 Welcome to Monet Cafe. I'm artist Susan Jenkins. Come on in the studio with me and today we're still painting wintery scenes. In this lesson, you'll see me work with oil paint and pastel. By the way, this is a real-time tutorial and I loved what I discovered working on pastel matte with another yes oil wash. I used oil paint to do a wash or a loose underpainting of sorts. Let it dry and then apply pastels. And I even added snow with a technique a little bit different than the last couple of videos I've done adding snow. So get ready for an action-packed full of information tutorial and we're going to paint this beautiful scene that is from unsplash.com. I love this site for copyright-free reference images. Grant Lemons, thank you for this lovely photo. Oh and if you haven't subscribed to this channel, I hope you will and click the bell icon to be notified of future videos. I began the process with a simple sketch on my pastel matte and I believe my proportions were square. I've been really liking a square format lately and as always if you're a patron of mine on my Patreon page, you always get my cropped reference image and typically my color notes, my color guide. I think I missed doing that for this particular video but one of the main points of this video is teaching about this oil underpainting wash technique. But you know me you're going to get lots more information. Somebody made a comment recently said wow you talk a lot and I thought that's the point of an instructional video right? But you can always turn the volume down. All right so all I'm doing here is I'm using a new pastel made by Prismacolor. It's spelt in you pastel not any W. I love these they come in multiple sets of different quantities and I like them because they're nice for sketching and they don't take up a lot of tooth of the paper because they're a little bit harder than most of your soft pastels. Now I want to talk a little bit about this pastel matte surface. It is awesome. I often buy the colored sheets. They come in various sets or pads with different colors and I like those because I don't usually like working on white. Well when I do use white it's because I'm going to do an underpainting either with watercolor or in this case the oil painting and I like a white surface to be able to do this with and so it's nice that it comes in a white surface. Now one thing I love about the pastel matte is it's not super gritty. If you've worked or learned a little bit about pastel painting you know that sanded surface often get a lot of praise because the sandiness of the surface is what allows you to get a lot of layers down and the layering is what gives that vibrancy of color and color interactions but if you work on unsanded surfaces your paintings can end up being a little bit flat. Not to say you can't work on unsanded surfaces. I often do and you can still get some really good results but the neat thing again about the pastel matte is that it's not super gritty. Some people have a hard time with all the texture of some of the professional sanded surfaces. Now the sketch was super simple but that's all I need and now I will be using these Arteza oil paints. You can use whatever oil paints you have. This is a set they sent me to do an instructional video and it has some of these standard colors that you would get with oil paints and this is the product I'll be using to I guess you could say dilute the oil paints. Someone told me recently it doesn't become paint until you add a vehicle like this. This is odorless mineral spirits made by Gamblin. It's called Gamsol and I really liked using this with the oil paints. I had never used it before. I actually had only used water soluble oil paints before so if you're a little funny with chemicals this is odorless but someone warned me be careful make sure you do have ventilation when you use this stuff. And whenever I use oil and often acrylic I love this gray matters paper palette. It's made by Jack Richardson. It's a little waxy so you can mix your colors on it very nicely and the neutral color the gray is awesome. And here I'm showing actually putting the color onto the gray matters palette. I don't use all these colors I put down. I kind of just wanted to show some of them and I do end up making my own greens though. Notice I didn't put any green down. I like mixing my greens rather than a pre-made green. So you're going to see me do that in this video. And aren't these pretty? I just love how the colors look on the gray matters palette here. You know if you're an artist you're just a color freak like me I'm sure. Now the brush that I used is a round number 12 brush and you can use whatever you have. I typically like to use a brush that's a little larger and this particular footage is from the previous video where I used the oil paints and I'm including it here just so you can once again if you didn't see that video see kind of my process. I put the gamsol in a dish and I use it to mix the colors and I'm thinning it out quite a bit so that this will dry quickly. As I said that footage was from a previous painting but I wanted to show I simply save my colors by putting a piece of like saran wrap on the top and you also can put this in your freezer. It helps to keep the colors fresh for the next time you pull them out. If you're thrifty like me you like to save everything you can. So now I've superimposed my footage in the upper right corner for you to see me actually mixing some of these colors and using my gamsol product as I mentioned before thin it out a decent amount. I'm not putting thick oil paint on. I'm putting thin layers of color because of the gamsol product because I want it to dry quickly. Oil paint is known for drying pretty slow so the thin layers will ensure that it will dry in a way that I can apply