 Welcome Monet Café subscribers and newcomers to the second in the series I call Artistic Meditations. This is a chance for you to relax and enjoy the process of creating art. The full version of this lesson is over on my Patreon page, but you'll learn lots here as well. So let's get started and remember you can always substitute the products with whatever you have. I'll be using an inexpensive sheet of Arteza watercolor paper. And I'll need a watercolor brush, which is fairly large. This is one brush that I really love. It is by Princeton. It's called Velvet Touch and it's a size 12 long round. I'll keep some water and some paper towels handy. And what I'm going to be doing is creating a watercolor underpainting. And I'm using this set that I really like. It's by Me Lang. Somebody correct me if I'm saying that wrong. I've used this set quite a bit. The company was generous enough to donate it for a product review video and I really do love it. I like the fact that they give this color chart. I always recommend, even if they don't provide one in a watercolor set, to make your own. The reason is because watercolors look substantially darker in the palette rather than how they do on the paper. So it's a really great little set. It even comes with this little travel watercolor pen or brush and it works really great. Now this might look odd, but I'm actually going to be using a sheet of plastic wrap and some salt. Salt actually has some neat effects with watercolor. I don't have regular iodized table salt. I have Himalayan pink salt, the one on the right, and sea salt. So I just had to improvise so we'll see how that works. As with the first episode in this series, I'm using the color meditation deck again. This is a neat card system that will prompt you artistically. And I'm going to use the one card that says color schemes to come up with a color palette basically for my underpainting. Now it has lots of cards, lots of prompts and ideas to get started. And if you want to know more about this color meditation deck, go back to the first episode in this series, Artistic Meditations. Now again, I'm using the color scheme card and I'm choosing a triadic color scheme. It's a really great way to begin a painting. All it means triad, think of a triangle. You basically look for colors that are in the shape of a triangle on your color wheel. And I'm going to choose the colors of a beautiful green, orangey color and magenta. You can get creative and choose a different color palette strategy if you like. By the way, on the back of the pocket color wheel is a wealth of information. You can see all of the different color palette strategies get a little mini color theory lesson with your pocket color wheel. Now I'm going to get started and I'm choosing some lovely colors from the watercolor set. It's like a magenta and one that's a little bit more purple. And I like to go ahead and make some puddles, get it fairly wet and runny. I mean, this is the point of an underpainting is to have it loose and free and not tight and fussy. So I've got my beautiful magenta purples, my golden colors and a couple of beautiful grassy greens. Now I want to recommend you can follow my tutorial, you know, just follow along and do what I do. Or you can branch out on your own. And if you branch out on your own and do your own thing, I recommend that you give a try what I did. I did not pre-select a reference image. I simply played with the color. That's one of the points about this artistic meditation series is just to play. And so I did get really loose. I really could have used a larger watercolor brush, but I just had this in my hand. So that's one of the points about this too is pre-select your items that you're going to work with your products. So you don't have to get up. We want this to be an experience. I mean, it's okay if you pause and get up and get, you know, another product or something you need. But one of the points of this is to paint for the joy of painting or creating. And we want to put on some soft music, make yourself a cup of tea. Find a moment if you can. If you're your mom with young kids, trust me, I know how hard that was. I don't know if I did much of any painting for myself when I was a mother with younger kids. But see if you can steal away a moment of time. So this is play time. I'm literally just playing with color and shapes. I did start to see almost like some flowers emerge. So you can kind of go with your gut, but mostly just have fun. Now I'm going to do something else to loosen this up. I just have water on my brush and I'm splattering water and what it's going to do, it's going to make these little dots and I'm going to sprinkle some salt on my surface. Now the whole surface is fairly wet still, but I also have those little water driplets in there that will make some interesting shapes. And now is when I'm using my saran wrap. I saw another artist do this a while ago and basically while the surface is still damp, you're going to crinkle up some saran wrap and just scrunch it up in some shapes and lay it flat and then wait for your surface to dry. And when it does, you just peel it back. And what happens is it makes some really interesting abstract shapes. Isn't that neat? I just love this effect. I think it would be fun to do these in multiples. Do another one. Do four or five of them so you have these surfaces to create paintings from that are very loose beginnings. Now I'm going to add pastel to this and I'm going to use the set that's called the Paris Collection by Sennelier. It's still one of the most economically priced pastel sets of this quality. I don't even think I used the Prismacolor new pastels I just showed, but again, use whatever you have. Now here's the reference image I found. I was seeing in the image that I painted with