 Hello artistic visitors and subscribers. I'm artist Susan Jenkins and welcome to my YouTube channel. I call Monet Cafe. Today's lesson will be on painting dark to light. I'm calling it darkness to light for some symbolic reasons too. Many of you know I'm with my mom right now during her cancer treatments and I truly believe we are moving from darkness to light. The album here I thought was interesting. It's called The Healing and I just thought the music was beautiful. I often add verses to my paintings and this one was just perfect. A rise shine for your light has come. Alright let's learn how to paint these pastel techniques. For this painting I'm using a piece of Sennelier pastel card. It's called La Carte pastel card and it comes in these pads which I love. Different size pads. This one I think is my smaller one. They do make a larger one and within the pad there are multiple colors to choose from. Just so you know pastel card is pretty coarse and so I love it because it helps to keep me very loose and impressionistic. However keep in mind that it is not a water friendly surface so I never add water to this. Now I've chosen actually my mom I allowed her to pick a reference photo out of many that I have. She chose this and I'm just showing you here how I have a little technique where I can make my painting equal proportions to my reference photo. Here are the pastels I've chosen. Just some nice bright especially some reds. I've got a good combination of cooler and warmer reds for those poppies which I'll talk about more as I paint. I wanted to quickly mention here if you're interested in finding more of my videos this is just go to my videos on my channel and you see I have I have close to 170 videos on pastel painting but if you look specifically in this little area I'm pointing out here called playlists. If you click that that's where I have organized my videos by different topics for example you can see the first one's drawing lessons on a budget color value and composition. Now I'm going to focus on this one here because if you want to know more about warm versus cool colors or just a little bit more about the color wheel this is the place you should go. That's a little ad playing on the side but over to the right-hand side you'll see all of the lessons that I've put in this playlist. That one right there soft pastel organization and color lesson is a good one and I'm scrolling down to another one right there. What's the difference between warm versus cool colors? So that's just a quick thing I wanted to show you guys so you can know how to navigate and perhaps find more videos of things that you're looking to learn. Okay back to the lesson. Now once again the topic or focus of this particular tutorial well I'll talk about a lot of things but the focus is mostly about painting dark to light. It was interesting because during this well let me add right here I'm just using a actually a very small new pastel that is in you pastel it's a brand of pastel made by Prismacolor I think it's Prismacolor that is a little bit harder. They're really great for sketching in your underpainting. Again in this case I am using all pastels rather than any kind of wet medium for an underpainting which is something I do a lot if you've seen my past videos so I always give you lots of options of how to paint. So this one is just using pastels and again focusing on dark to light. That's how we work with pastels I'll be talking about that more but back to my point my parents were literally at one point at the beginning phases here sitting right behind me on a sofa that's right behind me in their basement while I'm there with them during my mom's treatments and I think we're all enjoying being together and I do think they really loved watching my creative process here. They've known I've been artistic since a child and I think it was kind of neat for them to watch me paint as an adult and it was just a beautiful moment together but I noticed that my mom and my dad both mentioned about the fact that I start very dark. You'll see as I'm doing this underpainting I actually I got a darker pastel now and the darkest dark if you look in the reference photo above the darkest dark is that tree. Now that's an obvious dark but my mom was kind of wondering why you'll see in a minute how I go in and I add a darker color with different pressure. I don't go as dark as this tree but over a lot of the painting she was like I'm just fascinated that you put that dark color down first because it's our tendency especially if you're a new artist to look at those greens in the field for example and just put green down with nothing underneath it. Now you see what I'm doing here I'm adding that dark and I'm actually making somewhat of a subtle trail the reason I'm doing this most of it will get covered up but the little bit of darkness does kind of peek through and it gives a subtle lead into the painting that just leads your eye in and back it makes a much more pleasing composition than if I just had a flat surface of poppies right there on the front so that's why I put that down. Now I am adding lighter pressure but believe it or not even though those mountains look like a kind of a medium value blue it actually is better to go ahead and put some dark down first before you add that color and you'll see I even put more dark down later. Now I'm kind of playing with colors in this tree I've realized that blue I had was a little bit too light but it's going to give a lot more interest if I use multiple darks in in my dark areas it gives because that's how it really works in life things aren't just one flat color our brains often perceive that but there's lots of colors playing with each other in nature for example like that tree photography often help or