 Welcome to Monet Café! My artistic friends, visitors and subscribers and I'm very happy to be bringing you another in the beginner series videos. This one I'm calling Pushing Color. I often get questions from you guys as to how do I get more dynamic color in my artwork or reinterpret the colors that are in a reference photo that may be a little dull or you know something you just want to change a bit. And so in this video I hope to share with you and answer many of your questions as to some tips on how to accomplish that. Now here's a quick image of some of the pastels I used and I will go into that in more detail. But first a precious little moment I didn't even realize I captured. Many of you know that my little art kitty Dusty who showed up in my front yard like a little drowned rat about a year ago was hit by a car the other day and I can't even talk about it very much because it'll make me cry. But also too I'm wearing one of my t-shirts here and just so you know these t-shirts the happy painting t-shirts the art all colors welcome and a few others are available underneath my YouTube videos there's just some little links to those if you're interested. Here were my initial pastel selections and I apologize for the focus autofocus trying to focus there but as you could tell by the final painting if you recall I did add some blues of course for the sky but I in this painting I chose to keep the greens and everything a little cooler and to do that I really wanted to do a combination of these beautiful lavender purples and those cooler greens and if you notice like right here I think this is a Jack Richardson pastel I chose a lot of neutral see even this is a neutral and I just I don't know I had it in my mind to create a neutral palette and then just have a few colors that were a little more bold and all just so you know neutral colors just think I'm a kind of as dull colors they don't have as much brilliance or bright color now here I'm using a piece of Cinelli a la carte paper it's a called pastel card it's very rough in texture and I like that it keeps me very impressionistic but it is not water friendly so you don't want to apply watercolor or anything with water as an underpainting I did have a question the other day which is a great question I actually forgot at the end of the last video I did that I was working on Cinelli a and I I brushed off I showed how you can actually erase pastels with a bristle brush and I used some spray fixative that I often do when I want to get more grit and forgetting that it was Cinelli a la carte card and you're not really supposed to use water but the just so you know the spray fixative worked great on this it didn't warp the paper it didn't affect it in any way so I kind of made a happy discovery there so to my knowledge and from my experience you can use workable fixative with the Cinelli a la carte card a part in my voice if it's a little raspy some of you have followed how my husband and I've been sick from the mold issue we had in our house and we just recently had all of our floors redone it was like a miracle that you know I thank you for all your prayers we got a lot of that accomplished and and it's just so great so I've got a lot going on right now but I I did want to share this is actually a painting that I did weeks ago and just had the footage so let me actually talk about what I'm doing here as you can see I'm using a just kind of a dark warm I believe this might be a new pastel it's a just a harder little pastel you can use whatever pastel you want but get a darker value medium dark value and all you're doing here all I'm doing is blocking in shapes I often use the side of the pastel because I don't want detail at this point I'm just getting a composition and the more you do this the more you learn to see the big shapes right now here you can see I'm working on the the shadow there is a shadow being cast from that tree and that's going to enhance that composition to give some interest at the beginning and just kind of draw the eye in now if you notice underneath I have the reference photo up to the top right there and that actually is my photo from a little piece of land and property that we have we hope to build a house on it one day we're still kind of in temporary living conditions but I love that field it's just so beautiful but underneath it is what's called a value study or a no tan and all it is is a quick little drawing that's just the values to get the composition and the values correct and in the beginning of the video series you'd have to go back about oh gosh probably five or six maybe more videos where I started the beginner series with how to do these no tans these little value studies they are very important if you want to really create a good roadmap to where your paintings going to go and they're kind of fun you know it just relax and joy do a lot of them don't take them too seriously and the more you do the better you'll get so I'm even putting in there are values in the clouds I mean we have a tendency to think of clouds in the sky as white but I'm now doing the the blue part of the sky in between the clouds and again I'm not thinking about these being clouds I'm just kind of squinting my eyes and looking at where the blue shapes are in the clouds and the more you can get your mind away from what am I painting and zone out and just look at the shapes and the values that's one of the greatest things you can do especially at the beginning stages of the painting is to focus on big shapes and values and work all over the painting I get some good questions about how do I get a more impressionistic feel and that's exactly one of the ways you can do that is don't get too tied into one area of the painting too quickly get those big shapes and values and to begin with keep it very loose and free and that will help now here are three of my darker values that I'm using I don't know what I'm holding my finger up for oh I added one I've got in the purples that I said I wanted to create a color palette that was more of a cooler color temperature with purples and teals and so that's why I'm using some of these purples as dark colors that I'm putting down and shadows that I'm putting down okay now I added and again sorry for the focus one of the blues that blue is going to be some