and you click playlist. And I've been trying to be faithful about this by when I create a video to put it in a category. This one, for example, will go under the category of pastel tutorial and also under paintings. So there's a whole playlist. I think that one might have like 20 videos. I can't remember. There's playlist for color value composition or color theory, I think. And there's also one back to my point, a very early video with mine that I did that I think it's gotten quite a few views. I have one just on drawing principles or something like that. But I talk about the magic tricks of art and it's super simple, but it explains a lot about in a very simple way about some of the ways and the techniques and the principles in art of how to create that sense of depth and distance in a super simple way. It's actually a great video if you wanted to do it with your kids or anybody else who's artistic. So it's kind of a kind of a good little quick education. Now I apologize for my big old head in the way here. I'm still at the stage here where I was, I was not happy right here. I was like, this is not in the moment. This was not what the moment was like. But the neat thing is you can change your direction. And it's a good idea to do that. Don't keep working on something when you just feel like it wasn't right. So I worked on it a bit and then I was like, you know what, not feeling it. This is too warm. The flowers are too large. I mean, I could have kept going with it, but it wasn't what I wanted. So I decided, there you go, to get a stiff little bristle brush, just kind of a stiff brush and just brush out some of the flower. Oh, this is where I was actually just removing a flower. But in a minute, I decided, yep, go ahead, let's get rid of some of the larger flowers and then I start later. I will start cooling off or subduing the color palette. And I do that by what I'm doing right there. That's a gray pastel. Very rarely do I use gray. I use often bolder colors or or a neutral color. But this is most of those were just plain gray. And what it did is it started to create that misty moodiness. Do you see how it's already toned it down a lot? And it was feeling more like the day and more like what I experienced that day. All right, so that's it for the commentary of this video. Enjoy the rest of this. I'm going to put on some lovely music for you. Feel free to join our Monet Cafe Art Group on Facebook. Nearly 10,000 members in that group. And it might be at 10,000 now, for all I know. But artists just helping each other every level. You don't have to feel embarrassed if you're brand new at pastels. It's just a wonderful learning and a great place to be. And then, of course, my patrons, you guys know, I have my own Patreon group for you guys. I get a lot more time with my patrons because it's just a more intimate group and a little more attention. We just had a contest. We had a painting challenge that was called 12 Days of Healing, where we shared art together for 12 days. And and they got awarded some good prizes. So I hope you will hang out and watch the rest of this demonstration. It really does help my YouTube channel here, Monet Cafe. If you watch videos longer rather than just clicking away, if you're interested, of course. And also, if you haven't subscribed, please subscribe and hit the little bell icon that alerts you whenever I post a new video. And, of course, comment, like, share and just have a good old time. All right, guys, enjoy the rest of this and I'll pop back in at the end. All right, I'm finishing up at this point, adding a little bit of those pinks. You saw the pastel I held up was the it's actually an iridescent Mount Vision pastel. But if I had to describe this color palette, I would describe it as one half of the color wheel, basically, a little broader than just half. But it has mostly cooler colors and it does stretch a little bit around into the pinks and a little bit warmer greens. But for the most part, you don't see any oranges or yellows or reds. And it really did represent the day quite well. So I hope you enjoyed that. And I hope in your part of the world, wherever you are, that you're feeling the blessings of art and painting and that you're at peace and that you're safe. All right, guys, happy painting.