 Hello my artist friends and visitors of Monet Cafe. This is Susan Jenkins, and I am so glad to be back in my studio I had a little trip and I got away from painting for a few days and Man, do I miss it? I know you guys understand what I'm talking about once you get that artistic bug You just can't shake it. So I'm back and I want to share another experiment, you know, how they call people a mad scientist I think I'm somewhat of a mad artist because I like the experimentation process Almost as much as just painting. So it's just always fun to find new ways to do things So what I'm going to do today, and I didn't plan on this But I've been wanting to play around a little bit more with my acrylic inks. Okay, they're the Daylor Rowney acrylic artist ink and Some of you may be familiar with the channel of artist Bethany Fields She's the one who I saw this the first time and I've only barely played around with these And I'm not going to do it quite in the way that she does she uses it more for a value painting like for example with this reference photo I'm using from paint my photo She would Basically get in her darker values She might do an under painting of sorts and then use the acrylic ink just to get those dark darks with it because they do work pretty Give give some pretty dark values now what I'm going to do is I love our technique We kind of I kind of stumbled upon and I think some other people had done it But I had never done it where I use watercolor paper using watercolor paper is a great way to save money because it's fairly inexpensive and Buying the pastel papers. Oh by the way, this will end up having pastel applied to it. This is another pastel painting demonstration so I'm going to do a combination of things before I prepare it for pastels the acrylic inks I'm going to use on the watercolor paper to get some darker values as you know I've done watercolor under paintings before before applying the pastel and I've done some using the wax pastels on watercolor paper, but I've never used the acrylic inks Underneath kind of as an under painting on Watercolor paper so again, it's gonna be an experiment But I'm going to be able I think to get darker values laid down on the initial layers Then just watercolor which dries a lot lighter So it's gonna be interesting once I get the acrylic inks on then I'm going to Let them dry and I will I'll see where I go from there I may just go ahead and apply the clear gesso product which actually makes your watercolor paper Able to receive pastels you get that grit on your paper. So that's what I'll be doing afterwards I'm not sure if I'm gonna do something in between The acrylic inks and the gesso, but we'll see also I wanted to mention I bought this color only because another one was out of stock. I noticed a lot of artists use one called purple lake This one is called Velvet violet and I really wanted the purple like it's a darker value than this one, but I'm gonna use this one So I have the violet the velvet violet that's like a tongue twister then I have this one which is sepia and This one is burnt umber and This one is Antelope Antelope Brown. So they're all pretty pretty dark values. I did playing around with it back here and Hopefully it's going to come out dark enough on here. So we're gonna try and I'm gonna try to talk a little bit through this I know you guys have Requested that so all right. Let's see time to experiment All right, so I'm ready to go I decided to do away with these clips I use these sometimes with watercolors when I just started doing a little teaching with them It helps to just kind of move them around but I went back to my taping it down technique which Watercolor will or watercolor paper will warp. So I'm trying to prevent it from warping a lot on me right now Okay, so all I'm gonna do is I have this little tray that is just from a Chinese restaurant I use these little trays the disposable trays quite often for different art projects and I think this will work well for applying the Acrylic ink. I also I'm not quite sure how this is going to behave with water I may want to dilute it some so I have me some water here and I have me some various Different size brushes flat and round here. So again, this is a total experimentation Process for me and we'll just see how it goes. All right, let's do it Bigger brush for this part here Bigger brushes are better Use the biggest brush you possibly can often to Get your your underpainting in all right now. I'm gonna try to use some of this A different color with some water. Let me see how that behaves a lot of these colors Look kind of similar except for the purple one. I've been applying the different colors But the purple one is the only one that looks different. Okay, so a little bit of that in there now Now as you know, I typically work from darker values to lighter with pastel you can get down some pretty good darks and Still get light pastels on top of it Now I think for some reason my my purple was not coming out very good with the eyedropper I don't know if it's clogged or what but I'm gonna I'm actually even though the sky is light I'm actually gonna apply a coat of this purple Up there because we can make it darker and then apply the lighter clouds And I think this purple when I applied it was a light enough value to work for kind of an underpainting for