of the blues in the sky that I have and most of those the one the purple one on the far left is a Terry Ludwig and then the two are two in the middle there were Jack Richardson's they're a little bit harder than Terry Ludwig's or Sennelier's and let's see what this one is yeah that's the one that I'm going to use basically to get the darker dark so I'm just gonna go over what I've already done and get in because that's all kind of just general and now I know that the things that are closer to the foreground if you look at the reference photo and even my no tan sketch the trees that are closer in the foreground the one closest to me is going to be the one on the far left and the one I'm working on right now is a little further back but it's still very dark it's going to be the darkest value and I talk often about how in pastels and actually even oils and acrylics we typically work dark to light you want to get your dark values down first because you can add lighter values on top of those and that's opposite of watercolor and watercolor you want to work light to dark you want to preserve those lights because you really in watercolor you can't really get them back I mean you can use some gouache or some other things to maybe get the white back to a degree but it's never the same as that beautiful brilliant white paper in a watercolor painting so that's the opposite of pastel so and I typically work in value layers now see I'm picking something that's a little bit of a lighter value notice how that's it's a little more dulled down in color and see how I'm pointing at those are where the trees that are a little further away notice that particular pastel it's a little grayer and it's lighter in value if you squint your eyes it's not as dark as that purple that I put down so I'm going to be using that for those distant trees or the the next layer or level of trees and also I believe like for some of the shadows in there okay so at this point I'm just working the values like I said the first thing I did was just to get an initial big shapes in with one color pastel and then next is to get my values established very loosely and keep it loose and free and keep focusing on big big shapes and not too much fussy detail okay now I think I'm comparing some of the other yep I think that one's going to end up being too light for the yeah there we go the more distant trees are going to be a shade lighter in value than the middle ground trees that I just did so as you can see just with these three values not counting the the one that I did for the kind of under painting sketch these three values are going to give an illusion of distance and I just think that's what's so cool about art it's really like magic and I always say not like dark magic that's not what I mean like illusion magic I was always fascinated by that as a child as a matter of fact I did magic I my dad one time went to some convention he had gone to and there was a shop that had some magic tricks and he brought him home to me and I studied him and I just loved it and I got into it so much that he actually found a place that taught illusionary art and I took lessons there and I ended up having my own little show at like oh gosh what was I 11 years old my maiden name is moss and I was magical moss and I had my little suitcase of tricks I even had ones with with fire it's called flash paper and I did birthday parties and school things and and it was a lot of fun I just loved the idea of creating something that was an illusion that would trick your mind and that's really kind of what art is we're tricking the mind to imagine or see a three-dimensional image on a two-dimensional surface and so the neat thing is that's really all these things are is they're tricks and not bad tricks but fun tricks and so when you can learn those tricks I really think anybody can paint now of course we know there are some people that have these god-given gifts that they just see it and they get it faster and they do it more quickly but if you if you love it and you want to try it you can definitely learn to paint it definitely takes practice and patience and a lot of work and I know at the beginning stages you get frustrated and there's times where you feel like I can't do this and why am I even trying and and please I did the same thing I still do that sometimes when I get frustrated and go what am I thinking I this is terrible but those are just you know parts of it of the whole process that's the same with anything it's the same with music or any kind of thing you do I'm sorry I step on this side of the painting sometimes I need to get to the other side and I'm left-handed and I actually think it I think I had my pajamas on this I got up early in the morning I love early morning paintings that's just some of my favorite now you can see here all the colors that I've chosen thus far are cooler in temperature okay I've got purples and blues and I'm not getting over detailed or crazy with color now I'm using that lighter the little bluish grayish one for the clouds even though I think I light them up whiter later I'm just getting those shapes in with what have I got like four or five values that I've gotten in here so far and so once you get that done then you can start getting a little bit more serious with color or more particular with your color selections and choices so okay let me I'm going to speed this up just a bit to finish this initial this is kind of by the way like the underpainting you know a lot of other paintings I do especially if I'm using UART paper I may do a watercolor underpainting a gouache underpainting an acrylic underpainting a what are they called neocolor wax pastel underpainting there's so many different different ways you can do that but for this Sennelier paper I often because it doesn't take water just do an underpainting with pastels okay and again if you're very new to this all an underpainting is is exactly what I'm doing here getting in your big shapes your values and covering that big expanse or in this case it's not a very big piece of paper but covering the paper so that you have a a goal or a a roadmap for where the rest of your painting will go all right now my big heads in the way again now I've got a little bit of a darker lavender purple value and I'm just working that