 It's time to have a little holiday fun here in Monet Cafe. I'm artist Susan Jenkins, and today we're painting these cute little snowmen. These should be fun if you've got family in town for the holidays, kids or grandkids, and I've got some cute little sketches. You're feel free to use these. I'm also going to be providing attachments on my Patreon page, so I'll put a link up here. If you'd like to become a patron of mine, that would be awesome. I'll have these images there for you to use. Now this is just a sped up version, but in this video I will be sharing with you the materials that I've used and just some voiceover instruction to perhaps make it a little more simple. Now I will be sharing a more simplified tutorial on some Christmas trees after I share this video. Okay, so time to get started. Here are the sketches again. I wanted to give credit to artist Angela Anderson. She has a YouTube channel and I saw some sketches on her page where she did some oil paintings of snowmen, so she inspired me. Just wanted to give her a little credit. So I actually did four paintings in one session, two snowmen and two Christmas trees. Like I said, I'm going to be sharing in another video that's actually even more simplified or basic than this one. I think it should be good for all ages. But if you'd like to join along with me, what you'll need is some watercolor paper. Again, I did four at the same time, so I took a large piece of watercolor paper and I divided it off with artist's tape so that each opening or each space was five inches by seven inches. And the reason I use that size is because this is a common size for greeting cards and you can find envelopes to fit these. Now, while I will be using pastel in this, a lot of times you think, oh pastel, that's so vulnerable you can't package it up and send it. You actually can. I'll share at the end of this video how they make these little clear bags that you could put these in if you wanted to protect it and send it as a little greeting card and put a little note in it or whatever, make it a real personal gift. The other option would be to get a good photo of it and make a reproduction of it, print it out and send some prints of your little design as greeting cards. So whatever your purposes or your idea of what you're going to do, I just hope this is a fun project. Again, lots of family in town during the holidays and taking some time to just have some fun, get creative is always a good idea. And I purposely kept these sketches very basic because this is just a fun little design and we don't need to get too complicated or have an in-depth advanced painting tutorial here. So they're just fun and happy. I apologize that my pencil, I have a really light pencil here that I'm using and I won't even erase this when I go to add the watercolor and the pastel because it's really not going to show up that much. But you're just basically going to get your five by seven piece of watercolor paper and it is a good idea sometimes to tape it down. It can warp with the water. So if you could tape the edges down, give yourself a little, in mine I gave myself a little border. You'll see at the end the full card at the end is five by seven. But I came in a little bit on the edges about an eighth of an inch around each edge so that I have a nice clean white border all the way around. Here you can sort of see the tape where I've taped it off on my paper. I apologize, the paper's white so it's hard to see. The other supplies that you'll need of course will be some water and clean water and some watercolor brushes. I like to use a wide brush. All I'm doing for this is an underpainting with watercolor. It just kind of sets the mood. I'm using a set of Arteza. They send me these supplies and they're so nice and I like to give them credit when I make a video and I made a little color chart of all the colors on some watercolor paper. I have another video where I show how I do this. It's always a good idea because the colors look different on the watercolor paper than they do in the little pans. So this is their little 36 set. I like it. It's a nice little travel set too. You open it up and you have your nice little wells and things to put watercolor in but also it comes with this little travel brush. It's neat. It's a little brush where you can actually open up the back side of it. I think I do it here and put some water in it. So if you're just kind of on the go, I always like to have more water than I can just put in the end of this brush. But it's a neat way to have some water in your pen. The pen works, I mean the watercolor brush I should say works really great. It also has this neat little ring on the back. So if you want to hold it like a palette of paint or colors, you can hold it like that and it works great. The little pans inside are also removable so you could change the colors. You can rearrange them, move them around, whatever. So this is a great set but use what you have. It doesn't have to be a professional set. These are some other sets I've gotten over the years. This is a Windsor Newton set. It's going to be very dirty. This one's also very hard to open but I don't think I've cleaned any of this out. The same concept. You've got your little individual areas where you can mix your watercolor and kind of have it as a little holding area. This is another little one that you can add your own paints to. Oh yeah, this one's really messy. I used this for a painting not that long ago. It has some great colors in it. Same thing with this one. It's got a little hole in it. I filled it up with so much watercolor that I don't use it that way at all. My hand would just get so messy. Also, too, if you're very blessed to have some wonderful friends, this is a sweet, sweet, dear friend on my Monet Cafe Art Group who found me, I guess, through this YouTube channel. Got on the art group. Her name's Marisa and she sent me this little customized set of watercolor. She picked out the most gorgeous colors. Again, she did the same thing which is take a piece of watercolor paper and go ahead and put all your colors down so you can see them. Okay, I know it's time to get started with this, but I thought that might be some helpful little watercolor info. Again, if you've got kids or grandkids in town, you can even use the little school watercolor kits or whatever. I want this to be fun, but if you have professional supplies, by