 Welcome to Monet Café and if this is your first time visiting my channel, I ask that you bear with me while I share a little bit about painting through the storms of life and painting through trials. I know we all have them and you know it's not always happy painting. Sometimes it's painting through tears, painting for healing, which often leads to bringing us joy through these trials and storms in life. I thank you all so much that your hearts and prayers were with me with this recent hurricane Dorian that was coming our way. We are so thankful and praising the Lord. It did not hit us this time as it did Irma did two years ago and we were really hoping we wouldn't have to go through what you're seeing in some of these pictures. We literally, this is a house we went to to escape the storm because our house flooded and we actually ended up going right into the storm and having, being in the house where the roof blew off of it. Needless to say, all of that was incredibly scary and it was a long road in restoring our home that flooded and we've still been trying to peace our lives back together since then but thanks to so many friends and family members and church members who helped us physically helped and also emotionally helped us through this storm. And while we were blessed to have Dorian pass us by, I know I am not alone in sharing another storm in life that many of you have been all too familiar with. That's the storm of cancer and I was so blessed during my battle with cancer to have a mom that was so so encouraging and came and literally rescued me through her help and her prayers and praise the Lord I am healed. And many of us can relate to the fact that art or creative outlets can truly be healing through painful processes such as cancer and other life challenges. When we have loved ones that are standing for us in these times of darkness and doubt and fear and it is just such a beautiful thing and I know that many of you can relate because I talk to you guys on in our group in your comments and I know too that you all have your own set of challenges and obstacles and things in life and and I just love how our group is so supportive and there for each other and so kind it's a wonderful thing. So I'm dedicating this video to all of those who have gone through cancer. My father-in-law we lost him to cancer. My precious little cousin Markey at just two and a half years old we lost him to terminal cancer and even friends from the past this woman Nettie was like a mom to me from many many years ago and now something that seems so surreal to me is that my own mother is now battling cancer that's tumor in her neck and I know many of you were praying for her we have since the last communication I had found out these are pictures of her helping me when I had cancer and this is my beautiful mother with my sister who's so supportive but the good news is that we have found out at stage one praise the Lord please keep my father in your prayers this is a battle for him as well and I have specific prayers for him to draw close to the Lord. So thanks for tolerating this beginning portion of this video and I want to say that I am so grateful that I have a hope and many of you have a hope that's beyond this fallen broken world with sickness and disease and I pray you've probably figured out by now that my my YouTube channel is a ministry and I've always made the free videos in hopes that a little bit of Christ would get through the message and touch hearts now on to the painting that I actually did gosh it's time has been flying by since we've had so many things happening these last few weeks that I guess this was about three weeks ago but I just got in my studio I was still praying over my mom and some of the news and this just felt hopeful and so I'm gonna go over the process with you here of creating this painting. For this particular painting I'm using a piece of Sennelier Lecart pastel paper. Now I'm not putting up a picture like I sometimes do of the actual package but Sennelier is S-E-N-N-E-L-I-E-R I believe and Sennelier also makes a beautiful brand of pastels one of my favorites and here I just zoomed in I thought you guys I used to do this in former videos and I don't know how I've gotten away from it but I know you guys kind of like to see the pastel selections the first ones that I put down at the top there are mostly my darks and then I'm just kind of I group my pastels sometimes when I pick them out based on subject matter of course I want to get my darkest dark so my lightest lights but I'll group things according to the sky or to the distant trees or distant mountains and then I work the foreground usually with the darkest darks and but here I just think it's neat that you can see the actual color on the paper and the reason it's a good idea to do this often is because sometimes it looks a little different on your surface than it does in with the pastel you're holding in your hand and so you as you paint you have a good reference right there on your paper of what that color actually looks like on the sanded surface so anyway I thought you guys might enjoy this I think I did pick a lot of pastels to start with but I it was one of those moments like I said we've been going through a lot and at this particular time I was really deep in prayer and I wanted to paint and not have to go hunt out pastels so I kind of wanted to just be in the moment and that's that's a good way to do it sometimes painting can be more of an experience than even worrying about the final result and that's what this one was for me well I did pick a lot of pastels huh now here I think I'm working on some of my greens and I've got some cooler greens that I'm putting down now and that's another thing I will group them according to the color temperature sometimes and then I'm gradually working down to my warmer greens you see how the ones at the top were more teal and those are better for grasses in the shadows for distant trees things in the distance aren't as warm they're usually cooler so so that's my strategy or my thinking about how I apply these I am speeding this video up just two times the slowest I can speed it up and I'm doing that because I just didn't want a video that's like I think it probably took me about an hour and a half to create this painting and I I really have a lot I got