 Do you want to paint blue flowers that just dazzle with color? Well, join me in this lesson where I will teach you my technique that's a surprisingly easy way to get those luscious blue and purple flowers that jump right off your painting surface. Here I'm showing some of the different blues and purples that I like to use to create blue flowers, whether they're delphiniums, plum bago, blue violets, purple and blue pansies, or even something like blueberries. These are different brands of pastels obviously. Most of the rectangular ones are Terry Ludwig's. Some of the round ones are Sennelier, Mount Vision, and if you're a patron of mine on my Patreon page, you will get extended footage at the end of this video where I'll talk about some of these brands and the ones I recommend to get these colors. And talk about dazzling blues. Check out this reference image from unsplash.com from Aravond Ready Tarugo. I'll have a link to this in the description of this video. I have some wonderful lemon ginger tea and it's time to get started. Many people ask how I stick my iPad to my board like this. Well, it's just the cover that I flap over the back. It makes it very convenient. This is a homemade board that I made. I do have a video on how to make your own surface like this. Tape it to my board. I have an 8x10 sheet of Luxe archival professional sanded pastel paper. I love this surface for many reasons. The white of the paper really allows for luminous color, especially with the underpainting technique I'll be sharing. Also, it is archival. That just means it's going to last a long time. I'm not even sure if I'm going to last 100 years. I love that the surface doesn't buckle no matter what you do to it. It's great for many different mediums and it allows for, it says 30 plus layers of a dry medium and again what I love it doesn't buckle. It stays nice and flat. I will be using alcohol for my underpainting technique but water works great as well. I'll have a link in the description of this video to be able to check it out on dickblick.com and now I will unveil my secret technique that's not really a secret anymore. To get those blues and purples that pop right off the surface, it's actually by using an underpainting of primarily pinks, oranges. You could even use reds and yellows. I'm first getting in my sketch with a Prismacolor new pastel. These are harder pastels. They're better for sketching and you'll probably notice that I'm not doing my painting in a horizontal format. I really felt like these would be more attractive in a vertical format and I'm just getting in a very basic sketch using this pastel. You could use whatever product you have to get your sketch in and I want to keep this simple because really it's going to be these flowers in these larger shapes that really make this painting and so I'm keeping it very gestural and I'm placing things where I think it will make a nice composition. And once my simple sketch is complete, I'm going to be adding some of those pink and orange colors that you saw me hold up a second ago. Again, you could use reds and yellows, basically warm colors and you may be thinking, why would you do that? These flowers are blue and purple and trust me, as a beginner artist, I would have never tried this, never thought to try it, but as I create this underpainting, I'm going to share with you the reasoning for this underpainting technique and why it is a key to make your blue and purple flowers just really sparkle. All right, I'm speeding this part up a little bit more and I've got my beautiful orange. Again, you could use reds and yellows with this. It's really just using something that's from the warmer side of the color wheel and I'm just using this orange to kind of get an idea of where my flower shapes are. I'm not that worried about obviously anything being specific, because an underpainting is really a foundation that will give you that way to create paintings that feel impressionistic and painterly. And now I have a very pretty kind of vibrant pink. These two colors are from the set that I held up. It's the Richardson hand rolled pastels. The set is called Reds. It has a lot of reds and pinks and oranges in it and I'm just working this pink in around the flowers. You saw at the beginning I drew an idea of a horizon line and there's some really dark trees I see in the reference image in the distance and also the deeper roots of the flowers are usually darker. And so now I switch to a little bit lighter pink pastel that I'm using for the middle ground. Now you're probably thinking this looks like a mess, right? I may have lost viewers at this point, but there is a reasoning to my pink and orange madness and I'm going to soften this. I'm going to talk a little bit more about why this technique works, but for now follow along as I add some regular drugstore alcohol to create a wet underpainting. I'm going to basically just blend these colors together with a brush. This is a 70% brand or type of alcohol, but just use whatever you have. Now I like just kind of old brushes. You may have seen my video I just had on that and I think it really does just help things to stay very loose. So I have a paper towel or a couple of them to control the alcohol and now what I'm going to do is just wash this in. Again, this looks archival paper. It's not going to buckle on you. I love that. Now if whenever you try this with any kind of a wet medium and in a brush, sometimes it takes a little while to get the hang of the water or the alcohol ratio and how much you want it to drip, how diluted you want it to be and I want these flowers to drip, but I don't want to have so much alcohol that they lose their intensity and you can see I'm just lightly holding my brush and dabbing in some of this beautiful orange. Now you can see this is where all of the flower shapes were that I created and now I'm going to use the brush again to just blend in, get a kind of a wash for some of the background color, that pink, the distant trees that are darker, the middle ground that's a little bit a little bit lighter pink and really this could be done in just two colors. Now why does this work? Why on earth would I do this? And here is actually the color science behind it all. When you combine warm and cool colors, you can achieve a captivating interplay that captures the attention of your viewers and adds visual intrigue to your paintings. So using these color contrast with complementary colors, which are just colors opposite on the color wheel, it can be used as a powerful tool for you to emphasize and highlight the important elements in your painting. And in this case, the important elements are these beautiful blue flowers. So this complementary underpainting of pink and orange with these warm colors is what's really going to cause the blue and purple flowers to almost