 Hello my friends in Monet Cafe. This is Susan Jenkins and look at this messy piece of UART paper. What on earth am I going to do with it? This is actually going to be just a quick little, well it might not be too quick, but another example of learning with pastels and pastel supplies. This particular UART paper is one that I've used a lot. I know a lot that come on this channel have used this paper a lot. It's great for pastels, but one reason people love it so much is because it's called the workhorse paper of pastels because it is so durable. It actually can be washed off, which is what I've done with this one, and reused again. This is a small like a five by seven piece of UART paper that I actually used for a plane air experiment and I was on vacation and I wanted to do some plane air, plane air, however you say it, on location work where you're literally sitting there and painting. It was so hot that I started painting so quickly and I was like, oh this just is not working. So yes, many artists who post videos on YouTube have failures they don't share. We just share our good stuff. So anyway, I took this and just washed it off, literally put it in a sink and washed it and scrubbed some on it. Some of the softer pastels that got down in here didn't come off quite as good as some of the rest of it, but it actually is going to be kind of like an underpainting right now in itself. This messy piece of UART paper. So I've got a reference photo here that's actually from another artist's friends of mine. Hi, Billy. I asked her if I could use this for a reference photo and I haven't heard back from her yet. So if you're seeing this video, she said yes, otherwise you won't see it because I can't share something I don't get approval on, but I just loved it. It looked nice and it had a, I cropped it already to kind of fit my 5x7 format, but I thought just the kind of the busyness in the flowers would work well for just the messiness of this piece of UART paper. So what I'm going to do first is I'm going to do an underpainting. You may have seen this in some of my videos before with the Neo Color 2 water soluble wax pastels they're called. They feel literally like crayons and they're very fun. They're good for underpainting because you can just scribble and draw and then you can use your water or your alcohol to paint it in and get a nice underpainting. So I thought this might be fun just to get an underpainting in. I'm going to get kind of bright and vibrant with this one and just have some fun. So again, the main point about this is to show that you absolutely can wash a piece of UART paper and use it again. That's so nice because this stuff is expensive. All right, so here we go with an underpainting with the wax pastels. All right, so here we go with the basic sketch. I've picked, I often break these too because sometimes I like to shade things in on the sides of them and it's just easier with a small piece, but I need to use kind of a darker one of these wax pastels to get the drawing in and because obviously if it's a medium value it's not going to show up on here. So I'm just going to basically do a very loose and simple sketch before I begin laying in the wax pastels. So I'll probably speed the section up. All right, so you may not be able to see these very well, but they're really just kind of like for guidelines for where I'm going to start putting my other values with these wax pastels. And I might change the composition a little here and there. I like Karen Margolis's rule about sketching out the flower and leaving it kind of blank when you work around it if they're bigger than an inch, okay? So sometimes the little tinier ones that are going to be in these backgrounds, you don't really need to worry about drawing those in. They're more going to be marks at the end. So I got some of these bigger ones in and now I'm going to start applying the wax pastels for the underpainting. Now I've chosen these pastels, the wax pastels that I'm going to use for the underpainting and some of the reasoning for my choices are, I want to do some of the underpainting that's going to be a complementary color. There's a lot of green in the grasses of the flowers and you know, I don't want to lay down green because there's going to be no interest or variety, you know, when I put green on top of green. So that's why you pick an underpainting that is often a complementary color to green or to blue, which is going to be more in these, the reds and the oranges and the yellows. And I'll probably still add some darks after I get this underpainting in there, but that's why I'm going to use some of the reds and oranges for most of where the green grasses is. Now in this background area where obviously this is further away and behind these flowers, the flowers in this are brilliant pink. So I don't really want to put a pink background back there. So I think what I'm going to do is do maybe a combination of this lavender and this blue maybe. That would really be a nice background. Plus things that are far away are typically cooler in color. I could still do the complementary colors back here, but I think I just want to go ahead and get that distance going with the underpainting. So as you can see, all I'm doing is just kind of scumbling in between these flowers. It's weird how you think to have good art, you want to be real precise, but actually that creates art that is kind of amateur looking or too fixed. And so you learn as an artist the more you do this to get that place where it's artistic and free, yet still correct with the way flowers are and the way nature works and the way values are. So that is kind of my thinking here. And I'm hesitating because I'm looking at, this is going to have some darker, dark values that I'll lay down with pastels, but I think I'm going to get this darker kind of a greenish color. I liked the way some of the flowers in this were drooping like they had died or were dead flowers. And it gives a little personality to some of them. That's what I like about a lot of flower paintings. And I noticed that when people are just starting flowers, typically they draw all the flowers in the