pastels pretty quickly afterwards and I do shoot it with a blow dryer that definitely helps it to dry. You can kind of see here how thin it is. You can still even see a little bit of the paper showing through. The point of this is to get a loose underpainting like many of my lessons where I will give a demonstration of an underpainting. The point to me of an underpainting is to give a base of a loose beginning with some beautiful color. In this case this is what's called local color. It means it's more local to the scene. It's more true to what I see in the image. Of course you know me I'm always what I call punching up color. This is definitely more dynamic but we know the trees are going to be more green and there's some blue in the shadows. The snow is going to be more white or gray or purple whatever. I'm not doing what I often do which is called a complementary underpainting where I give some sort of red or gold or pink even and I have some of those coming up by the way. But the point again underpainting is to get some fresh beautiful color down and a value study. I'm giving myself a roadmap of the correct values or close to the correct values before I even get started applying the pastels and again it's just a painterly feel and that's what I really love about a nice loose artistic underpainting. I really enjoyed this technique so much that I will definitely do more oil washes as I'm calling them as under paintings. It was really a lot of fun and I wanted to give a little tip here with evergreen trees the leaves kind of zigzag almost like a little z pattern whether you're painting them in oil or pastel and I do give a little bit more of that impression when I get to the pastel and in the future I'll go even more loose with this. I was still kind of learning it as I was working but I will probably even get it more diluted and let some colors even drip and blend into each other and that definitely will help with the feeling of impressionism. I'm jumping ahead just a little bit here to show you some of the colors that I'm using for trees that are behind other trees. I love to give cooler tones when something is more in shadow or behind something else typically with a situation like this the values will get a little darker you know if it's in shadow and also they'll get cooler in color temperature blues and purples and even if you don't see them in the scene that way you don't see blues or teals or purples as long as we use the rules that are inherent to nature we can exaggerate and I love to share that because that's one of the questions I get all the time is someone saying how did you know to put purple there well I know that in the shadow things can cool off so I will use blues or purples and shadows even in the snow even when something you think your brain tells you it's white you can give it more color following the simple rules in some of my videos I have actually a layout a guide as to how color and value behaves in a landscape scene and it's just a neat little simplification of the rules of value and color in a landscape painting and it makes it really easy and that's what I like to do for you guys so if you're on my patreon page I'll try to include that guide in this video once again if you're a patron you get extra goodies and I can give you more content and often you get extra footage too as well plus you guys are awesome I get to see your work it's really cool and I'm speeding this up a bit now so we can actually get to the pastel painting but I wanted to show you with the background trees they also follow the rules I was talking about with landscape painting which is values typically get lighter in the distance so think of it as layers darkest values in the foreground especially for perpendicular items to the land like trees you know things upright and they will have a layering of gradually just getting lighter as things recede into the distance and for this I basically just thinned out the oil paint even more and you can see here how I'm just kind of giving those little zigzaggy marks also things in the distance get less detail they get a little fuzzier too they're a little more out of focus and if you accentuate these things you can create a painting that is more painterly and often isn't really what you see in the photo photos have a tendency to try to focus everything so you have the opportunity as an artist to break out your artistic license exaggerate some of the colors based on the rules how they work and also get creative with where the focal point is and as the artist you have the ability to bring your viewer into what you saw or what you see as beautiful in the scene I have another video I believe it's called five ways to create a focal point and I'll tell you what I learn from creating my videos often it's a subject that I'm exploring even more and as always say I bring you guys along with me with my learning and that video was eye opening for me as well as I explored focal point and what creates strong focal point in art and for the sky here you can see I've created what I would call like a periwinkle blue little purple blue color and I typically according to the rules of how nature behaves I usually have the upper heavens a little darker in value just a tad it is a sky after all gradually getting a little lighter as it gets down towards the horizon line I'm using some of the same for the snow lightning it up a bit the snow is pretty light but there are going to be areas of shadow and you can see how much I've thinned this out and by the the sheen on the paper here you can see where the trees are I've created a nice purple to go underneath the trees for a shadow I'm sorry for my little thing in my bun of hair sticking out I didn't quite wrap it up enough so it looks kind of weird right there so hopefully