vibrate with color. Now if you want a more subtle blue or purple field of delphiniums, then you wouldn't use such a high color contrast like this. But if you really want those blues to sparkle and dazzle, this underpainting is the trick. Now we have our vibrant underpainting and it's time to apply soft pastels. Before we do though, I'd appreciate it if you would like this video, leave me a comment and subscribe to this channel. And if you want the extra content I'm always talking about and to support this channel, would you consider becoming a patron of mine? You get behind the scenes content, extra instruction, and you get to become part of my beautiful community of artist and I get to see your work all for only $5 a month. As a recap, the blues and purples and lavenders that I'm using is a combination of different brands of pastels. And why would I have blue and purple here for a flower that's primarily blue? Well, it's this combination of colors that also will create that beautiful color vibration. I find that almost any blue flower I create is going to have some purple in it as well. You'll see this technique as I paint. I'm also going to need some greens and I have a combination of some cool greens on the upper row to the right or cooler, a little bit warmer greens to the left, three to the left. And I'm going to need some darks for those distant trees and deep grasses. I begin by getting some dark values behind those flowers. You can see in the reference image that it's like a tree line is behind the flowers and it's quite dark. I'm not using a really dark pastel. It's a little bit gray. There's one I typically use that's called Eggplant by Terry Ludwig. It's a beautiful dark, dark purple, but I didn't want to go that dark this quickly. This stage is what's called blocking in. And notice the light touch that I'm keeping. I wanted to make sure I didn't cover up all of that beautiful underpainting because it's what's going to give me that color contrast for those blues to really stand out. I added a little bit of a cooler kind of greenish blue in the distance as well. Now these flowers do have dark elements in them. If you look kind of deep within the flower, there's some little crevices that are very dark. And I always like to say, I paint flowers from the inside out. I look at what is most likely the darkest color in the flower and I lay that down first and then layer my lighter values on top. My distant flowers right now, I'm getting them in a little bit of a bluish purple, really pretty blue purple. And I will give those a little bit of darkness too, but right now I want to keep them a little different than my focal point flower. Now I'm just using a paper towel here. I blended in the background first and then I blended in the flowers. The reason I did that is there was still a lot of space showing through and I wanted to soften things up. But still you can see the influence of that underpainting vibrating through these colors. Now the Luxe Archival, it did kind of come off more than I anticipated. So I kind of had to reinforce my darks and I'm going to be adding my light source to the upper right of the scene. So I'm getting in some cool greens just on the sides of some of those trees. And now I'm getting in a really pretty dark purple for this flower. Again, some of it rubbed off with that paper towel more than I anticipated. And again, reestablishing my dark flower shapes and getting in some of these beautiful blues. Now I will let you know, you can tell this is sped up quite a bit. My Patreon version of this tutorial is barely sped up and I have full commentary throughout the entire painting. Now I'm getting in a purple that's a little bit more dull, but it's a little bit of a lighter value. And there is one advantage to watching these videos sped up like this. You really get to see the painting come to life and the stages. They make sense very quickly, rather than watching it very slow. Now you can see I'm adding some of these blues on top of those deeper purples. Can you see now how it's making sense that darker purple is really representing the inner parts of that flower? And I gradually just continue to get lighter with my values and brighter with my colors. And you probably have noticed, I'm not trying to exactly interpret this flower exactly like their petals are. I use a real suggestive approach and I just like to give it my own almost abstract impressionistic feel. So I'm adding even lighter lights on some of these flowers and I'm developing some of the, what I would call supporting characters, the other flowers. The main focal point is that main flower, kind of the big one on the right there. And I kind of start subduing these other flowers a little bit and giving a little bit more of warm green to some of these trees. And I eventually start carving some of those greens down into the grasses. Now I added a little more dark to that focal point flower in the center and that caused it to become more of a focal point. Now these flowers need some stems and these long thin pastels are called Prismacolor new pastels. They're harder, they're rectangular, they're great for stems, they're great for under paintings. I like to sketch with them. And now I'm adding more greens. I'm carving these grasses in between the flower shape. It kind of delineates the flowers, makes them more individual. I've zoomed in now and reset this to real time. So you can see some of my marks. I'm using this pastel to give more shape to some of these flowers. With this type of flower it's like there's a stalk and then there's like a bouquet of individual flowers attached around it, almost in a spiral. And so I just like to again not feel like I'm bound by the reference photo, but interpret it and be very suggestive. It ends up being a little bit definitely impressionistic, but maybe even leaning a little on abstract. Here's a close-up of more of my mark making, just getting some highlights around some of these petals that might be catching some of the light. Also can you see that under painting peeking through? And I really do believe that if you want blue and purple flowers to pop, creating an under painting like this is an excellent way to achieve that. Now I'm going to show you the reference image again. I want you to look at the colors in the reference image. Now can you see it's brilliant blue? Can you see the hints of purple in it? That's why I almost always combine some purple within my blue flower paintings. I hope you enjoyed this tutorial. I hope you'll give it a try. If you'd like the full version, consider becoming a patron of mine. It's only $5 a month and I'd love to have you as part of my Patreon family. Please like this video, comment, I'd love to hear what you have to say, and subscribe to Monet Cafe Studio. All right everyone, God bless and happy painting.