the sky So let me try that Now I'm curious some Kind of liking this that I might would want to get some acrylic inks that are in the family of reds and You know just some different different hues to work with here Probably the best thing here now. I'm trying it with water. Let's see what it is watercolor paper So I think I'll take the water and you guys know I like drips And we'll see how that behaves. Yeah, that's gonna start mixing on there So you don't want to go over your your other color as you come down because it's going to Blend it up into the sky now I may need a little bit more of this this purple here, and I'm really curious about the I Believe it's called Purple Lake. It's the one that I definitely definitely want to try now while I didn't want this color Blending up into the sky. I don't mind this purple blending down into the background or the The land and the background trees Interesting, but I got to be careful not to drag that dark up into it. That's pretty dry now, so it's not doing it anymore Okay, interesting interesting. I kind of like the different effects Back here of the the water that I mixed with it. It gives kind of a variation now I actually I'm kind of liking that purple again Maybe a little bit more of that On top of this now again, I'm not sure quite sure how this is going to behave With much water in the brush. Let me get some of the water out of the brush. Let's see how this purple behaves Oh, yeah, that's interesting because you know things in the distance get more shades of Cooler colors and purples are always good for that probably don't want to do too much more of that Because I don't want to lighten those foreground trees now. I'm going to go back over those with Darker pastels to make those even darker or I might just do more of this acrylic ink But anyway, I'm sort of liking this Yeah, this is pretty interesting and I picked a very Simple reference photo just for the fact that this was an experiment So that's kind of interesting. I don't like some of the lines I have going on in here So let me see if I can darken this land mass up a bit because I know I am Going to lighten this a lot with the Pastels and Get the lighter values of greens on there Sometimes I kind of like getting almost Geometric shapes in That's probably good enough just enough to get just kind of some basic values in there And start applying the pastels now. I'm not sure how watercolors would behave on top of this I I think the the good thing about acrylic inks is um if you use it on like u-art paper It doesn't um take up the tooth of the paper So you still have all of that good texture to work with with your pastel Because it doesn't fill up the tooth now. There is no tooth at this point to this watercolor paper So I'm not worried about that at all, but I'm not quite sure how watercolor Will behave on top of this. Let me just do another experiment. I've got a little travel palette of watercolors here and Just going to my water's gotten a little bit dirty, but Let's just play with something. Let's see. Where do I have like a A little bit to the top of the sky. I've got a little bit of a darker Sky blue I am going to have to pause and clean this water because it's a little dirty All right, so just walking away to Clean my water. I was able to back up something I typically like to do just to back up and check my values And I actually like this. I like the um How you can quickly get in the darks And big shapes. It's the main thing with starting a painting big shapes Get your values in then you're ready to go and don't get too fussy on anything. All right So now back to my experiment of seeing see how dry this gets the dries pretty quickly This is pretty dry up here. So I'm just going to attempt to apply a little bit of a This has actually some more purpley blues in it. Let me get a blue that's not too bold right here All right, I'm just going to check out what this does How the watercolor behaves on top of this maybe even more water Get some of the um, there's a it's a really dark um Bottom to a cloud here that's kind of going over And has some various Distant clouds back here. Oh, yeah, that's kind of interesting Up here. There's a little bit more of these blues not going to fix any of this with the Pastels so I'm just getting in some different shapes. There's a nice brilliant white cloud here and here Which is why I've kind of left those A little bit blank there Again, you're just the neat thing is you can you have more freedom than you think if you work big Um to small because you can kind of move things around and change it as you go And it adds to that painterly feel if you don't have everything just so so so fixed all the time All right now I got a nice little light back here Okay, it's even darker in here. Maybe add a little bit more of this blue It's actually a dark bluish purple that I might achieve With the pastels and it goes right over these trees Again, I need to try not to get too fussy with the underpainting Because it's really just more about the values Okay, so that's interesting. I I'm kind of thinking this is neat. I'm gonna blend it in a little bit. I don't want it so Stark All right. Well, let's just kind of play around with this now and see what else we can do All right. I think I do want um Some darker darks in this foreground. I know that typically with