 Hello my Monet cafe family. I am so excited to be here on my own property after so much that we've been through and I've got my French easel here just set up on our land and what a perfect place the weather is good to do a little plein air painting. It's a French word that just means on location. I haven't gotten to do a lot of that because of life and I know a lot of you guys relate to that. Things get in the way like family which is worth it. Illnesses, work, so many things that I know you guys understand. I think that's what makes our channel and Facebook groups so special is because we're real. We talk about the real things of life and we relate to each other like that. So I'm going to go over a little bit about how to set up to do a painting like this. Plain air painting is a lot of work but once you get your system down it becomes easier. The first few times is really hard and I need to do a lot more of it myself. I've got a real advantage here now because my property is really so beautiful. Thank you Lord. Praise God. And so I'm going to get started and I'm going to go through some of the things that I have here that might help you to learn about plein air painting. Alright let's go Jackson. One more time. Now let me just explain a little bit about my setup and why I have certain things the way I do. This is a French easel. There are all kinds of different methods. This is actually not the best easel to do painting on location. It takes a little bit more to set up. It's just the one I have. There are better ways to do it. Just quicker, easier setup ways to do it. But one day I want to show just how to how to actually put up a French easel because I know we've got a lot of beginners on here and it's a little trick to actually put it together. Hey Jackson. So but I'm not going to do that in this video. So here it is and I've actually got my little appetizer tray. Some of you guys are familiar with that from other videos that I've done where I actually discovered that it makes an awesome and affordable way to have your pastels. To have a palette of your pastels. It's because it emulates the color wheel and that's just so beneficial to creating good art. Now having some water is important with you. Having things like I had on a hat when you saw me. It's not that sunny where I am now but you never know and sometimes there's bugs, there's wind, there's all kinds of issues that if you've done any of that kind of painting you know exactly what I'm talking about. Now I've got my little setup. You want to be as prepared as possible too. I have my little setup here where I have a board already. Pardon this board that looks sort of like Frankenstein with all of the tape around it. I had some of my pastel papers that I had left over from the flood that are a little bit worked from so much humidity so I'm having to tape them down a lot but this is a piece of color fix pastel paper and this was a packet that came in all these different colors. Now I noticed something interesting that some of you who've used this product may notice is that some of the colors have more of a sanded surface than others. For example this creamy yellowy one has more grit to it than the the blue in this packet and then the the white. I think this one the soft umber had a little bit more grit to maybe the black but I know that that's interesting. I don't know if it was just my packet or whatever it was. Another thing is having some sort of things to wipe your hands off with. I also have a wet rag that I don't have in this picture and this is actually a quick little way. If you have any mats or anything with you sometimes the painting on location could be intimidating. I mean that is a lot of view there and it's like okay what do I paint and you can try to kind of crop it in your mind but often that's kind of hard so I find a little mat is a great way to crop. You can kind of get an idea of and all you do to make it bigger or smaller is just zoom it in or out to your eye to your focus okay. You can do it vertically and I'm gonna wait to paint just a bit because the sun's gonna go down a little bit and we get the most awesome sunsets but just when the light is not quite so bright as this but I'm not gonna start too late because light is fleeting and another good idea is to often take a picture of what you're gonna paint before like right now I with my camera here I should just go ahead and take a picture so I can see it. Maybe take a few of them if I if I'm not so into painting to capture the different light because it really changes quickly. Alright so that's just a little bit about plenary painting and how to get started. There's so much more to it but let's get started painting and I'm so excited. I thought this might be a good time to show a little bit about the French easel. Like I said one day I'm gonna do a video where I really show how to put it together or take it apart and set it up but um if you're standing to paint like I am this is really low right now I mean I'm doing it horizontally and I don't want to squat down. I do have a stool here to sit if I get tired but it's a high stool where it's almost like I'm standing so French easels have these knob on this side, knob on this side, you get to where you just know how these work. You screw one one way one the other way and you can just raise it up to whatever's comfortable for you and then you're good to go. Now this is a little zoomed back for my preferences when I paint but I