 Hello and welcome to Monet Cafe. I'm artist Susan Jenkins. We're gonna have some fun today And if you're new here, please subscribe and hit that little bell icon to be notified of future videos Hello and welcome to Monet Cafe. I'm artist Susan Jenkins And I'm very excited to bring you some tutorials on Owl paintings now I didn't know how much I liked painting owls until I did some recently and I'm also very excited because I Am doing a little bit of a different format. So this is something I would love to get your feedback on I realized I wanted to give you guys more instruction more detail to things Slow them down more a lot of times a painting, you know, it might take me an hour or two hours And that's just too long of a video So I have to speed it up in sections to make the file size smaller for uploading And so now what I'm gonna be doing with these next few videos is Breaking them up into separate videos And then I will combine them all as a playlist where you can watch the whole thing in in full If you would like to but this way I'll be able to not have to speed things up so much I'll zoom in I'll give you more detail and more instruction. I also for these next few videos I will give you links to the reference photo I'll also try to provide you a little general sketch if I can To help you out if you're you know just starting in a beginner So that should be a lot of fun again. I'd love to get your feedback on that also too I'm excited to see I haven't even made an official announcement yet, but I started a Monet cafe Google album So you guys the subscribers to this channel can literally go to the Google album I have links in the description sections of the videos and you can upload your artwork now I know we have a lot of people on the Monet cafe art group in Facebook I have my own patreon page with my patrons where I get to see their work there I realized there's a lot of people who aren't on Facebook And you may just want to share your artwork so that it's not just me up here talking all the time And so I love seeing what some of you have already submitted feel free to submit a picture of yourself And also I would love to hear where you're from and you know any other information about you that you'd like to share in The photos that you provide. Okay. That was a lot. Here we go This is the first owl painting that I did literally just kind of chilling out one night while my husband was watching TV I started an owl sketch just on watercolor paper now in this one I'm just kind of going over the procedure I I then put some watercolor on it and as I often do I liked the watercolor But then I decided I wanted to add more color with pastel so I put my little homemade surface on it started applying pastel and Kept working most of it was from Imagination except for the owl and then I added some cute little fireflies now in this tutorial I'm beginning from the watercolor stage in the next owl painting in another video I'll show you the whole process from sketch to finish at this point, this is just the watercolor on the watercolor paper and here is the Recipe that I have in another video. I'll put the link up here in case you want to see it in the upper right corner and This was not really even a big batch that I mixed up of my clear gesso Which has some grit in it and marble dust a 2 to 1 ratio. I think I had half a cup of The gesso and a quarter cup of the marble dust and it actually has gone a long way So what I'm gonna do is yeah, I'm gonna just paint this on to the watercolor paper Now if I was to try to add pastels to this watercolor painting right here I wouldn't get a lot of layering or I don't even think a lot of color I feel like it's kind of flat unless you have a little texture to it. So that's what The clear gesso and marble dust is gonna do it's gonna add grit to it so that I can get layering and texture Okay, so I was kind of just describing things with my hands there. No, I'm doing a voiceover All right, so it's time to apply the clear gesso and marble dust concoction And I am gonna speed this portion up. You don't need to see this whole process Now I only applied one coat and as you can see it looks a little bit cloudy at first That's because of the marble dust if you use just clear gesso, which you can do by the way It actually makes a very nice surface for pastel because of that little sandiness to it Clear gesso dries a bit more clear than this but this doesn't bother me because I I can see enough of the painting underneath and It's kind of like my roadmap with values and the basic structure Of things and here is my set that I so have been using a lot lately It's the unison 120 half-stick set. Just look at all those color selections Also, they're conveniently arranged in value like your blues go from a light value to a dark value blue with lots of neutrals Lots of bowls and even some darks. All right now here. I am beginning to apply the pastel and What I'm going to do here. This is what I was talking about in the intro how I'm gonna try to section off the video and zoom in so that I can talk this is all real-time and What I'm doing is I know around a light source It's going to be lighter in value around the light source Obviously the light is shining illuminating and it's going to gradually get darker in a circular way because this is the moon light source shining out and I'm going to get darker as I get further away and also usually things get darker in the upper atmosphere the upper horizons now I know I'm working around some trees here But getting in your basic values first Is really crucial before even getting into too much detail. You'll see I will start working on the portion of this above the owls wings and Then I'll move on from there But usually I like to kind of work over the whole painting before I get to detail. So I'm really with a light pressure Just kind of working a little bit of these values Around the moon and you will notice that I will keep it lighter around the moon and also notice that even now with that lavender I'm getting warmer in color temperature Purples are a warm blue actually they have more red in it than a regular blue would have So that's why I'm using a little bit of the lavender colors closer to the moon because the moon has a sense of warmth light typically does and So that's why you'll notice the color temperature changing and the value of the color changing. So once again, this is real time. I'm just Working kind of scumbling in not using hard pressure keeping it light so that I'm not Taking away my ability to layer things. That's one thing you want to remember with pastel painting is if you overfill the tooth of your paper or your surface even if it's an unsanded surface you're