under paintings especially with like Karen Margolis's Demonstrations when she teaches just so well She always says to put down some dirt some dark darks and she typically does that with the pastels And then gradually layers The lighter pastels on top of that, but I'm going to go ahead and try to get maybe some darker darks in here Without using pastels using these acrylic inks And this is also an experiment on how much of these acrylic inks to use because they're kind of expensive I'm trying to look at my reference photo here and um Go along with the values of what's in these grasses Right. So again, this is more just experimenting. I probably will end up covering up most of this With pastel, but I do want to get some of these Really really good darks in the foreground because there are and notice I'm still using a big brush here But I'm sometimes using kind of the edge of it Some really good darks here now. I don't know if you can see Um in the reference photo that I'll put up here on the top But there's little bits of water in here that I'm going to try to accomplish with the pastels All right, the base of these trees definitely needs more of this And it's going to have some pastels and grasses Um just growing up around this Okay, let's see again. This is just a value study But I do think these trees in the background here. They are this is um lightest value darkest values Um, I'm sorry. Let me go to the next one lightest value Next to lightest values are these grasses and of course this water That's going to be the lightest values in here then the next is going to be these back trees And then I need those even darker than that. This is that color. That's a little bit of that It's got more of that ochre type of color in it And then of course the darkest darkest are going to be those trees the big grouping of trees and The Foreground grasses, okay So again just about getting a value study in here All right, so that should be something something we can work with So now we have discovered we can do watercolor. I'm acrylic ink on watercolor paper and Apply watercolor on top of it now. I'm going to dry it and apply the Clear gesso which will act as a Something that you can use to apply pastel to it's going to give it some grit All right, so let me quit fiddling with this before I mess it up Okay, so time to dry it Okay, so now I am going to be applying the clear gesso. This is by liquid text To the surface of the watercolor paper and from some of my past videos I'll try to include those in here so you can watch them. We have discovered that you absolutely can create your own pastel paper Using this product on watercolor paper. It's a much more economical way to make pastel paper It won't give you quite as many layers as say uart paper or some of the other pastel papers But it suffices especially if you're just doing a small piece like i'm doing here So all i'm doing is putting some of the um clear gesso onto a sponge Applicator and i'm just going to start applying it. I'm going to apply it pretty liberally But you just want to apply it you can do more than one layer if you want and um, it's going to allow Or create that pastel surface. Well, I got a lot right there Better put my glasses on so I can actually see how much i'm getting on here and i'm not sure how this is going to behave with the acrylic ink. It doesn't look like it's Bleeding see I went over the dark and it's not it's dry. It's not going anywhere. That's a good thing Okay, so and sometimes um your lines Um might show a little bit but that actually to me adds to that artistic painterly feel All right. I'm getting a Good coat of this on here We'll be ready to go soon Okay, so now you can see how I have the gesso applied. It's dry and um as you can hear There's A sanded surface here so I can apply pastels now to this And I thought I'd go ahead and share with you how I I'm trying to keep the shadow away How I go about um picking out my palette as you can see I have my reference photo right here next to it And the reference photo is very dark Um, it's going to be one of those dramatic paintings and I can already see from what I've applied that of the color Families or hue is going to be a little different. This has lots of greens and kind of some pale um, just pale blues and gray colors And I definitely want it to be more dramatic than that, but I want to keep that value is correct in the in the photograph Okay, so I definitely want to keep the values correct, but I can get a little bit more creative with color So I'm going to go about picking a pastel palette right now out of my pastel handy dandy pastel drawer You may have seen from some of my previous videos It works really well for me because I could just take the drawers out Individually and lay them out and don't have to take up so much space So, um, let me pick out a palette that will work well with this and then I'll share my color choices All right. So here are my initial pastel choices again. I want a little bit more of a dramatic Painting or scene And I'm analyzing some of the things in the photo right now and we know we of course have the sky with the Um, the lightest value in the clouds So I've got some a little bit of purples and blues and the lightest light is going to be here Which is going to be some of those uh lightest parts to the clouds But we've