 Welcome to Monet cafe. I'm artist Susan Jenkins and in this tutorial. I'm calling this painting sunshine I'm using some very bright beautiful pastels and only 18 colors. This is the unison set Curated by the artist Lucy Pittaway. Oh, we're gonna have so much fun If you would go ahead and like this video Go ahead and subscribe if you haven't already and if you hit the little bell next to the subscribe button You'll be notified of any future videos. I post this free video tutorial is brought to you because of the faithful support from my patrons On my patreon page for five dollars a month. You can support this channel and you get extra content So here we go. Let's talk about the supplies as I mentioned already about the unison pastels I was so blessed that unison gave me this set to do a product review And I was so so blessed to be able to learn more about artist Lucy Pittaway So these are 18 colors that she selected from unison pastels and when I first saw them I was instantly happy because the colors are so bright and beautiful now her style I'll talk about more in a minute. It's rather whimsical and fun I always do this when I get a set of pastels at least I do now and when I was a beginner artist Sometimes would forget but I like to make a mark and write the color down so that if I run out of a particular color I know what it looked like and I can order it from that number and Let's go ahead and see on unison's website You can click under their artist section and read a little bit more about artist Lucy Pittaway She's absolutely beautiful and when you read a little bit more about her you can see she's beautiful on the inside too Like I said, she has a lovely whimsical and fun style and here it says she has two dedicated art galleries Also, she is a former graphic design teacher. I majored in graphic design myself It also says that Lucy chose bright and uplifting colors for her artwork And each piece has an underlying story and inspiration related to her own life family and surroundings Lucy is really well known for her sheep collection Her work just makes you feel happy and don't we all need that of course you can find it on the unison color website But I found that it is a little more affordable on Jackson's if you go to Jackson's art supply, I can't remember the website for it, but it's only $79 there the surface. I'll be using is pastel matte. You can find that and so many other products on my Amazon shop page Simply go to I have the link in every video go to my idea list where I'm clicking there and they're sub Categorized if you go to pastel papers and more These lists move around when I add things but right now it's the last list At the bottom there. So it has many of the pastel papers that I use. I love using pastel matte It's the second third and fourth one there I use the colors sometimes but in this lesson I'm using the white pastel matte I wanted this painting to be bright and in line with Lucy's style of happy and cheerful and Also, too I'll be doing a watercolor underpainting and I have a list of Watercolor products that I like to use and recommend as well So you can check that out if you like and that's it. Let's get to painting first I am going to create an underpainting with watercolor I got my sketch in with some charcoal pencil and I loved these sheep I found the reference image on Unsplash.com. Thanks to photographer Francesco Ungaro now I did crop the image and I flipped it horizontally I just liked it better that way if you're a patron of mine You will get my cropped and edited photo to work from I also did a quick little study of one of the sheep on a piece of pastel matte I like to sometimes do a little preliminary piece just to get started now again I'm doing a watercolor underpainting because pastel matte is water-friendly. I often like to put my watercolors just in a plate I like a circular palette much like the color wheel. I have ultramarine blue Prussian blue. I also have cadmium yellow and I have another yellow kind of color. It's called quinacridone gold. I love it It's a really kind of gold and yellow color. I also have quinacridone violet now with these five colors I was at five one two three four five. Yes, I can create so many colors. You know how you can mix the primaries So really with watercolor, it's awesome. You don't need nearly as many colors as with pastel I love to use these Princeton brush company brushes. This is the 4050 round I used a 10 and an 8 I believe maybe no I think I just used the 10 I did use a bigger brush though to lay down some water Here I'm mixing two different purples the quinacridone red and the ultramarine marine blue and then the prussian blue with the red It makes two different types of purples now I'm mixing some yellow orangey colors And then I'm mixing the quinacridone gold with the red for a more brilliant orange and two greens the prussian Blue and the yellow make a more cool green the ultramarine blue and the yellow make a warmer green So with these five colors you can get so many combinations now I thought I'd just go ahead and lay in some big areas of color for an under painting now This is going to be one of those videos where I say do as I say not as I do I've done watercolor on this pastel matte white surface many times But I never actually tried to do it in this way where I was sectioning off areas And I didn't realize how much it bleeds into other areas. It's not quite like watercolor paper This was something I learned I I got it all bleeding down into my sketch that I did So I ended up just not even worrying about it and just getting in the big