this little presentation of showing you how I created this oil wash on the pastel mat will help you if you want to do it and you can do it on any water friendly surface I could do this on my Fisher 400 that I often use which is almost just like you art 400 sanded paper but Fisher 400 doesn't curl I've been buying that a lot lately and if you saw my last video on using oil and pastels together that was the one where I missed the footage this particular type of footage where I was applying the oil paint first and I said I've got another video coming where you'll see the process this is that video and on that one I actually used the oil wash technique on a paper that was not sanded I put clear gesso down which you see in the background that white bottle to the right over there I put clear gesso down to get a little grit to the unsanded surface and then I applied the oil wash on top of that so you can even do this on unsanded surfaces as long as they're water friendly as well if you're hearing some rumbling in the background we're having a wonderful thunderstorm going on as I'm creating this tutorial or the the voiceover for the tutorial and it's just real cozy I got my coffee and it's awesome alright so there you have it and as I mentioned before I'm going to do this even more loosely in the future but I've got my values in my colors in here's the big aftermath mess and here's where I was shooting it with the blow dryer for getting about my head getting in the way so now we can start putting pastel down the pastel set that I used for this is the Sennelier it's a French company Paris collection I used this set I believe exclusively for this painting I love the set it is on sale at the making of this video anyway on amazon I have an amazon shop I'll put a link in the description of this video where it'll take you right to it it's a great sale if you're brand new experimenting with pastels I know some of these sets can get expensive I do have a little suggestion list in my amazon shop for pastels and papers I recommend if you're just getting started this portion is real time but I'm going to speed it up in just a bit to make the video size a bit more manageable and not boring for you guys to watch and add some lovely music since according to some I talk a lot you guys feel free to comment too and let me know your thoughts because that's how Monet cafe has become what it is I listen to you guys I love reading your comments reading your suggestions and I take criticism well because I certainly don't know it all and have never known it all that's why I have had to research so much about learning how to do all of this if some of you don't know I was not a professionally trained artist I did major in graphic design had very few little art classes which I loved and I had to learn all the rest after getting my kids a little bit bigger I kind of fell into the medium of pastels because of how user-friendly they are they don't dry up you can walk away they still just sit there there's no color mixing or other chemicals involved so it there are so many advantages that I found to soft pastels but back in the stone age when I was learning not that old but they did I didn't even have YouTube videos to watch so I had to search around a lot I learned a lot on a site that was called wet canvas dot com even though pastels are typically wet it had a pastel forum a soft pastel forum so I asked a lot of questions I read a lot I looked a lot and I started learning and experimenting and I thought you know what when I learned things I happened to like videography too in case you haven't noticed I thought I'm going to videotape and bring everybody along with me on my learning explorations and experiments like I do all the time so that's kind of the history and the birth of Monet cafe so again I love your feedback and that's how the channel has become what it is all right so now you can see I've been developing what I mentioned before about a focal point notice the the main tree that's kind of to the left there I would consider that the main focal point these trees I just worked on there are a bit more just a leadway into the painting and they they're going to have darker values because of two things one I want them to be focal point and when you have contrast dark values next to light values your eye automatically goes there and two they're in the foreground they're going to be a little darker in value than things in the distance and in pastels we typically work dark to light as we develop a subject matter and with trees you typically lay your darker values down first and then you gradually layer the the top layers think of it as building a tree from the trunk out and so that's how I typically work and most pastel artists typically work it depends on the subject matter your painting of course so now like I said I'm adding some of those leaves and needles I should call them in this case where I feel like the sun might just be hitting them I'm not going for my lightest value yet I'm working my my middle value green and the Sennelier Paris collection has some beautiful foresty color greens I really love this set and I can and have often completed full paintings using this set alone which I do in this case I believe I don't think I use another set at all or any other pastels so I am using the reference image to a degree to as a guide to get an idea of shapes and values for this but I'm not using it as something that's set in stone I just get creative and sometimes I think am I am I being a little too messy with this and maybe a little too haphazard but it gets refined a little bit more along the way it's better to work loose and then tighten things up in just the areas that are your focal point all right so I believe this is still that foresty green and then I'm going to