got some gray more neutral tones in those clouds too. So that's why I sat this one over here And um, this may even work in some of those back fields as well There's like uh across the back field Well, of course, we've got our trees in the background that are going to first I'm going to apply a darker value typically and then I put something lighter over it to make that distance a cooler um lighter value than the other trees And so I've got some of the greens here for the grasses and again a little bit darker values here I will put down the darkest darks first and in that distant field again. I've got um to add some punch to some things I I in my mind. I'm seeing some orange. Maybe it's just because I've done my underpainting with that acrylic ink that gave it that orangy glow And these are going to be the colors of the the water those little bits of water That's going to be one of the lighter um values And uh, perhaps a little bit more of this blue and I just love purple gotta throw some purple in there So I've got of course my darker values all in in here that I'm going to use to lay down first And then just gradually start playing around with it all and I don't know I love that color pink and for some reason I guess just looking at this here I just see where I might can get that in somewhere in here So anyway, it's all fun. And uh, again, this is an experiment anyway So let's just play and have fun. All right time to get started with the pastels. Oh, let me rub this again Hear that surface. It's sanded. Yay. Okay. Well, I'm going to get my um darkest values in first And uh, then this group of trees that looks like a big old clump I'm going to carve it in with the sky. So, uh, let me get those in first again I'm working from an extremely dark reference photo and I already have some dark darks on here But I think you'll see when I start adding pastels They even go on darker than the acrylic ink And I'm having to bend down here. My reference photo was in a kind of awkward place and I've noticed too, uh The photograph actually had a better composition than what I'm doing here. It was like it was taller and so it um was uh Just better as far as the rule of thirds goes. I have my horizon line a little bit closer to the middle than I would like I normally like it a little lower but again, I'm just working with what I have here for the um general idea Okay, these trees are going to get lighter and just put down a dark value for now Some of these dark darks in the foreground here. I think I'm gonna have to lift my um Painting up a little bit to work on it at the bottom. I'm gonna go ahead and place in where this water is just so I I have it um, and I don't get to Carry it away and paint over top of it. It looks like I can't tell if that's water or land back there behind these trees, but it's It's interesting. So I may add back in there too You can um the more you do this and I still need to paint a whole lot more But the more you learn to veer From your reference photo and go off of maybe something you've painted before or seen before there's a dark clump of um Like a line going through here that looks like it's where water is is going or flowing And um, and this is a pretty small just a little five by seven um painting here So it's so hard to work with these chunky pastels sometimes, but this looks like it might be where some water is flowed through And I think I still need some darker darks in some of these places And again, I'm working with clear gesso. So um, you got to be a little bit careful and make sure you don't overdo it with your um Application especially with these terry Ludwigs because they fill up tooth very quickly now. I'm adding a little bit more of um Another darker value in here to give this interest. Okay, even though I am going to apply some greens there at the top This is going to make it not just one solid color. It's going to be a little more interesting see here I think I'm going to go ahead and start getting in some of these greens in this back field and actually Like I said, there are some lighter values back here. I'm just testing this value. It's like there's um From these clouds above. It's like it's kind of shining down um or reflecting down on this field below To give it a lighter value. It's just a little bit here. So I'm just kind of getting this in I said I'm just checking it but again just getting general values in to to make things um somewhat correct at the beginning and then Then you can start getting more detailed and uh adding more hues and colors And all of this background feel too. I don't want to get too carried away. I have a tendency sometimes to add too much back here and keep blending and blending and blending and sometimes less is more All right now. I think I'm going to go ahead. Uh, that's I think that's a nice value back here It's almost like it's that where the sun has um It's late afternoon and it's been a rainy day and the rain has passed but there's still this um Darkness that is just about before evening. That's what I'm seeing anyway This may be too green for these background trees, but that's all right These are definitely going to be lighter than these trees So and they're usually lighter at the tops Then they are at the bases and some of this can be carved in a little bit With the uh sky that we do. Okay. So there we just