 Welcome to Monet Café. Today's pastel painting tutorial will be of a beautiful hummingbird in flight. This lesson will be featuring pan pastels. I've been enjoying using these for my past few paintings. This lesson also will feature iridescent pastels. These pastels give such a wonderful sparkle to this hummingbird. And if you're watching the free version of this tutorial here on Monet Café, I'd love it if you would like this video and subscribe to my channel. And if you happen to be a patron of mine, you will be getting the full tutorial, all of my commentary and more. And if you would like to become a patron on my Patreon page, it's really easy. It's only $5 a month, which will unlock for you a wealth of painting tutorials. And not only does your Patreon support give you extra goodies, but you help to support this channel and continue to bring free art instruction to subscribers like this. I was so blessed to read this comment from a fellow subscriber here on Monet Café, letting me know of her gratefulness to have a means to learn art. She comes from a war-stricken country. She lost her child, which I can't even imagine. And Monet Café reignited her passion for art, bringing her some joy. So thank you to all of those who support this channel and my Patreon page. You're not just helping me. You're helping so many people around the world. I just love that. Okay, we're really getting started now. Let's talk about these products. As I mentioned, I will be using a pan pastel background. Most of the background is completed with pan pastels. And if you don't know about these pastels, they are literally the same substance of regular stick pastels, but they're in these little pans, like little compacts. And you apply them as you would with regular painting with applicators that are sort of like a brush. The applicators come in various styles for various mark making techniques. There's also these larger sponge tools. Mine look really dirty, but you can literally wash them off for reuse. I'll be using just a few pastel pencils. And now it's time to pick out this surface that I'm going to use. I have learned through my experimentation with pan pastels that a surface that's not too gritty works better. And this surface made by Art Spectrum, it's called Color Fix. This is the cool pack. And I chose the color Elephant Gray. The surface is perfect for pan pastels. I'm using a charcoal pencil, a white charcoal pencil by Derwent to get in my sketch. The reference image is from Unsplash.com. I did alter it in Photoshop. I wanted a vertical format. So if you're a patron of mine, you will be getting that as a downloadable image to work from. I created a sketch very basic for the foliage, but I wanted to get the hummingbird a bit more accurate. So I spent more time on the hummingbird. My hummingbird is a little chunky to begin with. I trim him down as I paint. And if you're a patron of mine, you will get a slower version of the sketch with more commentary. And now I'm going to apply the pan pastels. I'm using two purples here. One is a darker purple and one is a lighter value. That's one of the wonderful things about pan pastels. We're a little limited when we use stick pastels and how much we can mix them, you know, like watercolor, acrylic or oil. You can have just a few colors and mix just a grand amount of other colors from that. With stick pastels, you can do a little mixing as you blend colors on the surface, but you are limited. But with pan pastels, we can use a lighter value or a darker value to get so many different tents or shades of a color. So you don't have to have as many pan pastels as you do with regular stick form of pastels. Also, they blend beautifully with these applicators. For the majority of the background here, I'm just using this large round applicator. And you can see how it's giving such a soft, moody effect. And that's really what we want with the background. You can see the reference image already had that effect going. You do that in a camera where you change the aperture to get that out of focus background. So pan pastels are perfect for this. And I have totally gotten more excited about using pan pastels because when I first tried them, I was using them on surfaces that were too gritty. I hadn't tried them on sanded surfaces that are a little bit more smooth, like this color fix by Art Spectrum. I think it's perfect for using pan pastels with. Also, I've been using some pan pastels on unsanded paper. My next tutorial will be of a bumblebee. That's our theme this month, birds, bees and butterflies. And it will be on a very affordable unsanded surface using pan pastels. And I am going to use some stick pastels for this, mostly though, just the iridescent pastels that I'm going to be using to add that sparkle to the hummingbird. You know, hummingbirds are little iridescent certain species or varieties of hummingbirds. And so I thought these iridescent pastels you'll see me use later. They're made by Mount Vision. I love Mount Vision pastels. By the way, I have a tutorial here on Monet Cafe or not a tutorial, a tour of the Mount Vision facility. It happens to be right here in Tampa, Florida near where I live. So I met with the owner and inventor and I did a tour and you literally can go through and watch how pastels are made. So while I was there, my eye caught fascination with the iridescent pastels. So I bought it's like 20 of them, I think is the total that they have. They have a set of 15. I'll show you a picture of those right before I go to add the iridescent pastels. A set of 15, which is the basic set, all these bright, gorgeous colors and a set of five that are more of the darks for the iridescent pastels. They're not cheap and you can't buy Mount Vision pastels in half sticks. Unfortunately, I always recommend buying half sticks because you get more color for the money, but they don't have half sticks. So you do not have to have pan. I meant to say this earlier, pan pastels or iridescent pastels to follow along with this tutorial. As