thought I might keep it zoomed back so I can kind of show you if my shoulder doesn't get in the way my idea for cropping this out. Now what I have here is just a little tray. You saw I have my pastels on the other side but within my pastel palette I have a few little harder new pastels that are good for sketching and I usually like to sketch them in a little bit darker but this is just a paper towel in a little Tupperware container that's from a Chinese restaurant we like so you can repurpose a lot of things as an artist so I'm just putting mine this is my little pastel holder right now while I work. Alright so and I have a nice little drawer in the French easel you probably can't see in this picture but or this view but I'm gonna just grab this little one here I think I'm gonna do it horizontally and I may need to readjust my easel let me do that real quick. Okay yes I think that's a little better so what I'm doing now is I'm just holding this up I'm getting a view of what I want to paint here I really like the shadows I like this one big tree is gonna be more of the right side I want to keep my horizon line not quite in the middle so I think I'm gonna go up with this you'll see I'll share a little picture hopefully of this so all this is is getting in shapes now I apologize you couldn't see much of that because I had it zoom back so far I just kind of started painting and wasn't thinking about filming that's the hard thing about doing all this by yourself but I got a general idea I like these long shadows I like this while the horizon line is more straight I like the shadows going down which kind of helped me with not having the horizon line right in the middle I am gonna kind of have it there but I think the shadows will draw the eye down here so that's the hope anyway I'm gonna take a piece of this pipe foam insulation and I'm just going to kind of scrub in this especially the background trees because they're lighter anyway these are I pressed real lightly with these in the background because they're going to be the lightest in value things get lighter as they recede in the distance lighter in value that means lightness or darkness so this is kind of a little bit darker under here then right here under these this is going to be the darkest dark even though I'm not going to see it right here I'm going to establish the more dark soon but once again this is all just to get an idea you're just kind of sketching with putting down some values that's really all this is there's another tree on this side it's actually I'm going to make it cooler because the Sun that's another thing you want to establish where's the light the lights coming here even though the Sun setting over here there's some trees and things blocking it so I'm getting most of my light on this right side so I'm going to keep that in mind so things not in the Sun are going to be cooler in color temperature the brightest thing right now in this painting is the sky and these bright green grass is right here and you can once you start painting the more you paint the more you learn to interpret the painting as long as you're following the basic rules okay so we've got a general idea here and then we can get started now I'm going to go ahead even though I'm still waiting for the Sun to set a little bit things are at least somewhat established with my composition but I am going to go ahead and get in some of these darks before I have to be on crunch time I guess I could call it this is actually really dark this is not I thought it was a new pastel it's a different pastel I'm not sure which one I've ground it down to nothing but notice how the color just came off so easily there I like using new pastels this one's better or is that my original one let me see now this is a little darker I like using new pastels for the underpainting because they don't take up as much tooth and this color fixed paper doesn't allow you the layering that um the UART paper and some other papers do let me keep this a little bit light I'm just gonna get in here and get where these darks are usually down in towards the trunk of the tree and where the roots are or where underneath the trees is where it's gonna be darkest all right let me just paint a little bit here I've got a pretty limited palette right here to start with I know I've got some really dark shadows in those grasses so these are gonna be my darks and they're a little cooler because they're shadows and then I've got those brilliant greens that where the light is hitting them so that's gonna be represented more right here this is just a good darker earthy kind of a green I am I see in a lot of this the light that's shining a lot of warmth so that's why I have some of these warm I love how Karen Marga list calls them like the dirt colors they're always good to use but I've got you know there's just this pretty warm light so that's why I have some of these colors I've got some of these back here that are more the the cooler trees and the distance again things get not as intense in value they get lighter in value and they get cooler in color in the distance so I might even have to lighten them up a little bit more than that so that's just how I'm starting and those are my original little new pastels I started with so let's get started and I might add some more I'm gonna try to keep this real basic because I don't know how much time I have and the lights already changing oh my gosh look at that but you see that warm area in