 Welcome my friends to Monet Café. I'm artist Susan Jenkins and this is kind of a you ask for it video. I had recently done a little watercolor painting where I also applied some pastels. I did a little speed demo that I put on Instagram and on my page, my personal page on Facebook by the way is the art of Susan Jenkins if you want to find me and follow me there. But I showed how I actually applied this clear liquid gesso to the watercolor paper. It's a great and easy way to make your own pastel surface. So I've done this before in other videos but I know a lot of you guys wanted to see this again. So here is the full video and I'm going to show you my products and lots more in this video tutorial. Okay here is my set of watercolors. I'm using a set of Arteza 36. A little set. I like this little travel set. It's got the little thumb holder on the bottom. So if you're painting plein air outdoors you can kind of hold it and open up your little pan so you can add your watercolors there. It's a nice little set. It's got some good colors too. I'm also using the Arteza watercolor paper. I'm using these products because Arteza is really great to me. They send me some free products to put in my videos. So hey free is good right? So I'm also using a reference photo here. I just have it on my little iPad. That is from PMP-art.com and by the way I'm going to be sharing in my Patreon group. My personal page on PMP-art.com I have so many albums of photos I've saved over the years and so I'm going to give a video to my patrons. By the way if you'd like to become a patron here's how you can for $5 a month. So if you are one of my patrons or want to become one of my patrons I'm going to be providing an instructional video on how you can access all of my reference photos that I have in the PMP-art.com. It's just a great site for free reference photos and why not utilize the all the photos that I've saved. I have them categorized in files such as landscapes, flowers, bees, trees all kinds of things. So hey I want to give you guys access to that if you would like to use the photos I've chosen from that site. Now as you can see I have just simply drawn in not any real detailed drawing the generalities of this with some pencil. I have wet the whole surface of the watercolor paper. This is what's called a wet-on-wet technique and then I want it to have that soft dreamy painterly feel to this and I'm sort of kind of doing a little bit of a value study here adding a little bit more watercolor where I feel like it's darker and that little area in the back where you see on the reference photo there upper right hand corner that's kind of like real far away maybe it's some trees maybe some mountains but it's gonna stay very blue and very cool because it's in the distance so I end up not darkening that very much back there actually that ends up being that whole area back there I liked it it had a high-key feel to it and if you don't know what I mean by high-key it's literally just lighter values there's nothing real dark about it I want to make another I have one high-key video I've made but I want to make another one I have sped this up obviously and I didn't feel like there was a whole lot of purpose for keeping this watercolor portion all real time but basically when I do a watercolor under painting sometimes like like this time I just I needed to paint some I had had a lot I was doing with my husband and I wasn't sure if I was going to just play with watercolor and leave it it was later that I decided to add pastels and that's that's so neat that you actually can do that with the clear gesso product but I usually try to keep things very loose and dreamy with watercolor and it usually does lend itself for a wonderful under painting if you are going to apply pastel but watercolor has that benefit to it anyway and a general rule of thumb with watercolor one of the hardest things for me to get used to with watercolor was that it behaves the opposite way of pastels or oil or acrylic pastel oil and acrylic all have something in common in that it's typical or general that you work dark to light and you can always get your lights on top of your darks with watercolor that is not true you have to preserve your lights and it took me quite some time to get the hang of that I was always painting my watercolor too dark and in this case I wanted to keep the lightness to those flowers if you squint your eyes and look at the reference image they are lighter than a lot of the things in the background but they're not as light as you think a lot of the parts of those of those flowers are in shadow you've got a lot of the shadowy colors on the bottom parts of the flowers so I am keeping them lighter on the watercolor but they're going to darken up a little bit when I add the pastel so I'm just getting in I might be getting a little too fussy with this but I think at this point like I said I wasn't sure if I was just going to play around with watercolor or if I was actually going to do more with pastel I couldn't help it I had to break out the pastels so I'm using the watercolor right now to kind of block in some of the areas where I see some of the darker flowers I am or the flowers that are more in the shadow so I'm using my watercolor to get me a roadmap of where things are in the painting okay so for the rest this watercolor portion I will speed it up a bit and you guys play with watercolor do some small watercolor studies just have some fun and it you'll be like me it'll it'll take you a while if you've if you've come from other mediums over to watercolor you might feel a bit frustrated at first but don't it's all part of the learning process okay so I was going to put on music but now I have to mention I am using the watercolor now to put in some of the darker values of the grasses I'm not getting crazy about drawing in every group it looks like I wrote SJ up there my initials I noticed that when I painted it the upper left-hand corner or ST I don't know my brain just sees those shapes but I'm not trying to get in blades of grasses here I am trying to get in kind of where things are I'm losing using the values again like a guide or roadmap you probably hear my dog lapping his water right now I'm not going to edit that out my sweet Jackson so anyway and it's also kind of building upon the values of where they are and I really liked this photo I didn't want to alter it a whole lot so okay so I'm gonna put on this lovely music you guys enjoy the rest of the watercolor portion and I will be back when I add the clear liquid just so here is where I decided to actually add to the bottom of this I had kind of cut it off to accommodate for my little bamboo holder that I have for my sketchbook and I decided I wanted to go ahead and utilize the whole surface of the watercolor paper so I just kind of and at this point I realized I am gonna add pastel so I knew that wouldn't be a problem once I add the pastel to kind of blend those two areas together all right so now how are we going to add pastels to watercolor paper typically pastels need a little bit of grit to hold on to a surface you can work on non-sanded surfaces but a lot of you guys know that it really is best to use a sanded