I always say, use what you have. People even use other mediums to follow along with my tutorials. I mean the same principles apply. You know, just use similar values and colors and techniques and you can totally follow along with my tutorials with whatever you have. And by the way, this Monet Cafe version of this tutorial you're seeing here is substantially sped up more than the Patreon version. My patrons will get more commentary and not quite so fast. However, if you're here on Monet Cafe and you'd like to see it slower, just go to that gear icon. It's at the bottom of the viewing screen to the right. You click it and you can slow this down. I recommend listening to my commentary here first, but then you can go back and watch it and slow it down and see it at a pace if you would like to follow along. And I think you may be beginning to see why I love using pan pastels now for backgrounds. Can you see that soft, just moody effect? And I recommend, oh, here I'm just cleaning off the applicator with a paper towel. I keep it on a roll of paper towels because it gives a little firmness for me to press and clean it with. But I do that often when I change colors. And if you, your applicator gets really dirty on one side, you can see the backside of it's still clean. I just flip it over and use the other side. Now, if both sides get really dirty and they do kind of get scuffed up a little bit with a lot of use, buy new ones. These little things you add to the applicators, the sponges, are quite affordable. So that's a good thing. Also, too, I'm going to let you know in advance, I wish I had left some of this stage, this soft, moody stage and just, oh, here I am putting a new applicator on so you can see how it's done. But I loved that soft background. And the goal in the future and for you is to create your painting kind of in layers, your background, your soft, moody, most distant things out of focus, then your middle ground will have a little bit more detail, color, vibrancy and value contrast. And your foreground flowers and focal point elements like this hummingbird will have your most detail and stronger contrast and more vibrant color. So I fiddled with this. I was just having fun with it. And I fiddled with the background a lot at the end. And I kind of lost what I have going on right there in the background. And I wish I hadn't done that. So that's just your advantage of learning to do what I, what do parents say, do what I say, not as I do. So I always thought that was bad advice. I was like, as a parent, you should do what you say if you're going to tell your kids that. So I'm pointing the finger at me here with this tutorial. So that's just a word of advice for you and what I'm going to try to do in my future work with pan pastels. And actually what I did with the next one, you're going to see the one of the bumble bee. So you can see I'm using the little applicator tool. I'm working the same strategy that you do with other stick forms of pastels or other mediums, putting your dark values down first and gradually layering the lighter values on top. It works perfectly for applying feathers. Focus on using directional strokes too. If you think of caressing the body of the hummingbird, like you were just petting it, the way your hand would curve, that's the way your strokes and your feathers are going to curve around the body. And that's what will start to give it its form, its feeling of having three dimensions rather than a two dimensional object on a flat surface. So that's that beautiful illusion of art. So you can see here, I'm just gradually working my values and my layers. And the white charcoal pencil shows up for a while, but it gradually gets covered up as I work. And I do tweak the hummingbird a little bit to slim him down a little bit. Like I said, I had him a little chunky or her and I need to go ahead and get in the eye now. And I needed my eyes to do that. So I definitely needed my reader glasses. So an eye is so important with a person or an animal, the location, the shape, you want to get it right. So it's believable. And I'm just using a little pastel pencil here and getting in the general location, I'm going to go back later and darken it with, I think it's the only time, no, maybe a couple more stick forms of pastels, but I'll use later to get it really nice and dark. A Terry Ludwig is the brand eggplant color. It's a super dark, super wonderful dark that looks kind of like a dark, dark purple, it almost looks black. So you'll see me in a minute add that to the eye. Now I am using a dark purple of a pan pastel to get in some of my darker values. And now I'm layering a little gray. I still have a little bit of that purple on my, my tool there. So that's what's neat too is you can drag your painting tool across two different colors of pan pastels and get a neat little blended effect of those two colors or three colors when you apply them. So I've been experimenting and really loving the accuracy and precision I can get with pan pastels. I was thinking they were just for backgrounds when I first started. And now I'm realizing that I can really accomplish so much by using these tools. They're called soft tools that you use to apply the pan pastels. Now I'm trying to get in an indication of the wing and you can see the wings are in motion. So I really want to keep that feeling of movement. Later I even give them more movement with some gestural strokes. The back wing is barely there. So just some sort of indication of that wing as it's in flight. I think that would be a neat theme to have one month in the Monet Cafe art group that we have on Facebook by the way you can find that art group just answer a few questions and become a member of that group. And here I was starting to use some of the iridescent pastels. But I realized I wanted to get a little bit more of the dark in the hummingbird's eye. He had like almost a little mask of darkness around his eye. And now it's time to add these beautiful iridescent pastels. This is the 