all means, use those as well. Now that the sketch is done, I am just applying water with a large, flat brush. This is what's going to be called a wet-on-wet underpainting. I just wanted a mood of blue and I think I used some purples. Yeah, and kind of sometimes the messier the better with this because I like it when colors bleed into each other because if you overwork this with the brush, they all become one color. They mix on the paper. So I like it to have that variety. So notice I'm not overblending it. Now I'm just blowing it dry. You don't have to do this. You could just wait, but I wasn't that patient. So again, I'm trying to, of course, stay within my little borders there with the white tape. I don't want to get so messy that I go into the other side on the right where I'm going to do another painting, but now it's almost dry, pretty much dry here, and it's time to get started with the pastel. Now, if you know much about pastel painting, you know it doesn't stick real well to watercolor paper. So here's the little trick. This is Liquitex Clear Gesso. If you've watched my videos much, this is a really practical way to make an inexpensive paper into a pastel surface. It has little bits of grit in it, so it gives it that little sanded surface when it's dry. And I'm brushing it again with the large brush, just getting kind of a smooth application on it. And once it's dry, it's ready for pastel. Here are some pastels I've chosen. I basically just chose a lot of kind of neutrals and cool colors for the snow, and I wanted some little bit of bold colors that pop for the presence. I knew I needed something dark for his hat and the little cold eyes and his little arms that are going to be like twigs, kind of. So you can kind of pay attention to some of the colors I'm using while I'm working here. Now, I added this little tree in the background, and I'm purposely keeping it. I'm not pressing down real hard here. This is supposed to look like it's far away. And basically, for evergreens, they're almost kind of like zig-zaggy marks that go from the top down, that go smaller to larger. So it's kind of a neat little simple way to do an evergreen tree. But I'm keeping kind of a light touch here, but I'm going ahead and getting in his little hat. You may have noticed that I put down a little bit of light, a lighter blue on top of that purple in the background, just to kind of push that background back and lighten it up a little bit. And I am giving a little bit of a shadowy color kind of down on the ground. I am going to add lighter colors on top of that, but it kind of needed something as a base, you know, to put on top of it. Now, I'm just going to continue to work here so you guys can kind of pay attention to the color choices I'm using. But you can choose whatever color palette you would like. Keep in mind, though, we have a tendency to want to paint the whole snowman just white. And just keep in mind that it's like any other three-dimensional objects. It's going to have shadows. So I'm making my light source where the sun or the clouds would be shining on him. The brighter areas are shining on his, to my left in this. And the back sides are going to be more of the shadowy areas, just like if you were drawing or painting an apple. There's one side, you know, where's the light coming from? And the other side will be in the shadow. So I'm giving kind of some cooler blues and purples on the shadow side and the lighter values on the left side, where the sun would be coming from. And also keep in mind that, again, even though there's a lot of white in snow and lighter, what we think of as white and light values, it still needs something dark to put it on. So that's why even like this little tree, I've got a little bit of a, I put down the darker value first to kind of emulate the shadows and the depth of the tree. And then I add the more of the evergreen colors kind of on top. I even added a little bit of light colors to kind of emulate snow that's kind of fallen on the branches there. So again, keep in mind that you've got to have something dark down in areas to put your, your light's not going to look light if you don't have something to put it on. I did keep the left side of the snowman where the lightest values are pretty light. I noticed I didn't put anything dark down first for that. But for the other areas, I typically, even with this scarf, I put down a darker kind of burgundy red. And then I added the little highlights on top of it. Pastel painting, I believe acrylic and oil painting, they have the same general idea. You work dark to light or darker values to lighter values. Watercolor painting, I believe you typically work light to dark because once you darken it up, you can't get that light back, that luminosity of watercolor paper. So anyway, working on this, having fun, doing the little arms. So just enjoy this part. I might pop back in in a minute, but I'm going to add you some neat little holiday music and enjoy this little snowman painting. Now I'm wrapping up this cute little snowman. And I even added a little snow in the background. And one thing about snow, you want to keep it really a lot of variety in it. We have a tendency to make dots that all are equidistant in part in the same size. So, you know, just get real random with it. Now just made some little very simple bows on the package. And this was a really fun little guy. I liked him. So, and this is kind of how it looks again with the little edge after I tore off or peeled off the tape. Okay, it's time to get started on the next one. Same idea, a general sketch, a five by seven piece of watercolor paper. You may want to do like I did and come in a little bit, an eighth inch all the way around with some white artist tape and sketch your little painting in. This one, I'm going to have a little bit of a different color palette. I decided to go, I'm going to speed this up even more with the sketch to talk about the color palette more. Okay, so same idea. Unfortunately, I didn't change my water. You see, that's a little gray, but it didn't really matter for these purposes. I'm going to use a different color palette for the watercolor underpainting instead of the blues and the purples. I'm using magenta's bright pinks and oranges. Now, that might seem an unusual color for a snow scene that's usually very cool, but it makes, if you guys watch my channel, you know, I love warm