going to not only lose the layering ability, but you're going to start muddying your colors and pastels have this wonderful vibrancy to them because of the Substance that it's made out of they actually have little particles that kind of sparkle and if you Overlayer you're actually going to muddy them and you're going to decrease that beautiful color intensity that pastels have inherently and now of course I'm adding the moon more of a yellowy tone and Sometimes you'll see paintings where moons are white but I actually like to give them a little bit of warmth and here I'm adding a little bit of a darker value I Don't want to give too much of this But just a hint to give it a bit more warmth and also too I don't like to have my moon as a perfect circle. I like to just have it more of a general circular shape I hope that makes sense and I don't want to align around it. It's it's got a lost edge Okay, it's really an edge more than it's a line if you're one of my patrons, you know exactly what I'm talking about We had a lesson on that and so Now I'm adding a little bit of that warmth as a glow Around the moon keep that in mind because that's a little bit of the strategy I use with the fireflies as well and I do it with a bit of a different technique But it's the same concept now again. I'm using such a light touch just getting a little bit of that glow I think I do maybe a little bit of blending with my in a minute You'll see me or in a little while when I get to the trees I use a piece of chamois cloth I've been using lately that works great to blend you can see it over there to the left and Now I'm adding a little bit of that pink that I mentioned earlier where I was talking about the lavator and just a little bit of a warmer tone and Not only is it Something that really does happen, you know with the color being a little warmer and a little lighter in value around the moon It's also just a neat artistic license. I just wanted to add more color to this and Not have it just a typical white moon blue sky So it's a little bit more interesting and now I'm working on some of the darker values Which are the distant trees and I get in my darks first if you've been following my channel much or other pastel instructors With pastel which is actually kind of similar to acrylic and oil. We typically get our darker layers down first It's like a good foundation. It needs something dark even if you have a rich bold brighter lighter value color For something usually it needs something To rest upon to give it contrast and to let that color show up So I am getting in my darker values. This is still one of the pastels from the unison set It like I said, it has some nice darks. This is like a really dark almost like a bluish green and Even though I'm going to layer other colors on top of it. It's just a good base now You see how I'm doing kind of a zigzaggy Stroke that's because I kind of wanted these to be like evergreen trees and that's kind of a neat way to have like little zigzaggy shelves to them or layers and try to make it Versatile you don't want every branch the same distance apart. So you're giving it a little bit of Versatility to the branches and also to I can't remember if I mentioned this yet or not I'm working from imagination here other than the owl. Now the owl is this gorgeous barn owl I believe they're called a barn owl There's also a barred owl, but I think this is a barn owl and they're just gorgeous They were in the movie the labyrinth if you saw that many years ago. I loved that movie when I was younger And I found the photo on Pmp dash art comm I talk about that side a lot because I found this is very helpful to me I've I'll share a little bit of my story here Well, let me do let me wait to share that until I show you right now what I'm doing This is the chamois cloth that I mentioned that I just kind of stumbled upon this technique I had some chamois cloth and I just tried it and it worked So now do you see how that is? Actually taking away kind of the the light color of the paper It's really getting more of a solidness to those trees and I did blow there Okay, and I blew it all over my iPad So also to there is a little bit of a disadvantage to working flat like this I prefer to work standing up But I know often I can sit and show you my pastels better if I have it flat I ask you guys opinion and many videos a lot of you really liked it Now this is the better way to remove your pastel dust is just to tap it Have something beside you where you just tap it and that seems to work pretty good So I'm going to continue to use the chamois cloth just to lightly Blend it in a light touch again. I'm not overdoing this I'll go back to talking about the owl and Pmp in a minute But remember again, I was doing this from imagination and I wanted to Create a composition where those trees almost look like they were Hugging the moon reaching up to the moon And I just thought it was a really neat way to do that rather than just having them go straight up That would have been kind of boring So that's something I think you get better at not that I'm an expert You get better at the more that you do it is Coming up with interesting compositions. That's some other videos. I have on my patreon page now I have General shapes of the trees and the sky in but now what I'm doing is some negative painting It's actually kind of like a video I did recently on sky holes I'm carving into the trees rather than making the branches the positive shapes extend I'm carving in negative shapes in Random places again, you don't want samey samey consistency So I'm and you can just kind of tap it off if an edge looks too rough I don't like to blend with my fingers much, but you can kind of just tap things now right there I did I knew I had that um that blue in the background and my chamois cloth was I guess not handy, so I just used my finger and I do darken this a little bit and play around with that I'm more but you can already see there I'm giving it a little bit more value and color there you can already see how a General background is taking shape now because this is the background. I don't want to overdo detail or value I know the trees are dark because it's night and they're a vertical structure and most things that are vertical are going to be darker and But by the way a sky behaves very similarly at night to the way it does in the daytime You know usually we have darker things up in the heavens at the horizon except around the light source like the moon Okay, now I'm going to talk about how I'm getting in these claws for the owl I'm using some geoconda soft pastel pencils. I don't use soft pastel pencils a lot Because I prefer to use the pastels, but I had covered