 Hello Monet Cafe art family. This is Susan Jenkins and I'm so glad to be back from the cruise that I announced Last week that I was going on my husband's company cruise. It was awesome But as you know that if you read the announcement, I had to postpone Announcing the winner of our February painting challenge. If you're new to our group every month We have a painting challenge category where artists upload Paintings that meet that particular category criteria in the month of February. It was streams, brooks, creeks, any little flowing body of water and wow Did you guys submit some amazing work? But I had to wait until I got back to my cruise to announce the winners That I typically announced on the first of the following month, but we have two Categories that we announced winners and one is beginner one is advanced a beginner Category is basically someone who's been painting Really in any medium for less than a year even not just pastels and the reason for that is we don't want someone Who's been painting in watercolor for 20 years to still be considered a beginner and in that beginner category I'm sure that makes sense and we also have the advanced category both category winners of every month will receive a prize We currently have that going hopefully and keep it going But right now we have it through the pan pastel company each winner will get a choice of some selections of pan pastels so I'm gonna be announcing the winner. I thought this would be a neat way to do it right here I'm gonna feature some of the Advanced category paintings that I really loved. Here's here's the album. We had over 200 paintings submitted for this month's challenge and you guys know I always say this is one of the hardest things I do in life Because these are amazing But I thought I might let you join in on my process and how I do this I typically just go into the album and start going through paintings kind of Noticing what's beginner and what's advanced and then I pull out some of my favorites I don't pay any attention to the names. It doesn't matter if you've won before or not You'll just you would have to if you wanted a second time you just get some more pan pastels They allow you to choose different colors. So I'm gonna show you some of the paintings in the advanced category that I have Kind of just stood out to me as some awesome paintings. So let me go back here kind of start to the beginning I think I need to pull my screen down a little so you can see them better. Yeah. All right This is a painting. I wanted to point this one out because it it caught my eye And I noticed it was from of our faith one from one of our faithful members Angela Moffett Angela's been in our group for a while and if I think I'm correct in that she just came out of the beginner category and Into the advanced so now she's just been over a year painting And I just am just so proud of how far she's come and this is a lovely painting Angela and welcome to the advanced category nice work This painting here. It just grabbed me for its sense of light The values are spot-on with this you really get the feeling of the time of day it is it just feels like the warmth of the Sun overhead and I love the brick work here often as artists We put too many details in and we think we have to draw every brick and this is just very well done I want to see if I could make some of these a little bigger And I just love this. This is really really nice Kathy zap or zappy or zap a I hope I got that right And now this one is from Cindy Mira Kenakria, perhaps I said that right and This one don't you feel the sense of movement in the water? And I love the looseness of it. It just really draws you in You want to just kind of play around and look around at all the different movements in the water? that water fall that's to the Mitter to middle to upper left there. It has that sheerness to it just like water really behaves So nice sense of movement beautiful color palette and beautiful colors in that water beautiful work Cindy this is another one by the same artist and I loved how the water you really could feel almost like the stair step Effect of the water going down that little brook. I've seen places in the mountains of North Carolina they look just like that and Lovely sense of depth and movement and color here this one by Donatella Nimbreni I wanted to point out because it's got an excellent Rendering of loose grasses. We often as artists get in a bad habit of drawing things Almost like soldiers or or just the same You know the same stroke or the same movement and this has that looseness to the grasses the little hints of things Not even it like a broken line in some of the grasses, and it's just lovely nice color palette nice movement this one took my breath away by Donna Teresa and I just felt a sense of calm when I looked at this and Sometimes there's a painting that just really makes you just take a deep breath and wish you were there And I really felt that way with this painting. I love how there's a coolness to the foreground Notice the water in the foreground is cooler and the water in the middle to background is warmer You really get the sense that either there's a trees behind you that's making a shadow or perhaps clouds overhead and What an excellent painting. I really love this Donna nice work This one is by Jared Gunnerson and I've been admiring his work in our group for some time and he just gets better and better. I love his Impressionistic style and almost a geometric feel to this particular painting notice the tree work in the distance the very subdued geometric shapes that are just nondescript and The color palette is gorgeous Beautiful work Jared keep it up. I do believe I think you won one of our categories before It's hard for me to keep up and remember all these things, but a nice work I love this painting as soon as I saw it. This one just had a nice Easy feel to it. I think maybe this was done with an underpainting maybe a warmer underpainting I loved the looseness the bits of underpainting showing through and Just a nice easy color palette That just felt very comforting to me. This is Jennifer Richard Moreau beautiful work This one I loved it's