blocks of color And I kind of lost my sketch because of that. So if you do an under painting on pastel matte You might not want to do it in this way What would have been better probably is for me just to get in some some nice color and then put my sketch on top So what I'm doing though you get the general idea Same principles apply to so many paintings. I'm just getting in big blocks of color I'm covering up that white surface with the general big shapes Values and colors and you can see it it was bleeding all around the edges now It doesn't matter that much because I do cover it up with pastel Again, keep that in mind if you're doing something similar on pastel matte and now the fun begins using these brilliant and bright Pastels I started with the lightest green. This was a sunny sunny day That's why I call it painting sunshine and I even named the painting sunshine days They were just these cool-looking sheep walking down the road in the sunshine now I have put up the reference image for you to see while I'm painting. I apologize that it's so small I have to wrestle with do I want you to see my pastels and A small reference image or blow the reference image up and then you can't see my whole palette So I thought you might like to see the pastels. I'm choosing in this one now. I did switch to the middle green here I'm working kind of like the way color works or value I should say works usually darker in the foreground and gradually getting lighter in the background I'm keeping this super super loose now. I'm working on that shadow the only real dark Well, there's two sort of darks this dark green that I'm using here I'm just kind of getting in that shadow. You can see in the reference image there the shadow was on our left side and Now I had to work in a little bit of that green between the legs like I said I really lost my sketch. So I had to just kind of Re-paint it which was fine and one reason I really like this image is because I felt like I could utilize these colors In this set quite well again bright colors. They kind of look like sunshine and the photo was Very bright and sunny It was so easy to see where the light was coming from from our right shining onto the sheep from the right now I used a pastel pencil if you've watched my videos much used no I don't often use a pastel pencil, but I kind of used it to resketch in To re-establish my sheep. So it was no biggie. I just redrew them So now I'm using something. I'll show you an image of it later. It's a pastel blender made by Pan Pastel So I'm gonna I'm gonna use one again and in just a little while now What I'm doing now is what I talk about in so many painting videos I'm focusing on value the lightness or the darkness of something and the advantages of using such a small set like this is you are forced to Rely on value because you don't have some of the colors you need sometimes So you have to just go with what value is correct versus color and this middle topi color. It's kind of a Brown topi color was nice for some of the shadows of the legs Now I noticed that of course the sun's coming from the right and so the right side of the legs are going to be more In sunshine the mother sheep though the middle sheep was kind of in front of her So the leg I'm working on right there was just catching a little bit of the sunshine and that one was almost all in shadow back there So these are just little subtleties that you pay attention to while you're painting and you you just choose values that are close I think working from a small set is so great Not only for beginner artists because you know sometimes we don't have a lot of pastels Or we can't afford to go out and buy hundreds of pastels But I think this is a great exercise for Pastel artists that have been painting a while It sort of reestablishes the importance of value and also how we don't always need so many pastel colors I'm sorry. Yes. I am actually admitting that. I know we always want more pastel artists. I get it I do too, but sometimes we can overdo it We don't really need as many colors as we think often. So I'm using this is the other dark This is the dark blue. It's probably the darkest of all the colors and the dark green would be next and I'm just scumbling in kind of giving directional strokes to the Shadowed side of the sheep. Now what I'm doing here is like, oh my goodness. Why would you use that red? Well, what do red and blue make they make purple? So I'm using this blender I did say I would talk about this blender These are the pan pastel soft blending tools and the one I'm using right now is the one that says point It's the bigger ones and I find that these blenders or sponge bars They're called work great on pastel matte. Sometimes if you're working on a sanded pastel surface That's very gritty. Sometimes these don't work as good, but in general pan pastels Work great on pastel matte if you're not familiar with what they are. They're literally like little pans They look like little makeup compacts with pastels and you can use these blending tools to paint with them Like you would an acrylic paint with a paintbrush and it's really a lot of fun I got to pull mine out again and do another tutorial, but this pastel matte surface is great for that So I'm using the blending tool here. You can see I'm picking up some of the blue I had before That I painted on the mother sheep and I just drug it over It keeps a little residue on it so you can kind of get in a little value study All right. Now I'm just getting in this road with some of the middle Um tan color that's in the set And remember that when you're