got a little bit of those background trees And now we've got a richer green Right behind where this water is and this dark. These are like the grasses that are growing up um where this water is carving through and behind it is this um section of greener almost like the tops of these grasses That may even Have a little bit more highlights than that Sometimes you just want to suggest things because the eye and the brain The brain will figure it out If you get things in correct with value And correct with how nature really works, you know You definitely don't have to put everything in I actually really like this right here. Um without any pastel on it at all So, uh, I don't often leave that much Without pastel on it, but I'm going to work my way down and see how it behaves Now what I'm doing here is I'm using a harder pastel I believe this is a rim brand and notice it's just kind of a light lavender and I'm using it to blend Some of the Texture out of these clouds up here. I like some of it But I'm just blending it a bit So that the eye isn't going everywhere when you look at the painting if you've got texture all over the place it's like the eye just Isn't led gently into anything. It's just Kind of mesmerized and overwhelmed. I guess is a better word All right. Now this might be yeah, see how this light lavender next to that really light background there. It makes those nice distant clouds That are kind of um Just with perspective are Going off further into the distance again this What do you call it a thunder cloud or whatever it's some Again, it looks like just after it's rained it is the lightest value along with maybe That water when we add some of the reflections that are actually going to be the reflections from this cloud And I don't again. I don't want to Suggest it so perfectly I just want to give it a little bit of Um where the eye just kind of Has interest to it, but you don't have to go analyze it calm it down All right. I just want to take a look and check this value back here. I think it's going to be too light But you know sometimes adding a little bit of lightness over the trees and the distance Um is a neat little effect But I think that's too light. I like that. I'm I like the way it was already Letting the white of the paper show through Oops, I may have messed it up You get a clean brush and see if I can yeah, there's um Really something it's about watercolor and the watercolor paper is that um There is a glow behind the whiteness of the paper that you almost can't get when you apply pastel on the top I've see I have darkened that um, I may try to do something to get that back But I like that little glow I had going on back there. I can I can probably add Uh, this may be a little too dark. Let me check it in the tree. It's pretty good You see how I carved out that tree with this Value right here. Yeah, that's gonna work. I add a little bit more um a lighter pastel still on top of that to Reclaim that glow All right now I want some variety in these trees even though in the reference photo These are sticking up. There's a clump. These are sticking up because down I want to give a little bit more Variety in them than they have in the picture um And I'm still not an expert at doing this tree carving thing But oops a little too much there But um still have fun with it. I'm gonna add some green kind of to the tops of these trees So I might better do that before I try to do too much carving This is richer and with trees you don't paint leaves You really paint shapes Because this far away you are not gonna see individual leaves on a tree Your brain says it's individual leaves. So you try to paint it that way but um It's really not and I don't want to get too fussy with this either I'm just gonna Give some hints here of how the suns and the clouds the light up there is shining down on these trees And usually it's on the ends of the The branches and things and purples are always good in like shadowy areas um If there's a little bit of light reflecting Getting a little purple underneath Usually the darkest darks are going to be closer to the ground. Oh, I love that purple. That's so pretty All right, I think I might establish some of that back in here. You see how this is a lighter value than this So this purple will be good for these um Little areas. I was saying how there's like obviously some water flowing through different spots And this purple also looks pretty good coming down sporadically In between where the darkest darks are to these roots Or these grasses The ones that are going down to the ground. I also like this purple. Maybe a little bit back here Not too much kind of ties it all together and gives it harmony Now I think I might go ahead and add Where these lighter colors of the water are Kind of coming down reflecting from where the The sky is again, these are chunky pastels for such a little painting That's okay. Sometimes working with bigger is better That's not funny. Of course, that's the common expression everybody says, but it is good in art too To always use the biggest brush you possibly can and um Sometimes larger strokes and larger pastels And I don't like how fixed that part is there. I'm just going to add Again, you don't want any lines And I'm going to cover some of that up with grasses But notice how I had to get a little bit of this blue in