 Monet cafe friends this is Susan Jenkins and I am here in beautiful St. Pete Florida I'm on a little getaway and this is just one of the views from my balcony and I wanted to do a little painting while I was here but you know it's so darn hot right now I mean it is like I would be sweating so bad out there even though I brought my new hat and everything but um it's beautiful here hey hubby you get to see my husband Todd say hi honey and I'm gonna walk through here and just show you what I have done to set up this is actually a guy Harvey hotel it is just a beautiful place with paintings everywhere oh there's me hello and it's just a nice nice hotel and what's cool is that I have a neat little area over here this little kitchen area and again paintings everywhere that are beautiful but I've set me up a little place here just to do some painting I wanted to paint outside but again it is so hot but at least I have a nice view of the ocean it's just so pretty so anyway I'm gonna get started and I'm actually going to be doing some little tiny paintings that are called the a CEO size they're basically like almost like a business card size they're three and a half by two and a half and what I have here is some sanded paper that I've already pre-cut to be able to just have access to them very quickly when I get here and just start to paint and I've actually copied someone from our Facebook group Monet cafe art group and I've made them a quarter of an inch bigger I have on here a a CEO plus border it's like a quarter inch border just so I can look at it know what size it is and it was from someone another artist named Brad on in our Facebook group and I liked how he just leaves a little border around it and then what is also neat is that they make these little sleeves to put your painting in it's just like a little plastic sleeve you can get the plastic bags and even little mats for these that are cute pre-made but these little plastic sleeves are also very nice for just putting your artwork in sliding them in there and then they're protected and safe so that's just a little bit of my setup but I actually wanted to just show I've got this nice sienna plein air box that I use and it's very handy for taking pastels when you're on a trip and I've just arranged my pastels in here I've got some neutrals over here I was kind of in a hurry when I packed I've got some of my new pastels here they are harder I've got some of the course unison in here and Sennelier I think I'm saying that right that's also this paper is the La Carte Sennelier paper and it's very sanded rough very coarse and this is a paper that you do not want to put water on okay no no no to water on this it will just deteriorate the paper so I'm going to be doing a few of these these come in pads actually that are larger can't remember how big it's bigger than 11 by 14 but I've got some different colors too that they come in I love working on something besides white so that's what I'm going to be doing and I actually took some photos from our very own member reference photo album in our Facebook group Monet cafe art group and there are some members that are sharing their own photos to this album there's over 400 pictures in this album already and they're wonderful so anyway without further ado I'm going to enjoy this view while I paint even though I couldn't get out and do my own painting on location I might try to do that some early in the morning tomorrow when it is much much cooler so anyway hopefully we'll have fun with this and you'll learn something I thought I do a little voiceover recording for these clips of me painting because obviously I can't use the sound when I speed it up like this and so sometimes I just want to explain a little bit more of my process here I wanted to just let you know I'm getting down as I always talk about big shapes and values if you could just keep those two things in mind when you start keep it big and keep focusing on the lights and the darks that's what I mean by values and a lot of times you'll notice here I lay down darker values sometimes like in that background that mountain or whatever it is in that backfield is darker than it's going to be when I'm finally done but I lay down the darker to give it something substantial to begin with and this of course I'm laying down the big shapes of the trees in the darkest value you can see from the reference photo that is definitely the darkest value but I often like to think of it as instead of drawing individual things right now you're laying a foundation and I was thinking as I was watching this it's kind of like someone who's like a farmer and planting first you have to put down your dirt you have to establish something for your painting to go on and so you're just usually getting down the dirt and the basic things before you do anything else and then once you do that get the generalities down you start layering and building upon your painting again big too small and more simple to more complex and you never want to get too complex at all if you want to keep that impressionistic painterly look so you see I can still I'm still working on big shapes but I'm starting to get down other layering on top of those shapes and at this point right now I'm still kind of establishing some values the trees are going to absolutely be the darkest thing but if you notice if you squint your eyes and look at the reference image well you can see that the darkest value in that front field is going to be to the far right the left side of that foreground field is lighter than the right side so that's why I'm going to continue to establish that side as darker now you can see what I just did when I said I was going to lighten up that mountain in that back field I just did that notice how that mountain in the back now has the purple behind it and the blue or turquoisey blue on top of it and it gives so much more interest than if I had just made that turquoise color in the background so the layering is is crucial to make an interesting painting where the colors just play upon each other now you can see I I'm using that eggplant it's the Terry Ludwig or Ludwig eggplant color that is that beautiful dark dark it's not a black it looks black and I'm getting down the darkest darks right now and gonna build upon that as well and I often like to share I'm probably gonna do a video on this where I share that color and value is relative to what surrounds it so a lot of times if you want a color to look dark you put something light next to it but that's a whole other lesson and so now I'm working more on just still layering up those from the dirt up and now I'm layering and the values I'm layering some of those grasses that the flowers are going to actually sit on top of those and so I'm still not yet to those final stages the whole painting is going to end up probably having no more than three or four layers in something this small like this and now if you notice the the green that I just used there on the left side of the field was a warmer green it's because that's where