in areas would have that medium dark tone and all of these are going to kind of peek through the grasses that I lay on top and that's another I said I was going to speed this up and pause I can't quit talking today but all of this is going to establish a mood and a little bit of color that's going to peek through the rest of the painting when you add the greens oh and that's what I was going to say is another key thing especially these beginning stages well really the whole time is to keep a light touch don't press down so hard that you lose your grit of your paper and at the end you know sometimes you can do I like how Karen Margulis says it you can do shouting marks when you've got your final images that you want to make the most impact whether it be some flowers or whatever that's going to be your main focus in your painting but before you get to that point you want to keep all of your strokes very soft and not press too hard another reason for that okay see now I've gone to a more bold in color darker value now what do we know about bolder colors or more intense with their chroma is that those colors are typically closer to us I wouldn't want to use that purple way in the background because I'm going to lose the illusion of things being far away what do we know about our eyes when things are really far away from us you don't see the color that vividly and they're not as dark they're they pale out and the reason for that is because even though you can't see the atmosphere the air it's there and when things get further away you have a lot of atmosphere in a layer between you and what the object is that's far away think of distant mountains why do they always look blue because things cool off in the distance because of all the atmosphere between your eyes and the distant things so they cool off they get lighter in value and they get duller in color and again if you can remember those three things about how to achieve that illusion of distance that is definitely going to help you and now I've I've basically got my underpainting done so what I'm going to go and do now is reestablish or establish the darkest darks in this painting and again that's going to bring those trees a little more forward I believe I don't think that's a terry Ludwig eggplant that's a purple color a really really dark purple color that works great for darks no this one's a little too gray I think the first one I put down may have been the eggplant but this is just a darker terry Ludwig and these are very soft so I'm keeping a soft touch so as not to fill up the tooth of the sandpaper and if you're very very new to this I mean why do we use sanded paper for pastels well if you put pastels on regular just flat drawing paper you can't get any layering because they they don't stick on top of each other the sandpaper allows for some tooth for the pastels to hold onto and it allows for layering of different colors so that's why sanded papers are the best types of surfaces to use with soft pastels oh another thing I wanted to point out to another reason why you keep a light touch and uh don't over layer or over muddy your your painting is because the more layers you put down the harder you press and the harder you rub you lose the brilliance of the pastel color it's like I was trying to remember something that I read I can't remember it's like crystals within the pastels but something that has this brilliance of color where the light just kind of reflects and the more you muddy that the more you blend the more you rub the more you layer the more you lose that and all of a sudden your colors become muddy if you've done this a little while and you may you probably have experienced when you're like man how did my painting get so so dull looking and it's because you've overworked it and trust me I have done that many times too so that's why learning to keep a a light touch and be a bit more purposeful with your strokes uh now there's a fine line between that because sometimes you want to be loose you want your strokes to be free but not so free that you have to correct and correct and correct and then before you know it you've lost that beauty of color that is really one of the beautiful benefits of pastel paintings um if you I often am able to do this I'm able to because I videotape my paintings I'm able to see points when I'm doing these voiceovers sometimes where I'm like oh man I I wish I had not overworked that area because I can see where I kind of lost some of the brilliance of color now I'm still at the very beginning stages of this one so um I'm still good now wouldn't want to overwork those trees that I just added the dark but really there's not a whole lot more to do to those I'm just going to add a couple more values of or colors of green I'm going to add a darker green and then a lighter green for some of the lighter leaves if you notice the trees are very dark but I I do want to kind of give some impression of some leaves on the trees and always we um we know or I talk a lot about how this is not about creating every branch every leaf leaf on the tree our brains kind of put that together um it's I think it's something called closure where your mind sees something even if it's not there if it resembles something oh and by the way I wanted to make mention a special special thank you to my patrons um I'll try to give you the short version I I started a Patreon page about it's been a month maybe but um per a lot of your suggestions you wanted to support me and I'm so grateful but I felt so bad that we had so many life challenges after that that I haven't been able to do much but bless your hearts so many of you actually I got more of you become my patrons after you knew of many of our challenges that are going on in life right now and God bless you that is just so beautiful to me um but I wanted to thank you because because of you I was able to buy a studio light I really really wanted and this video does not have that light it was be I created this before I got that light and I can tell such a difference now when I'm creating a video um then I did before I mean the light is so much better it makes the colors more like what it really is so thank you patrons for helping me and just so you know I am about to um move to be with my mom um during her battle with cancer