there too Um because water has shadows as well looks like there's Maybe like some lightness back here, but I don't want to Go overboard with it word of advice Move on if you're getting too fussy with things. Okay. I'm going to check this green This is a little bit more of a dead kind of a green instead of this warm green here and um it's going to be I'm seeing that a little bit more on this side here where they're cooler a little bit more away from the sun And there's just a little hints of some of this. They're not a lot of it. So I'm just keeping it rather Impressionistic here And I typically like to keep things in the foreground more impressionistic Because it causes the eye to flow into the painting whereas if you have so much detail right here, you know All these little leaves then it's almost like it's a barricade to um To letting the eye just enter in and I'm constantly analyzing values But you can get creative with color to a degree Now I did say I was curious about this pink here Because you notice the sky has got these um more lavender colors in here And I'm not sure I think this value is a little too light No, it's okay Just in a couple of spots Sometimes these grasses have acts like some rng colors in them Actually, these pinks are going to look good in these trees too. Just a little Because that that sky is reflecting even down on the trees I'm keeping kind of a light touch because I'm trying really hard not to overwork this. Okay, some of these pinks Things in the distance don't usually get um Um warmer they get cooler in color but um And I don't really see that this has any pink flowers to put in that distance So I'm gonna hesitate putting a warmer color back there All right now again, I really did like this orange. I may even need something a little darker. I've got this darkest darkest um It's like a a red Um much a deep deep deep magenta leaning towards warmer um And and it's a beautiful um value here or color And I think to get some of that richness Up front i'm going to add a little bit of this because it's warm. It looks good in the foreground And if you could see my eyes Even though it looks like i'm randomly placing things I am looking back constantly The reference photo checking for values now behind where this water is I noticed I needed some darker values where these grasses behind it are growing up It has little um meanderings like it's not going to make a straight line here. So you kind of Go in the direction that that water seems to be cutting through everything And this is like some of it's here too And it's even darker over here because it's because it's behind these trees We've got some more of these little Places where water may have cut through Cool it here because I can get too much Quickly if i'm not careful All right now i'm going to try to finish this up because I don't want to overwork it. I Uh recently did an experiment where I took pictures throughout the whole process I just kept going and kept going and realized that about 60 of the way through Is usually when I like it the best so Again going to try very hard not to overwork this now. I'm using a piece of Pipe insulation foam that you can buy at any hardware store. I just cut it up in little pieces So it's easy to work with but I'm using kind of this softer side There's a rough side in the middle here and then there's a softer side and it's perfect for blending pastels Again, I like a loose painterly look and I like the texture But again, I'm going to reiterate you don't have to have it everywhere sometimes It can be a little much if it's in the sky too. So I'm I'm just using this to soften up some of these clouds And um It already has texture to it because of that clear gesso we applied I'm trying not to cover up some of the lighter lights that I liked of that watercolor Showing through and notice how I'm wiping it off a little bit when I uh Go from one um color to another because I don't want to get the dark color onto the light color I might reestablish a little bit of those lights to get them back again Blend it just a little bit Sometimes I'll use my finger I have a real advantage with blending with my finger I know sometimes it hurts people's finger what they were if they use it too much But if I use a little it doesn't hurt. I play guitar and my fingers are very calloused. So There's an advantage there Don't want to get too much in here I really do like this uh This blue that I've used it's almost like a primrose It's how I used to always go. How can I get that color? It looks like a purple But color is dependent on what it's surround surrounds it and um, sometimes it looks like a blue and sometimes it looks like a purple I'm going to just loosen up some of these Uh tree Edges here so they don't look so harsh And again, I might try to reestablish a couple of the lights in there, but I just didn't want that much texture I'll get some more of this Right in here just a couple little spots For impact All right, I think that is going to Do it for this one and I definitely am pleased with this experiment. I love how the texture of the gesso and Just the watercolor paper in general It worked well to keep that painterly look you can even see the the marks of the gesso in there Which I like and um, yeah, this was a successful experiment. I will definitely do this again time to sign it