causes us unfortunately to paint very flat colors but in life our real eyes are always the best that's why plein air painting painting on location is always best because your eyes can really see the color that's there but again look at how I'm taking this mountain and right now what you see that I've painted is a lot darker than the mountain in the reference photo right can you see that and the reason is because when we add a dark base it gives the light something to contrast the lighter values or the medium values and you're going to basically have a much richer and fuller end result than if you just use the one color or a couple of colors so I know it's often confusing as why we put dark down first and you don't always have to put dark down first I mean there are different ways this can be done but it is a good general rule in pastels to work dark to light and because it's really hard to get those darks back again if you add them at the end it's just so much better to add your lightest lights on top now the color that I'm using here is more of an earthy color what does grass grow on dirt right the earth is what produces the grasses and the trees and everything so we do have some kind of a rich usually earthy tone underneath those grasses and again that's in art that is actually a compliment or complimentary color to green reds and oranges and yellows that side of the color wheel color wheel is a compliment to green so they just really work well together now you can see I added that blue little bit of a lighter blue on top of the darker now this is what I call a color note I'm reminding myself that I want to make a little bit of distant mountains or trees whatever those are in the distance that I had that little teal color a little bit too light but later I darken it up now I want some fun and variety of color in my sky so I'm not just going to do blue if you look at the reference photo you could pick like a medium value blue and just paint the sky blue and that would result in a sky that's very flat and kind of boring so I like to sometimes notice the first color put down was a purple and now I've got more of a blue color and I'm just kind of taking my blue there I can see in the photo a little bit more than you can see here in this video where there is some lighter and darker in the sky typically the lighter values of the sky are towards the horizon or like behind the trees but not up in the heavens usually it gets darker up as you go up into the sky but just keep that as a general rule of thumb and just something to keep in mind so now you can see here how I have used this color that I'm using here is a lighter value but it's also a little bit more in the purple family or the warmer blue you might call it and if you have a problem with color temperature or just you still confuses you I do have quite a few videos where I talk about the color wheel and color temperature and what it means when you talk about a cool green versus a warm green cool blue warm blue cool red warm red you think how can that be but hopefully that video will help you out a few I do have let me add here notice how I'm adding a little bit of a teal okay that would be a warmer blue okay on top of that mountain or tree base that I have there and these things can be subtle again it looks like it's a mountain in the reference photo but by the end of the painting you're not really sure are these mountains are they trees but that's actually good because that's not the central focus of the painting you really want it to be those poppies and then for it to draw your eye in around the painting and now I'm adding a little bit more of that teal to the landscape in the back and the reason I'm doing that is because in the distance colors cool off in temperature they're not as warm so that dirt that I added in the front I don't really need that warm dirt in the back there so I'm giving it more of a teal color and I will add some a little bit of greens lighter value greens in the distance but they'll not be on top of a warm color that may sound like a lot but it does get better the more you do this the better it gets so as I paint here just a little bit more a couple more minutes you'll see this is pretty much the foundation for the painting I've got in the basic big shapes you know I'm always talking about work big to small less detail to more detail also notice too like that mountain in the distance and even that path nothing has a hard or a sharp edge remember we're not drawing we're painting and that's something that I believe I have another video on it with lost edges it's called things if people often ask how do I get a more painterly look well lost edges is a way to do that to where there's no direct line dividing things it's more of an edge that is an illusion of an edge between value and between color so it's not all that hard some of these things sound complicated but they're they're really the more you do it the easier they get now is the point where I do have my base and now I'm starting to add some of the lighter values on top of the darker values know how I mentioned before I put a more of a teal dirt color in the background because it's far away colors cool off in the distance it gives that illusion of those grasses being further away whereas the greens that I'm now going to add on top of the dirt color things get warmer as they come to the foreground I'm adding my greens on top of that warmer dirt color and also as I progress in this video you'll see I kind of keep my dark area almost like there's a shadow underneath that tree I know it doesn't look that way in the photo but I make my darker area down towards the lower left I keep most of my values darker in that area and then gradually get them lighter I keep them darker and cooler down