and she is going to be having radiation it looks like so far hopefully no chemo and I'll be I'll probably be gone for at least at least two months but probably more like three months I'm going to take as many art supplies as I can with me she lives on a beautiful place and hopefully still be creating some videos so I ask that you do bear with me please stay subscribed to the youtube channel patrons I promise I will be bringing you guys some content as soon as we can get that battle overcome and accomplished and I am having faith that my mom will be cancer free and you can see here as I've been talking that I've been adding those cooler purples that I showed the pastel palette at the beginning and I really wanted to create that cooler um under painting mood or tone before I get to my green so you notice every color I've used so far has been on the cooler side of the color wheel cooler in color temperature and if you're not familiar with what that means warm versus cool colors I have on the youtube channel if you look up top above the videos you'll see um little tabs and one of them says videos and one says playlists and what playlists are are little files or like file folders or whatever that I can put videos of a certain category together and so if you click on playlist I think a video pops up but you'll see on the right all the different playlist somehow it works like that um I haven't looked at it in a while I just put them together so you'll see one playlist that has to do with color or color theory something like that um but in those you'll be able to see um a few videos where I go over the color wheel and talk about warm versus cool colors now in those background trees there I thought it was a little too light what I just put down I'm trying to get a cooler bluish green I don't want a warm green back there because what happens in the distance things cool off so I want to get duller cooler um lighter value tones back there so still still all on the cooler end but now I'm adding some of those coolers where the ground's a little bit lighter um are kind of in between those shadows a little bit um and what that's doing is kind of creating a color harmony um I actually do end up if you squint your eyes I have to end up darkening that foreground a little bit more it's a little bit too light compared to the background field there okay so now I'm creating color harmony by putting some of what's in the earth in the sky often the the sky and the ground play upon each other and you may not always see this in photographs or even with your real eye but as artists we can accentuate that and um and that's another thing you know the point of this video is how do you push color or or get a more dynamic color I wish I had the best word for it just more interesting color in your painting and that's one way to do it is by realizing um that we need to keep a color harmony in our painting and uh it it makes the painting more cohesive and just beautiful as a whole rather than segregating certain parts of it okay so now I believe I am choosing some of the more green I'm getting a little bit warmer you notice that's a more of a green than a blue and I apologize again for getting my head in the way let me see if I can get past this part here all right so now I'm I'm trying to make this footage to where I'm kind of avoiding my head so I'm sorry if it's chopping around a little bit so now I'm getting in a little bit more of my greens and I didn't really want to have a lot of tall grasses in this one I think I do at the end make some of them right at the entrance but for the most part I just want to draw the eye back through that field okay now as you can see I've got it's more of a green that I'm going to put on top of that purple the medium value purple that I put down before notice my strokes I'm not covering up all of that purple I'm just kind of glazing over it and making some some tree shapes you know not not over pressing this or overworking it and so that already too you can see now those really do look like they're kind of in the middle ground so while I have this pastel in my hand I'm looking at anywhere else that might have that similar value and remember how I said I knew I needed to darken that foreground a little bit to bring it forward to make it look more like it's it's closer to you and so this still staying in the cooler side of the color palette color wheel but that definitely brought that foreground forward you see how that happened just by putting that darker medium value I should say cooler green in the foreground okay here is where I'm the trees I have in the back there the when I put down that light value lavender or whatever it was they were they were a little too light so I needed to darken them up just a tad I think I do end up even blueing them out a little bit more but they were a little bit too pale they were there was not enough contrast yeah now I'm paling them out a little bit more there was not enough contrast between the trees and the sky that I know was going to be kind of light too so I wanted them to be a darker value than the sky because you can see that in the reference photo and also too in the reference photo you don't see the the really light far far trees like I am interpreting or or taking my artistic license I always like to try to make more distance if I can in a painting if I can peek a little place where there can be some trees real far away it just really creates more interest okay now is where I'm doing a little bit more vertical strokes I've got more of a it's a warmer green you see that warmer green going on top of I've already put down lavender I've put down a cooler green medium value green and now just that little bit of warm green there just really gave that feeling of grasses okay now continue to watch here while I build up the painting a little bit I am going to speed it up just a tad and I'm going to come back in for more commentary most likely when I get to the clouds all right enjoy I thought I'd add here that here is where I'm actually adding some of the lighter values they're not light they're still darker values but the the green values on top of the darkest purple values that I put down originally or whatever dark color that was but see how these are medium to dark greens I'm still keeping it a