same way. They're all facing forward, but flowers face different ways. They almost are gestural like a ballerina or someone dancing. That would be a nice title, Dancing Flowers. So that's kind of my thinking when I start working on flowers is to give them some variety. All right, so I'm getting back here where these dark, darks are. And by the way, this is all going to look a lot darker when I wet it with the alcohol. I'm probably going to use alcohol simply because it dries faster. And that way I could work more quickly. Okay, so we've got the bluer color in the background here just working around some of these simple flowers I've drawn in, nothing too detailed. Then I've got this darker greenish, like a bluish, darkish green back here where it's even darker and a little bit of it down in here. And now I'm going to add that complementary color. I think I'm going to add this darkest red down here, working kind of around these flowers. I've just kind of drawn in the droopy ones down here. And it's okay if this kind of blends up into there. Once again, just working around these flowers. Again, I'm just using the sides of it, turning it where I need to, either vertically or horizontally. Some of this dark red in here. Again, this is another experiment for me. I seem to be doing experiments a lot lately. I like it. It's fun because you just don't know what you're going to get. It's part of the excitement. And you know, I really like some of this yellow that I have here. I know that that background is going to be, you know what, maybe I should hold off on that. Let me think here. You know what? I might go ahead and get some of these flowers. I think this will make a nice underpainting color because these flowers are that beautiful bright magenta. And I might have to be careful when I start applying the watercolor. I mean, the alcohol. I'm not using watercolor in this because I don't want those to blend too much. A little blending is okay, but I don't want to lose this beautiful underpainting effect that will happen when I put the magenta on top of these. Okay, let's see. Any more of these pinks? The other ones, like I said, they're too small. I'm not going to sketch them in. Maybe a little another pink one back here. A little hint of one anyway. Yeah, just to identify these, I might go ahead and get in where the centers of these flowers are. They do happen to be yellow. So I lost one of my flowers in here. I think it's there. And there's a couple in here. These are the ones that are these dead flowers that are drooping. Okay, so that's just kind of keeping my sketch in place. All right. Okay, so now time for the fun part. To get the alcohol, and it's just regular alcohol from a drug store, and a large and a medium-sized brush to get this underpainting painted in. I love this part because it's so exciting. All right, so now I just put a little bit of the alcohol. I have a little dish I just almost always use in here. And I don't want to do too much because you can't put it back in the jar. You don't really need a whole lot. So, you know, just a little bit in here. And that's what I'm going to use to do to paint this underpainting. And I also keep paper towels handy because I don't want to blend the colors. In some places, I don't care if they blend, but sometimes I want to be a little more careful not to get the blue onto the yellow. And so I do a lot of wiping with the paper towel. Try to keep that up here so you can see. All right, so here we go with the fun part. I might need my glasses on. Hold on. All right, I typically work top to bottom just because I like the way things run that way. And it just makes things kind of fun for me. So I'm just getting in some of these outer areas of the underpainting that I've done. Working around the flowers, but again, not being so nitpicky that it can't touch one because that's kind of... Oh, see how beautiful that is. Oh, look at that. It's like once it gets going with the alcohol, it really starts blending and just, you know, looking gorgeous. Now, you kind of see how that's combining with the red. So I didn't want to take that red back up here. So now I'll rinse off that brush. And now I've got a clean brush again to start working up here. Oh yeah, look at that. I love these drips. Oh, I just really like the way these wax pastels behave. Okay, I might try to get a little bit more in here. Yeah, look at that. It's running into a flower. You can also just kind of dab if it gets too much drips, too many drips. Okay, that was a lot. I forgot to dab it. See, I typically kind of dab the alcohol before I paint it. So I forgot to do it that time. All right, look at that. And you know, sometimes you can just get little directions, meander your brush around a little bit. And I've mentioned this in other videos. I try to use the largest brush that I can. It prevents it from looking so fixed and perfect. You want things to be painterly and loose and funny. You see how that is really looking nice and dark right in there. I like that. Forget which flower is what. Oh, look at that red. I'm liking this already. I think these under paintings, some people have said, why do you do an under painting? For me, it gets you into that loose, free spirit and it helps your paintings to emulate that. Okay, so you see now already how having all those, that messiness from the recycled UART paper doesn't really seem to matter now, because it's just getting covered up with the wax pastels. Oops, I forgot to drip my brush. And I tried to put where the part that was darker on the paper before I started. I tried to put that, turn my paper in a way so it would be where the darker colors are, values are, I should say. All right, that's, oops, see what I mean about how you want to rinse your brush, because you get that blended there. So it's, you know, doing this. If you do it a few times, you really start to get the hang of it to where you're just kind of doing it without even thinking. I'm gonna get a little bit more of this dark stuff in there. See how you can kind of grab some of the dark, move it around a little bit. I like that feeling of coming up like this way here. All right, so I have