the watercolor like some large flowers. And this one had some beautiful flower shapes in it. This is from unsplash.com. And so I'm using this photo to inspire me. I'm not going to copy it. I'm just getting inspiration from this image. And now I'm going to do what I do all the time, which is one of the best ways to create your own pastel surface is to use clear gesso, not regular gesso. Liquitex Clear Gesso is the brand that I've been using for years. It has little bits of grit or sand in it and it dries clear. So you've literally just made your own little sanded pastel surface and it's going to hold soft pastels beautifully. I'm just using a foam brush and I'm brushing it on now. Sometimes watercolor will bleed a little bit like mine's doing. But to me, this just adds to the whole soft and moody feel. I only applied one coat that always seems to work for me. And now I'm going to use these little markers. You could use whatever little markers you have or you don't even have to do the stage. But it's Moigane. Gosh, I'm terrible with these names. But I'm choosing one that's rather fine, a very thin line. And I have the reference image in front of me and I'm just using it as a guide. I'm looking at some of the flower shapes and some of the shapes of the leaves and really just again playing and using my gut when it comes to my intuition, when it comes to where I'm putting things. And I did like how those large magenta shapes I had painted with the watercolor felt like a stalk or a stem of flowers and like the flowers similar in the reference image. And so I'm keeping this super loose, resisting any urge to get super detailed and just making some basic and very gestural shapes. I did like the shapes of the eucalyptus leaves in this reference image and I thought they made a neat kind of graphical element. You'll see me develop. Now that I have my loose sketch in, I'm going to tape down my surface. The reason I'm doing this is because I don't want it to move while I'm filming. I'm filming from overhead and sometimes I've moved my surface right out of the filming viewing zone. So now you would think maybe that I would paint some purple flowers or some magenta flowers with this mass of that shape I originally put down with the watercolor. Instead though, I felt like it made a nice darker contrast to make these flowers lighter. You know how I'm often saying we often paint dark to light and even with flowers will put its darkest element that you see in that flower down first and then gradually add the middle and the lighter highlights. Well that's what I'm doing here. I'm choosing to make the magenta color the base of some lighter flowers and I'm using some of these pretty almost peachy pink and whiteish. This one's more of a warm white here and I'm focusing on the general shape of the flower but not getting so carried away. I'm keeping my strokes almost linear. You know how a lot of times I'll lay my pastel on its side and I do that at some point in this painting or on some occasions in this painting but I'm doing a lot of little sketchy marks too. And if you're a patron of mine, I'm going to be providing you with the album that I have on unsplash.com that is a collection of floral images, just some floral reference images that are copyright free that I really love, things that I would paint. So if you're a patron of mine you can obviously copy along with me with this reference image or you can branch out on your own and maybe use some of those photos as inspiration. And now I'm going to add some peaceful music for you to be able to watch the rest of this painting intuitive creation with a meditative goal. And even though this content on the Monet Café version is sped up with no commentary I still think it should be a wonderful painting experience for you. I hope you'll try it. Remember you can always slow down the video by clicking the gear icon at the lower right of the YouTube video screen. It's a little gear icon. You can slow it down and I hope you will try this. If you're a patron of mine, I know that I'll get to see some of your results in our homework album and again it's only $5 a month to become a patron if you'd like to pop in and join my Patreon family. Now I do ask real quickly, I have noticed that I have about 50% of the people or more of the people who watch my videos on YouTube have not yet subscribed so if you would do me a favor and go ahead and click that subscribe button and the like button, the thumbs up and leave me a comment if you like. That really helps YouTube to share this video more often for other people to see it. Alright enjoy this process, relax and I'll be back at the end. Also finish watching the video just by doing that that helps this particular video get shared more on YouTube. Alright enjoy, relax and I hope you try this yourself. I'm adding some final touches and punching up a few colors and I must say I'm so happy personally that I started this series on my Patreon page and also obviously sharing here on Monet Café because I needed this. Art business, being a full-time artist, I know we have these visions that it's just, you know, romantic life and painting all day. It's a lot of behind the scenes business and marketing and just too much to mention so I need these artistic meditation paintings myself but I really do believe that others are enjoying them as well. So let me know what you think if you'd like to see these series coming and here's the final, very fresh, colorful, loose, not overworked and just a peaceful experience. Alright everyone, thank you for watching. Please subscribe if you haven't already like this video and become a patron if you'd like for more content. I have hundreds of lessons on my Patreon page that have more content and goodies available. Alright everyone, God bless and happy painting.