little cooler because remember at the beginning that was my interpretation of the photo is I'm pushing color towards the cooler end of the color wheel and I do end up warming it up a bit more at the end but but that that's exactly the license that you can take once you understand color and how the color wheel works and how color works together you can make your own interpretation of things so that's always really fun to do and we're not bound then by the photo okay see how I'm adding on the tips there or the where the sunlight may be kind of wrapping around a little bit you're getting some of the lighter greens on the tips of the branches or the leaves of the trees so now I'm just continuing to establish this and okay now I'm getting to the sky so what I'm doing here is I'm getting in kind of the the medium blue values right now in between the clouds and I had already gotten those purples down which again makes more of a cohesive painting to kind of play off those purples that are still kind of peeking through in the rest of the painting and so I'm just kind of building up the clouds again based on shapes and value that's all it is don't let clouds freak you out they're just shapes and value and now I'm getting a little bit of a lighter blue and if you look at the reference photo this is where usually in clouds the underside is a little bit darker it kind of depends on where the sun is of course but you know in this case sometimes clouds have a little bit of water in them and so that usually is reflected by the the value being a little bit darker underneath so that little bit of a darker blue that I have under that kind of emulates that or creates that feeling so again just looking at the value getting the lighter bluer it's not even a white that I'm using here and by the way I I keep meaning to do a video where color is and I think I have pointed this out in multiple video but color and value is dependent on what it's around if you have a light color or you just have a a medium value and you put a dark background around it it's going to look lighter if you put a light background around it it's going to look darker it's the same value but it how we interpret it in our minds depends on what's around it now I'm going to continue to paint here and put some music on I'm going to speed it up just a tad just so the video is not so long and I encourage you though to continue to watch the process I know the commentary is very helpful especially when you're new but it's also incredibly helpful just to watch and and and see the process and see how I layer things and also to I wanted to reiterate the point of this video is how we can take something a reference whether you're painting from a reference image or doing plein air painting out on location and how if you can learn some rules of color you can reinterpret the color palette to your own interpretation of it and that could have been done with this photo I decided to go to a cooler I don't know why I just felt that way maybe it was my mood or something but towards a cooler overall painting but I could have gone warmer too even though this photo has all this green and it's mostly just trees and grasses and I've done that in many videos before where I I punch up the color from the warm side of the color wheel and so those are the wonderful creative licenses you guys can have to be able to do that yourselves so it often how one of the thing I wanted to point out it helps though to have a plan at the very beginning look at it interpret it pull out your color wheel look at it and go what am I trying to say here what mood do I want to create and then make a plan and my plan started at the very beginning when I picked out those cooler color temperatures to be the kind of the base or the under painting of my of my final painting and so those things do help when you want to push color or reinterpret color to suit your own mood or your own creative concept of what you want to establish or represent so enjoy the rest of this process and I again want to thank you guys all so much for your patience on the youtube channel in the Monet Cafe art group facebook group and also my patrons my precious patrons who oh my goodness I just I know I go on and on about it but I am just so blessed and so humbled at your support and helping me out during this trial and again I'll be headed north north Florida anyway and getting lots of beautiful photography too I plan to take a lot of reference images I think I'm going to share some of those images with the patreon group and maybe while I'm out there create some little painting challenges for the patreon group to work from some of my reference photos so that sounds like a fun thing to do so I'll still be around pardon me if I'm not able to respond to so many comments and things like I tried to do and I just keep my mom in your prayers I feel very optimistic being a cancer survivor myself I kind of know the drill and some of the the yuckiness that goes along with these types of treatments and but I know my mom is strong not only in spirit but in her faith and I do do have lots of faith but still keep those prayers coming guys and I will keep praying for you I've had the wonderful opportunity to read and pray for many of you and some of the challenges that you're going through as well so god bless you all enjoy this painting and I can't wait to talk to you guys again and hopefully it will be soon all right guys so here's where I'm kind of wrapping it up and as you can see this is where I'm doing some of the grasses and by the way these grasses I'm doing with Giro Pastels G I R A U L T I think I got that right they're a French pastel company and I like them because they're medium to hard and probably not as hard as a Rembrandt but harder than most of the real softies and that makes it really great for doing line work or grasses like this so I do love them so if you haven't subscribed to the YouTube channel yet this channel I hope you'll do so you just hit that red subscribe button also feel free to find us on Facebook monnaie cafe art group follow me on Instagram you'll see all the details in a minute and if you'd like to become a patron on my patreon page you can see it there I promise I'll be bringing more content to that soon all right guys thanks so much happy happy painting