up my drawing with the clear gesso and the marble dust and I kind of lost Visuals of where the feet were I couldn't really remember where they were so I was looking back at the actual reference photo To remind myself where the claws were and I am going to speed up the section on the feet here But I used the pastel pencils again to re-establish the feet and then I also used a darker one to kind of fill them in I knew their value was darker once again We like to get the darks down first in pastel painting they did have some highlights on them and Some lighter areas like you know where the reflection of the moon was so I right now Notice how high contrast they are. They're the darkest thing with the background light, but that contrast will reduce By the time that I you know fill in the darks in the background His feet won't stand out quite as much as they do now and here I'm working on the background a little bit more once again working from imagination, but kind of following my watercolor Beginnings that I had made and it may seem a bit dark. I mean my watercolor Underpainting doesn't look that dark, but once again This is the same principle with pastels that I get my darks down first and then gradually build the lights lighter values and the color and Now I had to tape it down because my watercolor paper kept curling it does flatten out by the time you're finished usually I also Even though it's from imagination I have a general idea of how trees behave and grow and Some of that's just from observation and painting multiple trees But some of it's from learning a little bit more about the science of it the Fibonacci sequence I do have another video on I think it's called the golden ratio and the grand design I have actually I think another special lesson that I did for my patrons on that and you may have seen my patron Notification earlier in this video, but by the way your patreon support God bless you patrons is really helping me to dedicate more time to these videos and have better equipment and Once again, my love and my passion is to be able to share these free videos and also like I'm doing now Being able to offer some real time I know there's people out there who want to paint and you don't have the resources to do it and certainly now with COVID-19, you know, we are all having to find online ways to do things So God bless you. Thank you for your five dollars a month. It's really helping this channel grow And I do have a goal of having an assistant one day. I'm a one-man show The artist the filmer the editor, you know, I have my Etsy shop and you know, it's I don't mean it It's not like I'm complaining. It's awesome to be able to do what you love But I wish I could clone myself. So back to thank you patrons. Some of my patrons actually Just support me to help this channel grow and some patrons are Loving the extra instruction you get. So I have a little weekly schedule. It's almost like the school and it's really a lot of fun So anyway Notice that I've added some of these branches in but I know I don't want to have it too much detail Or anything really competing too much with the owl the owl is the focal point in this I have another video on focal point by the way Oh, it also to if you ever want to find a video on a certain subject You've seen it before and I've had people sometimes go I can't find that video where you talked about, you know Packaging up your pastel paintings Storage or something you can go to the top of that. Well, actually don't have to do that You can go into YouTube and YouTube search bar type in Monet cafe It does have the little hyphen after the E But I don't think it matters and then what you're looking for storage and the videos will populate So if you think you've seen something before you hear me mention it in one of these videos, you can just do a search like that within YouTube so again, I am not wanting to keep the or not wanting to compete with the central Focal point, which is the owl. So I'm just kind of going real gentle and then I'm going to reduce the contrast Around the the background portion. That's around the owl right now It looks kind of busy you see but when I get the other values And I really subdue that so that he stands out the most and I do apologize that I missed some owl footage of painting the owl I don't do a whole lot more to this owl by the way I mean, I think I do add some more maybe some lavender's but I love the Translucency of his wings and the way I accomplished that was I just used if you look at the wing part That's in shadow. It's really just kind of a neutral almost lavender And then I added some greens and I added some more warm colors because that that moon is shining through his wings But literally in the photo the reference photo because it's on PMP The site that I use I don't think I'm supposed to share it right here right beside my My demo that I'm doing in the video if it's my own reference photo I can but that's why I mentioned I will provide a Clickable link where you can go to this image if you want to open it up find it download it You can do that and and look at it while I paint. I do think you have to become a PMP member, which is free And I recommend it. It's got some offerings awesome reference images That's one of the reasons that I started using it early on as I was I mentioned way early in this video I was getting into my story but um my Situation was that I didn't have the financial resources or the time I you know at one point my life. I was a single mom with three boys and Trying to fit in art as therapy for craziness in life, and I just didn't have those resources I certainly couldn't go out to Neat places and take photos. I would take photos where I could but like if I want to paint an owl I would have to resort to finding Copyright free reference images and so many years ago. I stumbled across the PMP site It used to be called paint my photo comm so that's why it's called it PMP dash art comm So once again if I use photos from there, I can provide you the link, but I can't like show it right beside the painting so as you can see I've just been gradually getting in some of the Darkness of those trees and branches and blending them a bit with my chamois cloth And I'm kind of just trying to figure out where things would be. I know it's there's gonna be a lot of dark back there So this is going to be the end of part one. I'm at 21 22 minutes right now part two I will be finishing that extending branch the mouse and the fireflies so please comment let me know if you like these shorter formats like this and Then I'll put them all together in one playlist alright guys. I'm excited about this. I hope you liked it Thanks for being here and happy painting