towards the bottom left I just decided I wanted that to be more like a shadow and coolness and that's kind of the entry point that I have in my mind imagination of someone coming into the painting at about that point so I'm going to speed this up just a bit but stay tuned because I've got a couple of other points I've I've gotten pretty much you know my point across about working dark to light which is the focus of this video but I do have a couple of other little things I want to point out so enjoy the music as I speed this up a bit and stay tuned for some more commentary at this point you can see that I've pretty much got my not just my darks and general base or foundation I've added a little more color trying to get even this is kind of I would call it my second layer foundation and on top of these colors is when I'm going to start adding the flowers I'm putting the flowers on more towards the end because they are they're more like icing on the cake in this particular painting when flowers are smaller they can usually be added more towards the end you don't want them to look like they're pasted on the top or floating on the top so you can add grasses and things later to bury them a bit but I typically don't have to do the flowers at the beginning because they're small if you have larger flowers it's a good idea to kind of go ahead and get in some of the flower shapes that are larger early on so I just wanted to explain that that's why I've got my grass I've got my dirt my earth I've got my my values getting correct here and I've got some of my grass colors and now I'm kind of especially in the background there I'm kind of glazing some of those flowers in the back now the way things work perspective is of course we know things are larger if they're close to us and smaller when they're far away but also in nature and landscapes typically things are more vertical when they're close to us and they kind of flatten out to more horizontal in the background for example if you're imagine laying down in a field of grass and your head's kind of just prop your head up on your on your hands looking at it the grass is right in front of you you would see the vertical blades of grass going up and down but as you look in the distance you can't see those anymore all of a sudden the grass has become more of bands horizontal bands in the distance so that's going to be a way that you can create that illusion of distance now i'm working a little bit more on color temperature my green there i'm using is a cooler green again if you're not sure what those terms mean at about it's it's about a minute 30 or two minutes into this particular videos where i show where you can find that playlist and cooler colors will make your eye or your brain believe that things are further away not that you can't have cooler colors in the foreground but that's a general artistic rule now i'm just kind of creating little again little notes for myself about how things are positioned and the direction of things i want to where i want these flowers to be kind of the motion and that's something to keep in mind too even though in the particular reference photo i'm using here it's more of a just some poppies really kind of like right along the middle maybe middle to lower is all the red is right like in a band right across i wanted my poppies to have more energy and movement pulling the eye back into the painting and that's what we have this artistic license that we can do this once you learn a few simple rules you may say hey that that kind of looks a little boring with them right across another photographer did a great job that just happened to be how the flowers were growing so um you can actually make a more beautiful composition by just getting some of these basic rules of composition and understanding how what makes a more beautiful painting so now i'm using an even lighter kind of a cooler green that i'm making a few little bands these are going to be grass bands that are kind of going in the distance and as i as things go in the distance they don't only cool in temperature they get lighter in value now this is a much better i'm so glad i finally zoomed in on this you can see a lot better what i'm doing here so now you can see see in my grasses that i know i'm working on the sky here again lighter values towards the horizon or towards a tree line can you see that and also you see that loose edge that called lost edges see how my trees or mountains don't really have a line in between the sky that gives that painterly look again what i was saying about the grass is you can see now that your close up that i've given some direction to the grass is growing trying to lead that eye and also notice i'm not getting too fussy or detailed anywhere in the painting yet that's another huge rule and tip that i give whenever anybody asked me how do i get more painterly how do i get looser that more impressionistic feel is huge big of course i said already big shapes first just large shapes and then don't get too fussy or too detailed too quick work all over your painting and that's really going to help with that all right i'm going to paint a little while longer and i'll pop back in with more commentary here i wanted to mention to take notice of how i'm using more of a blue a teal i guess i would say it's a it's a cooler green and the reason i'm using that is because down deep in those grasses even though in the photo we see mostly green i get questions all the time one of my most popular questions i get is how do i deviate from the color that i see in the photograph to make my painting more interesting and one of them one of the things you can do is just kind of learn the rules of nature and again i'm using cooler temperatures where there are more shadows and so i know in