got such a nice Impressionistic feel almost van Gogh-ish to me or perhaps Monet really actually And I don't see a lot of heavy contrast in this sometimes I have a habit of doing that a lot in my work But often I like paintings that are maybe Softer in contrast and this one is so lovely. There's looseness in those trees and And just the the cool colors in the grasses in the water there is just so nice nice reflections Kathy Chisholm Capola beautiful lovely lovely painting. This one is awesome by Linda Fabricante Cole. I love the big masses of shapes. She did she didn't get overwhelmed in Breaking everything up with detail. It's just enough and that big wide waterway that draws you in is so nice with the Loose grasses and foreground a lot of times grasses in the foreground Can create a barrier to her eyes coming in but she kept them so loose and painterly that it it's just invites you in I love the color palette in this beautiful painting Linda this one was just very well rendered quite nicely and And well done overall. This is aura brown and that water just pulls you right into those background trees I loved the rendering of these evergreen trees. You've got a real knack for that and Nice shadows. I love the very cool This is a perfect example of what we talk about a lot If you want to create depth in your painting the background the furthest trees in the back Notice how light they are in value They're cooler in color and they're paler less chroma in the background And this this ends up making this painting have a lot of depth a nice painting aura This one by Patricia Wilt is just so well rendered. I love her stroke work and especially the Like the sky holes and the warm colors and tones behind those background trees and that splash of purple The water is rendered beautifully This one just pulls you in and the color palette is just fantastic beautiful painting Patricia This one by Paul Gustafson. I believe if my memory serves me correctly. He mentioned that he struggled with this He I don't think he's been doing pastel long, but he has a Obvious experience. I think it was an oil painting and it shows He's got a nice sense of style I love the water in this one you can feel that it has a sense of movement to it and the color palette is so soft and Pleasing so whatever you're doing Paul, even if you were struggling keep it up I think you're gonna just get the totally the hang of pastel art and you already are This next one. Oh, doesn't it just have that sense of brightness? You can tell this is a super bright time of the day because of the warmth of those grasses and she kept a very Analogous Color palette here that feels very soothing. I get the feeling of that sunlight That's just hitting the tops of those trees and grasses great sense of movement in the water over all a beautiful painting Sinchita Vishwanath, I think I said that right and this is Sandy young She actually did both of these paintings look at these beauties aren't they gorgeous Sandy have such a nice soothing style I'm always I always feel at peace when I look at your work. I can tell you have a love for creation and This painting is so well rendered. I love the rocks in this You get a little sense of movement of the water the composition is beautiful Just draws you in it. Look at those lovely clouds. She has just enough there and that doesn't I really feel like a cloudy day You've seen before And she kept her values harmonious with the cloud cover. So well done Sandy this one Don't just look how gorgeous. I love the Sun and the Sun's reflection in the water You've done an excellent job at creating the rendering of the water to be believable Just pulling you right into this beautiful painting. This one just felt fresh I thought it had a nice energy to the trees in the background I like that big massive rock overhanging the water. I got a sense of its mass nice work Susan Elizabeth Clark and This one here by Toby Reed Toby. You've done a beautiful job here. The composition is gorgeous And I think this looks like a subject matter that would be difficult to paint But you've done it so beautifully with with just enough detail to Get a sense of what it is you know this Rock cliff coming off a mountain with the water that comes out of the rocks and gathers together and and Tumbles down and you've created such energy and a beautiful color palette That just makes my eye want to hang out in this painting for a while. I love the looseness to the trees You've done something that sometimes is very hard for artists to do which is To not overwork it and you've done a beautiful job on this Toby so without further ado these were some of the paintings that I I loved and Let me go back here and Give you my selection. It's so hard. Oh my gosh. These are all gorgeous my winning selection for this Painting challenge is this painting by Donna Teresa Now I wanted to give you some of the reasoning because I thought sometimes you guys might think why'd she choose that painting? Sometimes some of you say that's the one I would have chosen to But as you can see from all these paintings, that's a hard choice. So I thought I'd give you the reasoning I thought this one just had that wow factor and it felt truly like art I like when a painting gives you a feeling and an emotion I think that's the beauty of art is that we as artists can take a scene that or a something that's in real life and transform it into a feeling and that's what I got with this painting and I just got it has such a nice dreamy feel to it and just something that I would love to just look at for a very long time and and you know just maybe Read my Bible and pray and just have artwork like this just to motivate and inspire me So Donna, this is a beautiful painting You are in the company of so many beautiful paintings within the whole challenge not just these that I pulled out to look at so congratulations Donna and You will be receiving some pan pastels as an award a congratulations award And also this lovely painting will now become the header image to our Monet cafe art group on Facebook Bravo. Yay Congratulations to all of you. I am so pleased with my art family and our happy little group here in Monet cafe