the sun is shining rest that there are lighter values the greens that I'll use on the right side are going to be cooler greens and darker greens and purples purple is always a great color to use in shadows so and this particular reference photo happens to have purple flowers I don't know if it's a field of lavender or what the flower is but it's more like a blanket so now I'm just establishing those purples if you see that white piece of paper pop up often it's me cleaning my pastel on that paper sometimes the pastel will get dirty and if I just kept using it it would get a muddied effect so now I'm getting down and some of those grasses that are a little deeper not the top grasses and not the ones directly in the light they're going to be more of a teal or a cooler green rather than a warmer green so still establishing some of the top layers now of those flowers again I've got the cooler purples on the right and I'm going to start getting some of those warmer purples on the left if you're still a little kid I have a few of those lighter ones peeking through on the other side as well but if you're still concerned or don't know what I mean by cool and warm colors I have a video on my YouTube channel I think it's called that how to distinguish cool and warm colors something like that I'll try to buy a link but it's a great lesson and just learning the difference of warm and cool colors and when to use them if you notice I just added that beautiful warm purple it's a deep magenta purple into some of those trees so it gave a little interest a little warmth and now I'm layering in some darker greens over the trees I can't talk as fast as I'm painting here because I sped the painting up but again just getting it now you notice now I'm just finally getting to some of those little highlights of those flowers and notice I'm not painting every single flower I'm just giving a hint your brain can figure it out we don't have to paint everything all at one I mean all in the painting we just give hints of things and it makes a much more interesting and impressionistic painting now I'm adding what's called sky holes the tree was kind of like a big blob before and so you don't try to paint every branch and every leaf of a tree you paint the big groups like I said big shapes and then you add you carve out the tree later and it's just really much more interesting and impressionistic now I haven't been an expert at sky holes so sometimes I get them in a little bit too bold or maybe in the wrong place but I soften them up with a pastel if they don't seem to be in the right spot now this group of trees didn't have a lot of openings at the trunks of the trees but I still gave a little hint of some lighter greens within those trees now here is the final painting and I took it out in the light to be able to get a good photograph of it and also just tried to change the levels and things after I did the photo to make it look as much like the original as possible you know sometimes getting a good photograph is hard but this is really pretty close to what it looks like and as you can see when you look at it closely you can get an idea of the values more closely and see that there's a lot of paper even still showing through like up in the sky so and down below in the grasses so it's definitely not overworked and I liked this one it was fun okay so this is actually the first painting that I did that I'm putting second here because I had some camera difficulties with my my hair and my head getting in the way so I'm going to just show a little bit of this one I'm going to speed it up in a minute but I just wanted to talk a little bit at the beginning if you notice sometimes I actually I'm left-handed but sometimes I'll actually use my right hand if it is more convenient with the setup or just more coordinated to be able to reach something better so I recommend sometimes just trying to paint with your opposite hand sometimes you'll be surprised you actually will get more of a loose impressionistic style by using your non-dominant hand so it's kind of fun sometimes but anyway right now I'm just basically establishing the composition I'm looking at the horizon line in the background which is that field and trees bordering the sky and I'm just lightly this is a new pastel that I'm using it's a harder pastel and it's sometimes a good pastel to sketch in things so that's kind of what I'm doing right there and I'm just really trying to get the composition in so now I'm gonna speed this up a little bit because I got very little footage because you see my hair right there it's even I need to pull back that crazy hair that's because I was at the beach and my hair was flying all over the place from the beach wind from earlier in the day so even though I didn't get very much footage I thought I just shared this little bit right here so you can kind of see how I'm using again the layering tech or the blocking in technique with the the shapes I am going ahead here and getting in kind of the idea of where the flowers are more of just being able to measure than anything and getting in a general composition first and then working big shapes and values down to small so here is the final painting and I liked it I punched up color like I often do but it was fun and thanks again to the member in our Monique cafe art group on Facebook who shared this beautiful reference photo now this next painting is one that I actually started before I did any filming so you're seeing it after I've kind of blocked in the big shapes and the values and now I'm working a little bit more on some of the more specifics in the from the reference photo and this is another reference photo from our member reference group or member reference album in our Monique cafe art group on Facebook and the album has currently over 400 photos in it and I've said this before but it's really a blessing because many people who are interested in art oh there's my husband in the reflection in the background many people who are interested in art are very good at taking photographs they already line them up great with composition and so it's just a really valuable resource for us to find some good photos in our group so I really loved this another great photograph and I loved the the light and the shadow in this and so I'm trying to kind of keep that feeling there and I'm almost making this a little bit abstract and a lot of times if you are interested in abstract artwork I actually am getting more interested in it all the time a good way to pursue it is to really zoom in very closely to a subject matter and just explore the shapes and it gets you to where you're not concentrating on necessarily what a thing is but just the more interesting shapes and values and colors in that particular zoomed in version so because this is more of a macro and zoomed in on these flowers it gave me the opportunity to keep it a little bit more abstract so anyway I just loved these colors and I really enjoyed working on this one I'm just gonna speed this up a little bit and share the final