to do right now so I apologize but I think you can still see pretty much all that I'm doing good enough you know to recreate this or learn from it what I'm doing now is I am using a piece of willow charcoal I use charcoal a lot in my initial sketches just because it's it's kind of like a pastel you know you kind of dust it off actually but this one's just a big thicker one I had a whole bunch in a packet and that's kind of the first one I grabbed so what I'm doing now you see I kind of with the pastels colors that I did kind of surrounding the image I think it's I think it ended up being like an eight by ten maybe a little larger but I'm I'm measuring in some of my other videos you may notice that I use spatial relationships a lot when I'm sketching or drawing a lot of it has to do with if I've got an image that is proportional to the reference image or my paper is proportional to the reference image sometimes it makes it a little bit easier for me to draw sometimes I don't draw exactly what I see I I just kind of go by feel or I feel like things could be placed a little better and but anyway so that's really just a piece of willow charcoal that I'm using for this sketch and here you can see I'm really just using this this is a different pastel that I've grabbed it's it's a new pastel it's just a harder pastel that is a dark value it's not a black even though it looks black I think it's a really really dark green but what I'm doing is I squint my eyes if you look at the reference photo to the right and then this a lovely reference photo thank you to Karen Collins I can't remember where I grabbed it but she gave me permission to use it and I and basically you squint your eyes and you see where are my lightest lights and where are my darkest darks obviously the tree shapes are going to be the darkest darks and if you notice down in the roots of those grasses kind of in the middle foreground there they're going to be a little darker too but a lot of this is just for me to block in the shapes it this is my underpainting of sorts okay I'm I'm really creating my underpainting with just shapes and values and now I'm just playing around with some of the darkest darks again getting in those those tree shapes and I I get in a place when I'm painting where I kind of zone out and literally I'm not even thinking about this being a tree I'm squinting and looking and squinting and looking and just getting my shapes in and I think if I could give any advice it would be that many of you have heard of the book or read the book or heard the expression draw what you see or paint what you see not what you think you see our brains often want to try to rationalize something or put it in a category like this is a tree this is a flower and sometimes we don't draw what the thing actually looks like in reality and so when you can learn to kind of zone out like that and forget what you're painting to a degree you know oh I'm sorry I forgot to turn on my studio light you guys my patrons man a big shout-out to the patrons I feel so bad because I started my my patreon page it's www.patreon.com slash Susan Jenkins I hadn't had a patreon page like I said at the beginning of this my YouTube channel has been more of a ministry for me to to share art with others and positive vibes and of course I throw in my faith that I can't help I just I just that's that that would be my greatest gift to anyone is to share the gospel rather than a painting video so I'm glad you guys bear with me even our Facebook members that are not believers or share the same faith are also very precious and tolerant of when I share those things but anyway where was I with that oh yeah back to my patreon page I actually had never really intended to have a patreon page and if you're not familiar with what that is you could you know just google it or get on and check it out it's it's really really just a neat resource for learning and growing and supporting other artists or people in different fields but again I had not intended on starting one and I had so many beautiful friends artistic friends on my Facebook group and on my art page on Facebook and various places you know just say that you know I'd love to support you what you're doing and why don't you start a patreon page and so when I did it's I think it's it might have maybe a little over a month I don't know but anyway when I did I was excited I don't ever like to get support especially any financial support without feeling like I'm giving you something in return so it's been very challenging for me that literally right after starting my patreon page I found out about all these life challenges that I'm going through right now and I'm not gonna go over that again and again and again but I just felt bad because I had so many great ideas of ways to share and I'm still gonna do it okay it's just it's just delayed a little bit but but anyway so I want to say a special thank you right now to the patrons the that just means the members the people who have signed up to be a patron it's five dollars a month is what I have it set up people can set it at anything but the beautiful patrons and people who have supported me and become a patron on my account when I'm actually not even able to provide that much now but I hear your comments and it's so beautiful and lovely that you know you want to support my efforts and what I'm doing and maybe some of you especially because we've got so much going on right now but it is my goal to provide more detailed advanced in-depth art instruction for my patrons and now I will I've already had some of you ask I will continue to create free videos on YouTube and in case you haven't checked out my videos I think currently I have probably close to 170 free videos on YouTube so that is always my goal to bring free resources to you guys I probably need to talk about this painting process huh but anyway I just again a special special thank you you don't know how beautifully it has touched my heart for you patrons who have helped me out kind of in a rough time of my life and it really is blessing me and I hate to talk about the financial part but that really has been blessing me too you guys are amazing but I hope to give back very soon all right so you see I've gotten it my darkest darks is obviously the tree or the trees and some of the roots like I mentioned