now i'm working in the tree now but i know that deep down in those grasses there are going to be some cooler more shadowy colors so i'm kind of making that apparent by my color choices and my value choices that i use now i'm going to go ahead and keep this sped up a bit for the remainder of the painting but try to take notice again look at in the already look at where i've added kind of those blues as they kind of cascade and meander into the distance it's pulling your eye back into the background and then i will i'll keep this going with the music but then i i'm going to come back in when i add some commentary about more of the the poppies that i add on top notice how i've been adding some purples also another color you don't see in the photograph that much but down in particular roots of the where the flowers are growing up from that does that creates more depth and also notice how i've got a general mass of poppies and now i'm adding my lighter red values on top and in some places cooler values of red or cooler colors of red and again that's back to the point of this video i have been working dark to light even with the flowers even with sometimes white flowers especially if they're large white flowers we usually put down a darker color before we add the white so now notice how now is the icing on the cake now are coming those lightest values that are going to just make those poppies pop no pun intended but now it's almost like they're the ones that are up closest to where the sun might just be hitting on those tops of those poppies and that is just a way to make it more believable more interesting and also by the way when we add layers the final layers if you have quite a few layers often using softer pastels are going to be the ones that really allow you to get that color down for it to still look fresh and crisp and the ones that i'm using now especially the brightest reds that i'm putting on top the lightest value are i think that one is a senelier pastel which i happened to absolutely love on senelier paper they just work so well but sometimes the terry Ludwig's and i'm also trying here even though there are some lighter flowers that i'm putting down on the lower left i'm being careful not to brighten them too much i want that eye not to get stuck right at the beginning with too much detail of those poppies i want to lead it in i like i can't remember which artist says to keep an impressionistic feel and a pretty pleasing composition you want to keep your edges almost imagine like an oval going around the outside edges of your painting you want to keep your edges blurry if i got so much detail right at the entry part the lower part of the painting there as your eye comes in you kind of get stuck on all that detail so keep it very subtle to allow the eye to enter now i'm just doing some general lightening up the clouds adding a little bit more purple you see how from where i started this painting look how many colors i've put in that distant mountain started out with very darks and then i got some deeper blues then i added some more medium values then some purples and some teals and and all of that helps to push that back when i added those lighter values and make it just a more interesting color treat for your eyes again keep in mind i'm keeping cooler values down in that lower left corner i'm imagining that tree like has a little bit of a shadow there and now i'm kind of adding a little hints of stems on the flowers i don't want too many again i don't want to distract from the eye entering into the painting and really the only places you're going to see the stems is right at the beginning at right at the entry way into this painting because as things progress in the distance you don't see the stems anymore they all of a sudden get blurry and buried deep down into the grasses now i'm also too adding instead of just stems everywhere i'm taking the side of my pastel and kind of glazing it to kind of simulate or emulate grass is growing in there without adding every single stem and every single blade of grass otherwise that would get monotonous and boring again i my focus usually or my love is more impressionistic artwork so a lot of times that's what my lessons are kind of on so again now look here how i'm adding the horizontal bands of grass in the distance it's giving that illusion of distance and giving the eye something to draw it back and to have a little bit more interest interest in the distance all right so i'm going to conclude this video here and come in at the end with just some more comments all right guys enjoy okay so i'm wrapping up the painting at this point getting close to done and just so you know the video this video is probably going to be about 40 minutes but the actual painting took just under an hour i think maybe right at an hour and i took my camera and decided to zoom in a bit so you could see a little bit more of the detail and also notice where i snuck in those bits of blue and purple to add some interest which will hopefully help to answer the question a lot of you have had which i mentioned about how to veer away from the reference photo and give a little more life and color to your painting so i hope you guys enjoyed this once again here's that beautiful verse arise shine for your light has come and the glory of the lord has risen upon you that's from the book of isaiah now you guys i know i have many of you who've become my patrons on my patreon page that's listed right there i want to say a great big thank you i am so grateful to your support right now you know i'm going to be adding more to my patreon page when i return to my home studio and again thank you you have blessed me so much by your support all right guys i hope you enjoyed this and learned something happy painting