working with pastels or really any medium Don't feel like you have to get everything just perfect at first It's all about the layering And keep a light touch and just get in the layers and usually I work dark to light I'm not even going to try to put in any of these bright Sunny looking Parts of the wool on the sheep Because if I try to put that down right now see the sheep are still pretty light before I added that orange color If I tried to put light on light, it's not going to show up. You've got to have some color contrast Okay, I added some more of that orange to the legs where the sunshine is just in the areas If you have a big enough screen, you might can see the sheep or you I'll put the reference image link Um in the description of this video if you want to pull it up Now it's going to be flip-flopped so the sun will be coming from the opposite side But if you're a patron of mine again, you'll get my cropped and flipped image So now I'm going to the lighter yellow again getting gradually a little lighter Getting that sunshine on the sheep now sometimes this it looks kind of crazy at first, right? But really it does all come together and hey, this is art. Okay. We're not always trying to Really very realistically portray our subject matter This one actually came out Pretty close to some of the colors because like I said, I I found a photo that happened to work with these pastels Um, so, you know, just if you are a beginner artist and you have limited pastels Focus on value and you'll be on the right track. So now I'm just adding The middle blue it with the blues in this set There was a dark blue then there was this middle blue then there were two lighter blues Um, the one next to the blue and I'm working on now is a little bit more teal It's light, but it has a little bit of a cooler color to it And the other one is the lightest light. Well, it's not actually the lightest light in the set Um, the lightest light in the set is actually it's like a white It's a warm white and then there there is a black. I don't think I use the black And I often don't choose black for my paintings, but I do have another tutorial coming soon Where I did a painting using this set, but I limited myself even more I think I might have only used I don't know 10 colors maybe and that one will be on a new surface I had never tried before and I'm very excited to share about that So if you haven't subscribed to this channel, go ahead and subscribe So and and like I say hit that bell icon because that way you'll get notified when I upload something new And by the way, this is sped up only slightly just to reduce the size I actually find the times when I know a lot of guys are like real time real time I find sometimes when I upload a video that's real time if my videos are over an hour um, I can tell from the youtube analytics That they people just stop watching. It's like everybody's attention spans have gotten shorter So I'll I'll sometimes have more real time on my patreon page as an extra Um, but often I'll just slightly speed it up because usually you can you can see what I'm doing here I mean and you can always pause the video. So now I'm using that topi brown now the sheep. We know his her I'm assuming this is the mama sheep Her fur even though it's on the cooler side where I'm working now It's still, you know, kind of got some warm tones in it So that's why I chose to use some of that topi color now There were some little highlights where the sun was catching just a little bit of the back side there So I didn't want to overdo it. You don't want to add too many light values on this side But it was almost like it was a little bit of backlight Um, and then I blend some of this in too so it doesn't look quite so light So just working a little bit of the lights around the perimeter Of the sheep now I did love this little minty green I think I'm going to zoom in a little bit so y'all can see a little better Like I said, it's it's very light, but it's just got a hint of a teal color to it So it's kind of a warm Light color and I found it was a good color just to catch some of those highlights On the underside of the sheep and the reason I chose that versus white Is it was a little bit underneath the sheep? So it was still a little bit in shadow and that means that colors cool off a bit So the lightest light I'm not sure if I actually I don't think I used the white But I used one of the lightest lights that was that warm White color I finally add at the very end to the sheep Their faces again if you can see the reference image you see that the Our right side of their faces is the lightest light where the sun's hitting A little bit on some of the legs the ones that are sticking out the most And then also a little bit on some of the wool some of the little curly cues of the wool So again, I'm having to focus on value here and I didn't want to just add white to their face This was a lot more interesting and later I'll come in and add a little bit of lighter what I'm calling white to this as well So you can see how I use this minty green and this makes painting fun Like I said, we're artists. We're supposed to have fun with color and by limiting yourself with colors It forces you to choose fun and creative colors. I have that question all the time How did you know to choose that color and um, sometimes it's just knowing a little bit of Rules they're not hard with color temperature and just how color behaves That you can choose colors that you don't necessarily see but sometimes if you limit yourself with your palette you can Get creative with color by your