the grass there I better get going I just love it I'm hearing cows now all kinds of things out here it's wonderful all right I know that this guy it's gradually getting darker as the light is fading right now so I'm just gonna get a little bit of this guy in here I'm not gonna worry about carving that in too much and then the sky typically gets lighter at the horizon line so I'm gonna kind of sneak some of that in here but because this light is getting warmer with the setting of the Sun I'm gonna add a little yellow in here I wish I had more things to I usually clean my pastels I can probably clean them right here on a piece of paper that I keep behind it this is a really soft pastel that might be a little too dark in value and sometimes when you add certain yellows to the blues they can blend to look a little green I know you don't blend pastels a whole lot but that just added a little warmth I'm gonna leave it at that keep this simple all right now let's get to I see this beautiful light on top of this tree right now it's not quite that light see the light is shining over here and it does have some warmth on it got my darks in there but I don't have them too dark because this is kind of when it's distant it's just kind of subtle then I've got some cool grains I like kind of how I'm having to work real fast here because these things are in the shadow it's darker on this side so I'm gonna add this darker and I'll fix this a little bit more you can even work on these more after you're out of the field I should say and I've got man there's some beautiful distant trees back here but they even have that warmth just casting its light which is awesome and I am so glad I put in this general composition because I wouldn't know what to paint if I hadn't had that to look at cooler here but again I'm gonna get some of that warmth even though they're far away they do have some warm light being cast on them there's noises all around back here and some of it is is these coyotes that live back here that's why I'm having to really watch my my kitties and my little Jackson because Jackson he would try to fight them I know him I don't want to put too much of this back here because I want those to still recede and I don't want to put too many warm colors back there but I do have this beautiful it's almost an orange back here light that's being cast from behind here another tree in there just kind of dancing up and around here and especially on that side of the tree oh that's really nice and I see sometimes I just want to have a color I like to go ahead and use it wherever I see it over here this is already cooling off a lot I want to remember that this was warmer before but already those shadows are changing look I quit that happens I'm gonna keep some of this just from memory because I remember that this was all really light in here coming down and this was the darker so let's get that in no of course this grass so we do have some green in here this was the shadows now it's incredibly shadowed it is amazing how quickly light changes you know God is the master artist hey Jackson I see you back there this was that tree that had that oh it's not that light that cooler blue or cooler green I should say more it I think it probably it does need to be even darker than that let me grab another dark green it's about the same now I know this is a real softy but it is definitely darker I'm getting some of this really pretty orangey colors in the branches here make mix of them melding together here it's too orange here those coyotes you hear them buddy you hear those coyotes Jackson you hear them alright now this is the part where I know I'm running out of layers again this color fixed paper doesn't have the ability to layer as much but it's the time when I you guys know my expression punching up color I don't know if that's a correct artistic term but it's when I say okay this is gonna be my final little exciting time to make this kind of fun and not exactly what you see already I'm doing that right now I've got this neat little magenta pink that is just so beautiful and I want to keep it where there's gonna be more warmth which is gonna be in the foreground maybe just a tad in those trees not too much because they're a little darker in value but I might just add a couple of marks here and there yeah like that and I'm also seeing let me get rid of this how you know I haven't even added any purple in this can you believe that and for once I think I might not even add any purple but I'm seeing in here there's a blue that is a rich blue if I have it I might not have it here let me look is this it I'll put a mark down and see yeah yeah yeah just a little in these shadows down here it's gonna add a little umph you want to use it somewhere else in the painting if you you don't want to just have it in one spot so you just kind of start to feel your way I think I'm overdoing it now I better quit I may not even should have added that blue but that was fun I hope you guys enjoyed that and I hope I get to do a lot more of this because this is an awesome way to get outdoors and even if you don't create anything that you think is fantastic or you love it you got outside you have some time in nature and hopefully you know praising our creator the one who gave us all this gorgeous um palette to paint from what would we do without this amazing creation so anyway all right I'm gonna finish this up and I hope you enjoyed it I know I did and happy painting