add a little bit of a lighter green now I am going to add the music but pay attention to how values are going to decrease they're going to get lighter as things go in the distance but those background trees I am going to give them more color and I'm going to make this more interesting by giving them more purples and teals and some blues way in the distance there I'm going to be adding some pretty colors in the snow some blues and even kind of a pinkish lavender color in the snow so enjoy this and then at the very end I'm even going to add some snow you know if you've watched a few videos before this we've been on the winter theme this month in December and I've had a couple of videos where I've shared how I create snow and in this video I do the same but I use a little bit of a different technique also if you happen to be watching this video near its creation I have a December promotion for my Patreon page I've been trying to grow my Patreon page and I've been very blessed that so many beautiful people have chosen to support this channel which keeps these free videos coming but in December if you become a patron you will be entered in a chance to win two original paintings that I created this month and as long as you're still a patron on January 1st so you become a patron in December I'll have the drawing on January 1st and that'll be fun for me to announce the winner and also every patron of mine on January 1st will receive my free 2022 digital art calendar and it is digital I mean you have to print it out or you can use it however you want but it has many of my original paintings from this past year with some inspirational scripture enjoy the rest of this to this lovely song angels we have heard on high by the way this will be uploaded right around Christmas time 2021 and also to be sure to stay to the end because I'm going to show you my snow technique and it's a little different than the last tutorial I did of the snowman and most of this if you've noticed has been real time I'm going to speed up a little bit in just a few minutes but for the most part I think you can follow along with this if you're one of my patrons I can't wait to see what you do I'd love to see your work in our homework album and our other sharing platforms and if you're not a patron and you'd like to share from this tutorial be sure to tag me on Instagram and follow me on Instagram at Susan Jenkins artist all right I'm really going to be quiet now and I'll see you at the end where we make some snow I really felt a sense of peace while painting this I hope you did while watching it and here I took a coffee break said hey to Bob Ross and I've laid my painting flat for the snow creation the pastels you see to my left there are the mount vision iridescent pastels this was an experiment I wondered how iridescent pastels would look as snow often I clean my pastels with a piece of tissue paper as you're seeing there I wanted them to be nice and fresh sometimes I'll even add other colors for the snow and in this case I think I just used the white now I also have my cheese graders two different size one's more of a zester and another one is larger for cheese I'm going to be using a candle now this is just a good smelling round candle but I'm using it because of the round side you can use a rolling pin or a wine bottle whatever so this was the technique that I used in the snowman tutorial where I just grate a little bit of the snow with the cheese grater I find that this mount vision pastel though or I found it really was very fine little crumbles so to get some of the bigger flakes of snow I wanted some variety of the sizes I chose to use my exacto blade I have done this before and it works fairly well but I chunked off a few pieces that were larger and you can actually customize this if you want to play some in certain areas but this way you can get some larger pieces of snow right now you're just seeing me kind of scrape it above you can't see my hands but I was just scraping off little bits of the pastel and I even split some of them while on the canvas or not the canvas I've been oil painting on this I feel like it's a canvas on the surface and here you can see how I'm kind of just scraping and moving it around to get snow in various places for this painting and once you've gotten your snow in place then you simply get a piece of tracing paper I had used this for my other snow creation so I'm wiping it off and I just lay it down it's a good idea to tape your surface I did not do that here and I'm going to share with you also something I learned okay you know how parents sometimes say do as I do not as I do as I say not as I do well I you might even can see it here kind of when I pushed really hard with this something about the really soft pastels and the pastel matte almost made it a little bit too blurry so I decided to now I'm just kind of trying to soften some of the edges here but I decided to go back and refine some of the painting again it seemed to blur it out I might look okay on the screen here but I added a little more pastel even over some of the snow and then I went back with a little bit of a harder pastel I believe it was a Rembrandt and it didn't smush out quite so much and looks so fuzzy it gave me more of crisp snow rather than fuzzy out of focus snow but it depends on the technique or the outcome you're looking for even added some more of that pretty teal color in the background so here's the final I'll show you the whole image in a second and you can see how I brightened it up but now you can see the snow a little more crisp and fresh I hope you guys liked this tutorial I hope you learned a lot I hope most of all you have a merry Christmas full of love and blessings as we celebrate the birth of our Lord Jesus Christ all right guys happy painting