 Welcome to Monet Café. I'm artist Susan Jenkins. Today's lesson is gonna be a lot of fun, a painting of an adorable little fox. The theme this month is tiny treasures, little small paintings, and I'm gonna show you a really neat underpainting technique to get a soft beginning to your pastel paintings. So come on in the studio with me. There's lots to learn in this tutorial and it's just a really fun subject matter. And Jackson's thinking, okay how about doing a painting of me one day, right? I definitely have to do that. Alright, let's get started. I'd also really appreciate it if you would take a moment right now to like, subscribe, and hit that little bell icon to be notified of future videos. And I'm able to keep these free lessons coming because of the support from my patrons on my Patreon page. If you would like to consider becoming a patron, it's only $5 a month and you get extra goodies and extra content. And by the way, I do have a tiny painting or small paintings playlist. I'll include a link to that playlist in the description of this video and I'll add all these videos that I'm doing this month to the playlist as well. Let me share some product info with you. The surface I'll be using is pastel matte. I love the surface for pastel painting. It's awesome. Here it is on DickBlick.com and I'm using the, it's the darker colors that are in a pad. My pad I got was the 9x12 with 12 sheets. It's $40 for that pad. Now, that sounds expensive, but you can literally wash this stuff off if you're not happy with your painting. It's great. The color I'll be using is the color called sand. And I like working on the colored surfaces, but sometimes I buy white pastel matte as well. And I have cut one of the sheets into multiple 5 inch by 4 inch little squares to start this painting on. The soft pastels I'll be using is a 40 piece set of Sennelier pastels. I love this little half stick set of 40. It has such beautiful colors and I almost exclusively used this set for this painting. I think with the exception of maybe some purples, I'll talk about that as I paint. I also like on the DickBlick.com site how you can literally click on all of the colors in the set and see the actual names of those colors. So that's really convenient if you're just trying to find a particular color. And as I often say, use what you have. You do not have to buy these products. Many of the things that I teach can be used even with other mediums. But if you want to explore other soft pastel painting products and many of the products I use in my videos, check out my Amazon page. I have some photo images of some sets that I use, pastels and papers. I also have some product review videos and I have groupings called Idea Lists where I group together products of a particular category and you can explore and learn a little bit more just from my Amazon page. So check that out. Now look at this adorable reference image. I haven't painted animals in a while and I thought I'd love to do some tiny paintings of animals and this Fox was just so sweet. So I got this reference image from a site called Unsplash.com. The photographer was Nathan Anderson. Looks like he got the photographer of the year in 2017. He has some beautiful photography. So thank you Nathan for this lovely image. As I previously mentioned, I'm using a size that's a 5 inch by 4 inch. I really loved all of the softness of the background around the Fox. So I came up with an idea for an underpainting and I'm going to share that with you right now. All right, here's what I'm going to experiment with. I want to get some soft color down and not get so tight with this Fox too quickly. So I thought, you know what, I'd love to blend some soft colors in this and I thought, you know what, I have these neat tools that are from Pan Pastels. I really do like Pan Pastels and I always forget to use them, but they're literally pastels that come in a little, it looks like a blush container, like a little makeup, and you can grab with these little spongy tools, grab the pastels and paint with them. So they have other tools you can use too. They have some that looks like an eye brush applicator, but I'm going to see if I can literally, these Sennelier pastels are so soft that I'm just going to see if I can just grab some color right here, like a little palette of color, and do some blending. I've also got some chamois claws here. I use chamois claws a lot, so they may work as well. So here I go experimenting again. Go figure, right? All right, so I think what I'm going to do is I'm just going to go ahead and get some of these pretty greens down. Let's see if hopefully this will refocus and show you. I'm just gonna see what happens. Oh yeah, that's kind of cool. I like it, and it's kind of mixing in some of that other green in the back of it, so let's just go with it. That's pretty cool. Yeah, it's working. So I'm just gonna get some of this color in. Maybe I should do my left hand. Any other lefties out there? I hear from you guys sometimes as we're, as I'm posting videos, you guys shout out lefty power, but you probably are like me in that. I can use both hands, but that's mostly because you grow up in a right-handed world, and you kind of have to learn how to do that. You know, I think I'm going to leave this is really light back in there. I don't think I'm going to do a lot in that area, but over in here, this is a little darker. I think I'm going to grab some of these, even this dark blue right here, and I think I'm gonna get some of that in. Now, these pastel applicators here for the pan pastels, they will really stick to some surfaces. They don't apply good if they're too