underpainting. You use warmer colors for an underpainting and it made a nice warm palette underneath to lay down the pastels on. I still chose, you know, obviously colors and values that would represent snow, but I changed it up a little bit with this one and I'll talk about the pastel selections afterwards. Again, I'm keeping this really loose. I did keep the snowman and the little easel a little bit more of the orange tone with the pinks a little bit more of the background. All right, blowing this one dry. And of course, after this is done is when we have to apply the clear liquid gesso. I'll make a quick comment here. I like to point this out that why do we use clear gesso when doing this? Well, one, we need it to be clear. We need it to show through. If you have an underpainting underneath, if you use regular gesso, it's just going to cover up because it's not transparent like this. Another reason is clear gesso is the one that has the little grit in it, almost like sand that gives you the ability to put pastels down on top of it. The regular gesso does not. I don't know why, but that's just the way it is. All right, so you saw my little pastel collection or selection. I'm using a lot of teal colors. I'm making the snow instead of more purple and blue in the shadows. I'm making it more leaning a little more towards warmer blues, which would be teal in color. I decided to add some little evergreen trees in the background. Again, very simple, just kind of some zigzag marks. Lower marks are wider, upper marks are more narrow. Adding in some sky in between the trees, I'm using a pretty neat little bluish color in the background there. It gives a really neat color on top of that magenta, on top of that pink. Now, here's another one of those teal colors that I like, adding a little more of this blue in between the trees and even in the snow at the bottom. I think I add some of that in a minute. But see the palette of the teal that I'm using now? And you'll see when I add the shadows to the snowman. Yeah, there we go. I'm using more of the green and teal family rather than purples and blues like I did in the other one. And it's the same concept that on this one, though, I'm having the light come from the right side rather than the left side. So the shadows on the snowman are going to be on the left side. And the brighter parts of the snowman are going to be on the right side. I actually used for my, you'll see when I start doing the light colors, the white, I guess you call it on the snowman. I use a warmer white, more of a yellowy white instead. But also notice this mid snowman has two sections, a head and a body, whereas the other one had three. But see, I put down a lighter teal and now, remember, work dark to light. Now I'm putting down that more yellowy golden white rather than the colder looking white that was in these other snowman. So again, two kind of different color palettes for these, but some of the same general concepts. Also to a quick note, now I'm just doing like that piece of paper on that easel. A quick note is that this watercolor paper, I'm using the rough side. And so you get a little bit of texture, which I like. And also too, with the clear gesso, keep your pressure not too awfully hard because you don't get as much layering ability when you work on watercolor paper as you would if you're working on some of the other manufactured pastel surfaces. Now for the cute little hat, which is kind of like a little artist's beret, a beret, is that what it's called? A beanie. So once again, I'm putting down the darker color, a purple, and giving him a little, a little shape there, and then a little scarf putting down the darker purple. And I will add the lighter values on top. Again, that gives it some depth and some shadow underneath. If I just put the lighter color down first, it would be very flat. Now this is a little bit of a lighter purple here that I'm using for the sash. And I add some little hot pink stripes to it. I know you can't see it all that great here, but just some cute little stripes to the hat and the scarf kind of made it a little bit more fun. I'll continue to work on this one a little more, give you some more holiday music. Let me see, I'll try to pick a different song this time. This might even be fun just to play in the background while art is happening with some nice holiday music. All right, here's some holiday tunes for your listening pleasure. As I'm finishing this up, I wanted to refer back to what I said at the beginning of the video that if you wanted to ship these as original paintings, a company called ClearBags.com does provide these nice little clear bags that you literally can put your artwork down in very safely. It has an adhesive flap and a little seal on it. And you can order them in different sizes. But in the description of this video, I'll provide a link for the five by seven size in case you wanted to get some of these bags yourself. They're pretty affordable. Now, wasn't that fun? I've just got to add some legs to this easel and I've finished up this little guy. So here he is all trimmed. The tape has been taken off and it's been cut. And I wanted to show you real quick here how when I pull the tape off, I do it very slowly too if you do this because you don't want to pull up the watercolor paper. Also, I have a big cutter that I use to cut the edges and also too as a note, I have this little, I wish I had it in the video, this little part that comes down to hold the paper. If you're using pastel and cutting, make sure you wipe that off each time. It can come down and contaminate your painting. So I'm always cleaning that little bar that's up on my cutter. So here are the four little paintings. Once I got done, this was really neat. Each one didn't take that long. And it came out with four neat little paintings that you could either send as originals or get a good photo reproduction and print your own original green cards to send to friends and family. And also keep an eye out for the upcoming video with a really simple, fun artistic project you can do during the holidays. And if you love these videos, I pray you'll keep coming back. Please subscribe to my channel, like me on Instagram, find our art group on Facebook, Momay Cafe Art Group, and also consider joining me on my Patreon page, where for $5 a month you can continue to bring these art lessons to a hungry artistic world. Happy painting!