15 set from Mount Vision. You can see almost all of the color numbers there if you wanted to order one individually. This is the five dark sticks set. And so I am just back to the whole layering principle with the pastels. I'm layering some of the iridescence on top. I wanted to get a little bit more of that dark in the eye reshape the eye. So I'm playing around with some of the pastel pencils. A little more blending here. And here is where I'm using that Terry Ludwig dark. I think it's V 100. I think that's the color number for it made by Terry Ludwig. See how it looks almost black. And now one thing that really makes an eye feel like an eye or look like an eye is that little reflection in the eye, that little highlight. And my white pastel pencil broke when I sharpened it. So I literally grabbed the tip and made that little reflection. Now I've zoomed in even more to show you my application of some of these iridescent pastels. And I'm just going in the direction of how these little feathers are layered along the bird's head. Also I realized my bird was getting to be the same value lightness or darkness as the background. He wasn't showing up anymore as the focal point. So I decided to go in with some of the pan pastels and give a little light contrast around the bird. And you can see it instantly makes the bird show up more. So I'm learning over the years I have learned more and more the importance of focal point. And if you wonder what is your focal point, it's usually the thing that drew you to that image in the first place. In this case, it's the hummingbird. So your focal point needs to have more contrast that has to do with lights and darks to the background. It needs to have usually more vibrant color. It needs to have a bit more detail. Usually your final mark making strokes that are your icing on the cake are going to be somewhere in focal point areas. I have a video here on Monet Cafe. I think it's called five things to learn about focal point, something like that. That is a wealth of information in learning about focal point. So check that one out. Now I'm still just kind of fine tuning this little bird. Again, he's going to have more detail and precision I would say than other elements in the photo. So I'm you definitely wanted to get the hummingbird right in this. I got his beak a little thick there, but I go back later and add a little highlight to the top. I think you can see it there a little bit of blue there. So just working this guy I'm thinning out his head a little bit and getting some things corrected before adding my final iridescent pastels. Now you will see at the end of the video how these pastels truly are iridescent. They sparkle literally for some reason when it's on my easel under the lighting that I have, you can't really appreciate the sparkle. So I take it in an area where I can move the painting and you'll see the iridescence. It's absolutely wonderful. Now I think that too much of this. I mean, it could look a little tacky. Some people think iridescent pastels are tacky already. You see a little bit of it here, but I think it's fun. So if you like to have fun like I do, I don't pull out my iridescence all the time. But for a subject matter like this, it really is a lot of fun. I'll work a little bit more on the hummingbird getting his little feet in there. Feet should be very subtle little gestural marks. Mine are a little dark here. I go back and lighten them up. You're going to see me work on more of the focal point flower here. This layering works just like other stick form of pastels, usually putting your darker values down first, gradually lightening them up as we add our other highlights to them. And I'm going to add some music for you guys as you watch me work. You will see how I at the end you'll see how I kind of lose some of the soft background there. There's some points where I kind of wish I just left it where it was. I'm getting better at that. I think I have music on often when I paint and I just get into the moment and I'm just having fun and I keep painting and I need to learn when to walk away. So but I was still very happy with the final and just like you guys, I learned something new with every painting. So enjoy the rest of this to some lovely music. And if you haven't yet, if you're still watching and you haven't yet clicked that like button, please do that. It really does help this video to get shared more and seen by more people. Also subscribe to this channel if you've been coming here for a while or you like what you see so far. Go ahead and click that subscribe button and leave me a comment. I love to hear from you just like that comment I shared earlier. It blesses me so much to know how the videos are helping you. I answer a lot of questions here on the YouTube channel. So I'd love to hear from you. All right, enjoy this music and I will be back at the end. Here is where I'm actually going to add a little bit more iridescent pastel to some of the flowers. And this is the point that I was saying that I wish I had stopped. I liked it at this stage, but that's okay. I still liked the final and look at this sparkle. This is what I mentioned about putting it under a different lighting and you can really see the sparkle. Here's the final. I really love this little hummingbird. He was so fun to paint. My mama loved hummingbirds so much. And here is a view of the full painting which I will be putting in my Etsy shop. You can find my Etsy shop link in every video description. And here's a little sneak peek at the next tutorial. Again, some pan pastels on unsanded paper. All right, artist. I hope you learned lots as always. God bless and happy painting. Thank you so much for joining me in today's lesson. I hope it blessed you and it would bless me if you would consider subscribing to my channel, liking this video and if you would like extra content or just to support Monet Cafe, consider becoming a patron of mine on my Patreon page. All right, artist, until next time. God bless and happy painting.