textured. If they're, if the surface is like a U art or a fissure, and that one's, this color's not applying so great right now. So I'm going to try one of these. Let's see what this does. Oh yeah, that's pretty cool. Again, just an experiment. I want to get, I know he's got kind of a halo or silhouette of dark around him and back in here. So see what that does? I'm already kind of creating a mood, and you can do the same thing with literally just putting the pastel down. I think I'm going to do that a little bit here. This one is a little dark, but it's okay. So what I can do is I can see how it applies so nicely, and I'm just looking at some of the ways this is kind of moving and going, and now we're already getting something happening here. Then you can take your chamois cloth and you can blend once you've added it, and you can add water to this. You know, if this feels like it's too, I don't know, too much, not blended enough, you can get some water and add to it. Another fun thing is just to get a spritzer bottle of water and spray in and let it drip and move around. Maybe I'll do that too. There's a little bit of dark back in here. I think there's like a, this is like a really nice, really dark green. I'm squinting my eyes to look at where some of the darks are, and I want him to feel like he's nestled down in here, so I'm going to get some of that in here. Kind of here there and everywhere, and then there's dark back here, but it's not going to feel that dark. So I'm going to grab some of this really pretty sagey green. Yeah, there we go. It's kind of way back in the distance. And things with the rules of art and nature, things typically get lighter in value and cooler in color as they go off into the distance. So I'm getting me kind of a nice little halo effect, going around, getting ready to get that box nestled in there. I want him obviously to be the focal point, okay? So he's going to be kind of right in here. I'm looking, it's not quite center. His nose is going to be right about in here. So, but that's kind of fun. I almost feel like I want to get get some water or some alcohol. I think I might just get that a try. I think I'm going to spray it and see what happens. That's what, you know, to me the fun part of art is just playing and remembering that it's all right. We always have this end goal in mind that the painting is what matters. And it's also the experience. So let me get some alcohol. All right. So I've got this little spritzer bottle of alcohol, literally just a body mist sprayer. It's not vanilla sugar body mist. And I'm just going to spray someone here to see what happens. And now I've got a brush that's a really kind of a course. What is this called here? Something from China. But I like to get a brush that's got some texture to it and just have some fun. So let's spray this and see what happens. I sprayed a light mist of alcohol kind of consistently around. And I just started moving the color around with the brush. You see how it's starting to drip and run. And what that's going to do is it's going to create that more moody, subtle, subdued type of background, which definitely you got that feel from the photograph. And before I did this, it was a little bit too detailed. So I definitely will use this technique again. You don't even need to use, I had fun trying with those little pan pastel applicators. But really you could just lay down some pastels, maybe blend it around a little bit, and then try some alcohol. But now we have this nice moody beginning for the painting. Alcohol dries quickly anyway, but I decided just to blow it dry before getting in the sketch. And I don't always or often use a pencil for sketching, but I kept this really light. The reason is because sometimes pastels won't stick to the pencil. But I felt my charcoal sticks would be too big for this little small surface. So I got in just a little basic shape of the fox. Now if you want more instruction on sketching, I'm going to have another tutorial coming up where I give you some tips. And I do stress to get better at drawing. Drawing is a core foundation for beautiful painting. You just really need some to learn some drawing skills and don't cut those things short. Now when I begin any painting, when I'm finally getting to you know laying down some of the elements and the big shapes in the painting, I focus more on the value than the color. Fortunately this little set of Sennelier pastels had some really nice colors for this little fox. But if you squint your eyes and look at the reference image, like right now, look at the reference image, squint your eyes. Can you see how the fox on the left side from our view is really in shadow? Okay, it's pretty dark and the light side is going to be the top of his head. Obviously we've got a source of light that's kind of coming from up and above and a little bit to the right side, our right side. And of course when you have a subject matter that's an animal or a person, it does take longer than a typical landscape painting. You've got to get some of these features and bone structure and things correct for it to render, you know, accurately. And so I'm taking some time on this. This is real time. But can you see how I have added the darker colors to the left, especially the left lower side of the fox because he's, you know, got the grasses around them and everything. And I often mention that with pastel painting, it's a good idea to work dark to light because we can layer lighter elements on top to create the contrast. And so I know that it looks a little dark often when I first start, but I know that I'm going to lay the lighter fur on top of