force to you know by necessity In this angle of filming and the way I cropped it I was able to get this sheep reference image a little bit larger. So hopefully that'll help now. I'm adding a little bit of this Kind of middle Tan color to the mama sheep. She was a little bit more in shadow and I'm adding That lighter tan. I guess you would call it's in the row of the those topy colors the lighter one to the right side of the sheep here and you really getting that feeling of sunshine now and And it was just fun. This it just looks so bright and cheery to me I really enjoyed painting this and I enjoyed the results because you know, this isn't my normal style of painting either so I have to say a big thank you to unison for gifting the set to me to be able to do this demonstration and Learning a little bit more about artist lucy pittaway. I would love to meet her. She's got this beautiful english accent I saw a video on her. I don't know if it was on the unison site Now I'm adding a little bit more of this orangey color Warming it up if you look at the reference image and squint your eyes. You can see there really is some of that orange feeling to the sheep and now the the left side I keep Getting confused with that. It's the sheep's right side, but it's our left side Is really in shadow. So I'm even adding more of that blue. So what am I doing now? Oh my goodness. Look at that bright bright. This is a gorgeous red by the way That bright red that I'm putting in their ears. Surely their ears aren't that bright red. Well, no, they're not but this is one of the Aspects of pastels that you can use to your advantage with a limited palette. I really did love this orange color Sometimes with sheep and with pigs certain animals if the sunlight is shining in their ears behind their ears It really does illuminate some areas to be this pretty pinkish orangey color So even though I laid down that bright red. I'm like I said, I'm using the Ability of pastels to layer and kind of alter colors by some layering now I'm just I'm kind of outlining the ears with some of the the way the sunlight was capturing The little fuzzy fur around their ears, but you'll see me go in with other pastels Like on that mama sheep, you can see the left ear our left is darker inside. I go back later with a darker blue or some of those blues and I make Little value changes to that now. I am using you saw me use that. I think I was using that blending tool again Now I am going in with the pastel pencil and kind of getting in some of the darks of the eyes I wanted to get them right and The pastels were a little chunky for getting some of these features just right So I wanted to kind of reestablish the darks there now. I actually use the pastel pencil I use that instead of a pastel to kind of darken that center part of the the mama sheep's ear and same thing here you see how I'm just Changing some of the values and leaving a little bit of that bright color at the tips of the ears And now I am Going to be continuing to layer. I've got the basics in I've got color down everywhere And I'm going to continue to layer the fur and establish the values and colors further So I've got about at this point. There's probably about Oh 17 more minutes 16 more minutes into the video So I'm going to add some music But I want you to pay attention to how I'm I have I've resisted the urge to put in the fur I've just been putting in large shapes But now I'm going to gradually start adding some of the fur Would you call it fur wool? Whatever you would call it on a sheep Reestablishing some of their faces the baby sheep need their faces Really finished too, but just kind of watch that layering process And don't go anywhere because closer to the end I'm really going to zoom in so you can see a lot of the detail in the strokes And how they really do look like they're glistening in the sun by the end of this. All right. Enjoy the music And now we're getting closer to the finish line. So here I've zoomed in And I I hope you can see how bright and sunny they look and I I really loved this fun Exploration with this set and limiting myself with these colors And it is truly proof that you don't have to have a million pastels to create a painting And I always recommend getting quality over quantity when it comes to soft pastels Don't get the cheaper pastels just so you can get a lot of colors That is one thing that's worth it is the quality Professional pastels because the ones you get it like the craft stores You're just not going to get this kind of color. So you can see I added in some grasses now I'm working more on that shadow. I wanted to I added the darkest blue for the shadow But I softened it with that medium blue and it kind of softened the edges and took down the dark value Just a little bit. Now I'm going to add just a little bit. The road was just kind of really flat with one color I did want the sheep to be the main focal point But I wanted to give a little bit more color to especially that area underneath them And this is also a lesson in stretching yourself artistically to paint subject matter You don't normally paint. I mean, I might paint sheep, but I wouldn't have done them this fun So I really do love this little painting and I will have it available in my etsy shop soon And I'll probably make prints of this one on my fine art america print site. So check that out I hope you learned a lot. I hope you'll subscribe if you haven't already Find our facebook group the mone cafe art group on facebook Become a patron if you'd like to support this channel and as always god bless and happy painting