people ask all the time of, how do you choose your pastels for a painting? Well, first of all, I look at the reference photo, and then I begin to analyze it a little bit. I often pick out my darks first, because I know I'm going to get down the darks, and that's very important. So I've got a really dark, dark blue here. I've got that beautiful Terry Ludwig egg plant here, dark purple. A lot of Ludwigs in here, but I do use other pastels such as unisons and Rembrandt's, and, you know, I've got a combination of pastels in here, but I do have a lot of Terry Ludwigs. So I pick out my darks. Oh, I like this dark, like magenta, deep dark magenta color. Often this is good to lay down as the dark for the under color of a flower, and then you put the lighter on top of it. And then I just started looking at some of the colors, and I am a color enthusiast, so I punch color up quite a bit, usually. I'm not trying to match what's in the photo. I'm trying to enhance it in ways that I think would be artistically beautiful. So then I just chose some of these pinks down here that I know are going to be in those flowers, the magenta. It's really a deep magenta. It may even have, some of them even have a little bit of red in there. Actually, I'm seeing that. I need to get some of that cool red before I move forward. Then I've got a little bit of what these centers of the flowers are going to be here. It's probably going to have a little bit of this orange color in the center underneath it as well. Then I start looking at, you have to remember that flowers, depending on where they are in the scene, if they're receiving the sunlight, they're going to be bright, but you're going to have some that are more in the shadows. So you're going to get more of those neutral colors, like, you know, maybe more of some like this. They're going to be a little darker in value if they're in the shadows and a little more dead looking. So anyway, so that's a little bit with that. And then I just try to get, I know in the grasses, I've got some warm greens and different values. And I've got some cooler blue greens in here. And then I've just got a blue. There's not a whole lot of blue in this, but a blue is a good color for things in the shadows or shadows in the flowers within themselves. So that's just kind of how I start. And then sometimes I'll add a few pastels as I go along. Like right now, I think I might need to get one of those reds before I start, but I'm going to start it now. I'll have to add that as I go. So anyway, that's how we usually start. And now I'm ready to go. This should be fun. Okay, first I'm just working on getting some of these darks in. And I'm not rubbing, just so you know, I'm not rubbing super hard. I don't want to fill up the tooth too quickly. And I know I've already got some of that old pastel on there that I had washed off, but not much of it. So yes, I'm just looking at where the dark darks are. And I'm keeping the pastel kind of moving in the direction of where it would be. Working kind of around some of the flowers I have drawn in, but I'll add a little bit more definition of those as I go on. And I'm going to be careful not to darken things up too awfully much. But again, with pastel, you can work dark to light and get the lights on top. There are, even though this is the red down here for some of the greens, I still want to get down some of these darks. There's quite a bit of dark down in here too. And a little bit back in here. And it may look like, man, she's just covering all that up, but some of it is peeking through. And that complimentary underpainting will help that. All right, maybe let's see here, maybe just a little bit more in here. Okay, so we've got some of those darks in now. Now let me see. I want to get a little bit more variety with some of the darks. I've got, that was the dark eggplant. Now I've got some of this darker blue. I may add some of that down in here. It's kind of almost like a deep blue-purply dark, just for some variety, so it's interesting. And I'm going to add greens on top of this. But again, I'm just letting little things peek through here. And this has got some darker back in here, but I don't want to overdo it with this because I like that, that blue that I've got going. All right, so as someone stated on my Monet Café group for Facebook, it's like, she said, it's amazing that it starts out like a big blob and then it turns into something. That's what I always think too. And I know we all are worst critics, but sometimes we doubt ourselves. It's like, is this going to come out right? And you just keep working with it and fiddling at it and following the rules that you've learned over time and it gets better. Okay, so let's see here now. I really like, back in here, I think I'm just going to establish that. I kind of like to get my values a little set in place. Look at this here. I'm actually going to break this one here, make it a little smaller. I do that often. I forgot to put my paper that I usually put on here. This is just the back of an old drawing pad. And often I put paper down to clean my pastels off. Okay, I want to keep a little bit of that blue showing through back there and lighten it up a tad. How dark is that? Oh yeah, that's lighter in there. So I'm just going to kind of lighten it up because there's still some tangles of weeds and flower stems and things growing back in there. But they're not going to be real obvious because they're further away. It's more of just an idea of it instead of specific. Okay, so now we've got a little bit of that going back in there. All right, I'm squinting my eyes. I do that a lot. All right, now I'm going to go ahead and start getting in some of these cooler greens down in here before I lay down the warmer greens. I need to go ahead and start getting some of these flowers in before I get too fussy with this. These are some cooler shadows. Anything in a shadow is going to be cooler. And sometimes not as vibrant or bold as other colors. Okay, I'm going to have some of those greens, brighter greens on top of some of these down in here. Right, I'm going to just be quiet and paint a little while so I can focus.