that. And just like I say with the landscape painting, I know this is a small, it's a tiny painting anyway, and the fox is kind of small on the painting. So it seems like it could be difficult, but I'm still focusing on the same principles of big shapes, blocking in is what that's called. I'm not going in right now and trying to get anything so specific with the fur going this way or that way. I'm literally just looking at the value first, value as king. Even if you don't have the right color, often you can choose a value. For example, that blue that I've added in the dark areas under his neck and down in the shadows. If you pulled that color up like in Photoshop that's actually in the photograph, I mean it's going to lean a little cooler probably, but it's not the exact same color. But if I get the value right, that's already going to be in my favor. Now there were little elements that were hard, like his little nose. So on that case I did grab, it's a Terry Ludwig Eggplant pastel that you saw me use there for the inside of the ears and the nose. I had it a little sharper on the point. Now here's where I grabbed, I do grab a few colors that aren't in this set. I realized after I started rewatching this, this purple, it's a broken piece. I had all of my pastels fall over a couple years ago in the wind and I have these little shards of pastels and some of them were my favorite colors. So I work with them, but this is a Terry Ludwig. It's just a beautiful warm lavender purple and this color definitely you don't see in the Fox, but I know because it's the right value. It's kind of medium value, not too light or not too dark and it's cooler and things get cooler in the shadows. So I often use that little strategy of using blues and purples for shadowy colors and my Fox comes out looking perhaps a little bit whimsical, but I felt that the the general photograph and the the mood of this was a little bit whimsical and I really just loved how he was looking up. Someone mentioned I shared this on Instagram. I share a lot of little stories and reels on Instagram sometime before I even make a video like this. So find me on Instagram and follow me. I would love that. You can find me at Susan Jenkins Artist. One word, Susan Jenkins Artist. And so somebody said on there it says it looks like he's watching you paint him and I was like that's so cool. I kind of felt that way while I was painting. Now this is another one from the little forty-half stick set of Sennelier's and I'm just kind of getting in some of the values on his ears and again it looks a little bit weird right now and even as as long as I've been painting I still go through the phases sometimes. I think I literally said out loud verbally while I was painting this. Oh my gosh this looks terrible. I walked away and came back and and just was like oh no this is what I what how it works. You just have to get things blocked in before it starts coming together. So be patient with those stages that are often called your painting goes through an adolescent stage sometimes where it's it's not grown yet it's not mature yet so definitely be patient with that and now I am really studying the reference image to see how his little mouth goes and at the he had a little curve like right at the bottom of his little mouth line there and and it does it looks a little odd right now but I'm going to start layering some of the other values on top and shaping him up a bit more accurately with regards to his anatomy and it eventually comes together. So I I don't know why I started this particular series of tiny paintings with a subject matter that's a little more time consuming. I do have another the next one in this tiny series is going to be a bull a cow bull and he's really loose and impressionistic and then I have what I do is when I have a month of painting a theme I try to I like to get on a roll and I like to paint paint paint paint and then I start uploading the videos so I've already got like four paintings done for this month so you know you'll have a lot of content coming but I want you to notice here how I have layered some of the lighter values now where the light is hitting and also too I resist the urge to grab white. Our brains tell us okay the fox has a little white area around his face around his nose and his mouth area he has a white area around his ears and a little bit on his chest and so when you're a beginning artist and I did the same thing I'll grab white but often almost always white is not white because it's being influenced by other colors it's being influenced by where it is with relation to shadows and so that's why you'll see me sometimes now this one is this is a gray actually and I wanted to get a little bit oh well let me tell you what this pastel is these are prismacolor new pastels spelled in you pastel and they are harder and you can get finer lines and because this was such a small little subject matter I found I needed to resort to using my prismacolor new pastels because some of the other ones were just too darn chunky and you can do quite a bit with chunky pastels believe it or not let me zoom in here a little bit and show you this little layering that I'm doing now like I said this is actually it looks white here you know just because of what it's next to but it's kind of a grayish white it's a light gray and that's the area where the sun is shining so I'm just kind of scumbling in little bits of this lighter value now on this area if you don't have the right color you see how I I'm just lightly glazing so that it's just a little lighter I'm not pressing hard so it's not as if you want to call it white as the part that's