surface well that's what this wonderful product is for I don't know whoever originally discovered this but clear gesso not regular gesso the clear has a little bit of grit to it you can feel it actually in between your fingers and it is great if you just apply it on top of your watercolor right on top of it so your watercolor is actually an under painting the watercolor portion you've just done and the pastel you will apply on top after we apply this clear gesso another reason for the clear is because it's clear if you put the regular white gesso on top of this you just cover up your watercolor you know no purpose in even doing the watercolor underneath so I'm applying this all over the whole surface just kind of random strokes I usually like my strokes to be more like X's and random than just all smooth across I sometimes do my strokes directionally kind of as they as things grow all right here's my pastel selections what I did a kind of cheated I had some pastels I've used for previous painting oh look how dirty my hand is now I'm feeling you I can feel that grit on the paper but again the pastels that I chose I just kind of added to some that I had already in my little tray so now like I was saying that flower is actually darker than you would think I'm getting you see if you look at the reference image it's kind of the colors that I'm choosing one of the challenges I did have with this is some of the light you know how said work dark to light with pastels I don't know if it was just my pastel selections or what but some of my pastels didn't apply the way I wanted them to on top of the flowers it wasn't the same as like using you are paper I think it's because of you know the clear gesso but I still like it I still like this technique even though you can't get quite as many layers I think it lends to a more painterly look I also think it makes you more careful about your strokes and also to it's a great way to save money and as artists especially when your first beginning you don't want to always use the most expensive stuff if you're just practicing and you're not sure so sometimes this technique is really great this is what I was saying is that I didn't feel these colors were going on the way they would have like on you are paper so and that actually some of the light tips that I did there I realized later I had the value to light that is to me lighter in value than it was in the reference image and I kind of work on that or work with that as I go along okay so as you can see we've got our watercolor underpainting we have our clear gesso applied which is dried gives us a nice little gritty surface and I wish I could paint this fast but I'm speeding this up a bit just because the purpose of this video was mostly reminding you guys about this awesome technique now there's other products you can apply to make your own pastel surface I have a video I'll try to remember to share it at the end of this video YouTube allows me to share a video at the end that you know you can click on if you want to go see that one I'll try to remember to share it it's a it's think it's called eight different ways to make your own pastel surfaces so that's a really beneficial video for beginners if you want to get some money saving methods to working with pastels so anyway hopefully that'll help some of you guys so again I'm putting this video just on the if you're seeing it here you're either seeing it on the Monet cafe YouTube channel or my patreon page a lot of my videos now I still don't want to forget my Monet cafe channel the totally free channel where I provide videos and tips and techniques because you're my heart this is how I started and I always want to provide a free option but I have been lately giving some extra content to my patrons because they're supporting my channel so I'm trying to give them a little bit extra but again this video in particular is going to be the same on both I'm not editing it out any content for the YouTube portion so it'll be the same on both but still if you'd like to become a patron of mine it is really helping me it's blessing my life a lot it's allowing me to buy I would bought the ring light that I put a little comment there I had forgotten to turn my light on at the beginning of the video you probably notice now it looks brighter because of my patrons I was able to buy that light because of my patrons I was able to buy my new computer I had a computer crash and I needed a new MacBook Pro computer and I was also able to buy a new video filming options so everything is better because of my patrons so Monet cafe subscribers should applaud and thank my patrons for helping this channel to get better so anyway just bragging on my patrons because y'all are so awesome anyway guys and so are you guys in Monet cafe enjoy this I'm gonna add some more music I'll jump back in at the end but you can kind of get an idea of how I'm working here obviously the little kind of pale neutral marks I was making in the background are kind of my idea of where some of these flowers are going to go obviously the flowers are kind of reseeding getting smaller lighter in value and cooler in color as they reseed into the distance so anyway enjoy here's some music and I'll be back okay so I'm wrapping it up here and you know I just these flowers just felt free and happy and full of life and brightness I loved that again like the high-key color in the background there where there weren't even really many dark values as it receded into the distance and just that pretty bluish teal in the background color there I just I don't know I really liked the reference image to oh this is something I wanted to show you I don't often blend but I felt like some of my grasses were just too textural and I wanted them to blend in a little bit more so that's just a paper towel and I'm just kind of randomly just rubbing in a few places not over blending by any means but I felt like it really softened up some of those grasses I didn't like some of the strong contrast that was going on with them so it just kind of softened things up in general alright guys so I'm finishing this up I hope you will try this and I hope you learn something please comment I love it when I hear you see your comments and get to answer your questions if you have any on this YouTube channel here also please like this video if you haven't subscribed already I would love it if you would subscribe it all really does help me with my YouTube rankings and everything and consider if you would like to show some of your own artwork we have a Monet cafe art group on Facebook just go on Facebook type in Monet cafe art group and you just have to answer a few questions like how'd you hear about the group that kind of stuff and you can share your work there are over 9,000 members in that group and there are some amazing artists who are helpful well not just me helping you you get all kinds of people helping you in that group so check that one out again if you'd like to become a patron there is a clickable link at the end of this video I would so appreciate that and I hope you guys are blessed that this blessed you and I just love being here and sharing with you guys alright guys happy happy painting