of the in the grasses but now I've gotten in that see that paler duller blue those are more of the background trees things like I said they cool off in the background and then I also got my lightest lights not quite my lightest lights the sky is the sky is pretty much the lightest lights in these because even though it would be our tendency to just paint those poppies not poppies Queen Anne's lace white they actually aren't as white as they appear they've got more dark bases that's why I'm giving them this kind of rosy color right now getting them in I don't want to put that white down right now I'll add some highlights afterwards but I think it the end painting at the sky ends up being a little bit lighter than the flowers and the flowers that top Queen Anne's lace flower contrast is very key in your painting and I've got to make sure that flower doesn't get lost in the sky in other words you don't want a super white flower on a super white sky oh and here I decided to go ahead and blend in that's a piece of pipe foam insulation and I've learned actually because I've had to use pipe foam insulation for a practical homeowner standpoint here recently with our experience with our floors and having to redo some things in our house I've learned that there's actually some different brands and since this video while I was working with my husband I was we were insulating literally one of our pipes to keep our it's too too much to describe but I said wow I need a piece of that because it's a little different than my pipe foam insulation I use but it's literally just something you can buy from the hardware store so it works good for blending so as you can see here I've kind of got in my basic shapes all right so now I can start working more on a little bit of specifics still keeping everything very loose right there I know that background field is lighter okay it's got lighter values on making these flowers a little bit bigger here and right now these flowers are just shapes I'm not trying to get detail in and I do think I'm going to just play music for the rest of this process I I literally have so much to do many of you are aware of like I shared at the beginning of this video the situation with finding about out about my mother's cancer that she is going to begin treatments oh and probably like 10 days so she's about three and a half hours north of me so I'm literally moving in with my moving back in with my mom what do they call that a boomerang when your kids come back home but I'm happy to do it and she's happy to have me be there because like I said she helped me so much with what I went through it is my honor and my privilege to be with her and especially since I've been there and I I know some of the the trials that you go through when when going through cancer treatments so anyway so I am packing up my pastel she happens to live my mom and my dad have the most beautiful property in live out Florida many of my reference photos I use are actually from photos that I've taken while out at their property so I hope to do a little on location video there first priority first is my mom and her feeling good and doing everything to help her through this but she might actually even enjoy me doing a little painting and and I know art is we talk about it all the time art is truly therapeutic so I'll just pray how all that can bless my mom and I'll be there at least through her treatments and probably into at least mid-November or Thanksgiving so so packing up my art supplies packing up my other business and computers and everything and just kind of relocating for the time being so enjoy the rest of this painting process and I'm so grateful to all you guys for your beautiful support of me and I pray for all that you're going through to I love when we can share things with each other and feel free on this video if you want to share in the comment section anything a trial that you're going through or someone that needs praying for I mean not only myself but everyone kind of reads these comments and we may start a little prayer chain and pray for each other through through all of our life challenges and trials so alright guys enjoy this process and I'll be in to conclude at the end of the video I wanted to jump back in the video here at this point to share with you something that can happen in pastels I wasn't happy I felt like I'd gotten a little bit too much layering of grasses or something so I'm sorry it skipped a little bit there but you can actually brush off pastel I kind of wanted to rework the bottom part of the painting so I'm using one of those thick brushes what are they I think they're used for like stenciling but the bristles are so compact that they make a good stiff brush for just erasing pastels and what you're doing is now I'm spraying a little fixative it's a Blair low odor fixative I never use fixative to fix my paintings at the end but often you can get a little bit more layering or grit by adding it so what I did again is I brushed off the pastel with a hard bristle brush and then I sprayed a little fairly thin coat of spray workable fixative and then it gave me enough grit to kind of start reworking the painting again and I think you can see from the end result that you know it works you can actually erase pastels so I just wanted to pop in and and give you guys that little tidbit of what I was actually doing here so keep that in mind that if you ever have to do that the goal is obviously not to have to do that but it's nice to know you can if you have to if you've made it to the end of this video I just want to say a special thank you to all of those who are so kind to each other not just me but if you haven't if you're very interested in pastel painting one of the greatest places to learn and get encouragement is our Facebook group it's called Monet cafe art group on Facebook it is a private group so you will have to ask to join but just say you heard about the group from the YouTube channel Monet cafe YouTube channel so anyway guys I know it will be happy painting again even though there are trials in life because like I said earlier we have a great hope and it is so beautiful and wonderful to know that life is like seasons you know it may feel like fall or winter at times but spring returns so thank you guys so much and you know I love you happy happy painting