above it so often we can layer to kind of get new colors or new values even when we don't have that many pastels I use that technique often if I if I need something that's kind of a middle value and I don't have that color I'll lay down a dark value first and then scumble in a lighter value to produce more of a middle value I'm looking for so while you can't really mix pastels like you do with other mediums to get new colors and values you can have ways that you can accomplish that by layering now I am speeding up the remaining portion of just the fox and then I'll go back to real time when I get to the background you know when you're doing elements like this animals and people you do have to you know make sure you get it right and it does take a little bit of time so I didn't want the video to be too awfully long so I'll be talking about that more in an upcoming video now I'm using these new pastels just to kind of build up the fur once again I've got my values in first kind of big shapes right it's going to look a little wonky and crazy at first but as long as you get your values and your shapes in pretty accurately your painting you build upon it and I find that I tweak things as I go sometimes I see wow his ears need to be you know a little taller a little shorter we do have a lot of flexibility when we're painting with pastels now I use a cooler blue color this is another new pastel and I used the cooler color why do you think I would do that well I used it on the sides that were a little bit more in shadow and here he is at this point I did you can see I kind of worked with him I missed some footage and kind of changed his face a little bit and now I'm getting in that little white highlight in his eye and a little bit of orange sorry for my big head his eye did have some orange in it as well now I couldn't do this if I didn't get my head closer so I am so sorry that you can't see this but this is the point where I decided all right it's good enough I need to move on I felt pretty good with how he looked and I needed to get to the background and a lot of times I don't even spend this much time on one part of the painting but when it's a subject matter that's an animal or a person you know you got to get those things right so let's move on to getting this lovely very impressionistic background of flowers now a lot of times flowers that are kind of this purpley color they have more blue in them than you realize and I've found a good strategy for doing those flowers is to get in the darker value first kind of the same technique that you know I talked about with a fox and I know some of these flowers are a little closer and some of them I want to give more focal interest one of the strategies for focal point is contrast and to get good contrast with these flowers I need to get some darker values in and then gradually layer my lighter values on top of them now I wanted these flowers obviously he's looking up what's he looking up at well it's it's a combination of the sky but maybe some of these flowers sticking up so I'm just kind of scumbling in the little dark areas these are just shapes you know I'm just thinking of what the general shape of these flowers will be now I even got in a little bit darker in just a couple of areas now you're going to see me this is back to real time you're going to see me gradually layer these and I work some of them look like they were a little now change my mind there they're bluer and so I'm just scumbling that just means to kind of randomly move your pastel around in these little random marks and I'm scumbling in on top of some of the darks just to get I'm using the reference image as a guide and at this point I was really having fun I really love painting landscapes with a sense of freedom I had spent so much time trying to get this fox's elements correct and him to look like a fox that the flower part was just piece of cake you know it was just so fun to just get expressive and have some freedom in painting so I did notice that some of them were more purple than than blue and I just decided to give a little color interest by varying that up a bit I think those other two pastels or the ones I've been using before were Sennelier and Terry Ludwig now this one is a lovely Sennelier from the 40 half stick set that I've mentioned at the beginning of this video I love this color I happen to love a color that is right at the cusp between purple and blue kind of a periwinkle color but look how that vibrates on top of these flowers and I kept it really light as I got down to the bottom because these flowers are a little more berry a little more in shadow I don't want to get it too light down there but look how that's just looking so beautiful with the contrast of that red fox or orangey red fox with those purples and I just really enjoyed painting these flowers so I'm going to finish this up you watch I'm going to add some music then I'll be back at the end to share a little bit more of my final touches well I really liked the stage of how loose and impressionistic the background was but if you've watched my videos long you know I fiddled with it and fiddled with it I added lots more little flowers which I'm still very happy with the final but I have lots more tiny painting tutorials on the way I hope you will subscribe if you haven't already like this video leave me a comment I love to hear what you have to say become a patron if you would like to support this channel because these videos that's how I'm able to bring them is because of the five dollar a month support from my patrons god bless you patrons god bless all of you watching and happy painting