 Welcome to Monet Cafe. I'm artist Susan Jenkins. I'm glad you're here and today we're going to be learning about how to paint a Monet style lily pond. It's a lesson in impressionism. And the reference photo for this tutorial is from unsplash.com. It's a great site for copyright free reference images. And photo credit goes to Adora. Good enough. I like that last name. And if you haven't subscribed yet to this channel, I hope you will. It's a great place to learn and have fun. Also, these free videos offered to you on Monet Cafe are brought to you by the faithful support of my patrons. For only $5 a month you can support this channel, keep these free videos coming, and my patrons get extra content as in this video where they'll be receiving my color analysis for the colors chosen for this particular painting. I also get to meet my patrons virtually online. My patrons get to share their works with me in our homework album where they do lessons from some of these tutorials and we just have a lot of fun. In this lesson I'll be using Luxe Archival Professional Sanded Art Paper. You can use whatever you have for this lesson, but I am coming to love this paper. It is a beautifully sanded, smooth surface that takes water very well. Any water-based mediums very well, and it is durable and awesome. In this lesson I will be teaching on creating a glowing underpainting. I use some acrylic inks that I'll share about to create this really golden glowing underpainting. So let's dive right in. I'm using Daylor Rowney acrylic inks. These are the same even though the labels are different. I am using a fluorescent pink, an Indian yellow, and one called Purple Lake. It's a great dark. What I'm doing, I just have some bowls because I want to use a wide brush. I needed something large enough for that big ol' brush to fit into. I'm just giving myself two dropper fulls of each. By the way my painting surface size is 11 inches by 14 inches. I also needed some water and some paper towels. I'm going to talk about my process here, but I wanted to also share that if you don't have these products you can use pastels for an underpainting. You basically would use similar colors, apply in the large shapes, and then you can wet it with water or alcohol. Pastel turns into paint when you wet it. Also notice the simplicity of my basic sketch. I just use a piece of charcoal sketched in these big shapes. I specifically liked how I had that V shape in the upper sky and a reverse V in the water. And now let's go ahead and apply these acrylic inks. So now I'm speeding this up just so I can actually get to the pastel painting part. But I'm using, I decided to go ahead and apply more of a water wash. You see how it's kind of drippy there. I started with just only 100% acrylic ink and I realized the color was a little bit bold. So I decided just to give it more of a wash feel with some water. So that's why I had the water to be able to change the values a bit. When you add water to the acrylic inks it's going to lighten the values. You see how I'm making those distant trees a little bit lighter. So I'm just kind of alternating between the Indian yellow and the fluorescent pink. And notice my brush strokes. I'm using my brush to kind of get flat feel for the water and also to keep it very loose. You might be thinking, why would you use a brush that big? Well, this is the underpainting and this is the stage where we're just getting in big shapes. It's going to help to give that feeling of impressionism when you finally get to painting because you want it loose and painterly. Now I added some of the fluorescent pink to the sky. See how that warmed it up. The reason I'm using these two colors, they create such a glow when you combine them together. Indian yellow and fluorescent pink. Again, you could use pastels for this. You don't have to use these exact colors. There's a lot of flexibility in this. So now I'm just kind of dabbing in with the edge of the brush. Just some little tree shapes back there. Notice how the values are getting lighter in the distance. It's going to stay warm in the distance for the duration of this painting because the sun is back there. Now I'm going to add some of the purple Lake Daylor Rowney acrylic ink. And it's going to help with, I'm going to dilute it a little bit with water too. I don't want it full strength. I like my little ball jar there. But I am going to share what parents say sometimes, do as I say, not as I do, because I thought I'd use this little scrubby that you see me using here. I thought it would work well. It did at first for getting in kind of some of those rough edges on the trees. But it, because the sanded paper is so sanded, it was catching a bit on the sanded surface. So I've used a sponge before for this in the past. So just be careful. You can use a brush, okay, like another paintbrush. I could have even used the large paintbrush that I used before. But I kept using this for the rest of this just to have it consistent. And it did work, but that's just a warning. Find something that blends better. So my advice is to use a brush for this stage, not one of these little things that I use for blending sometimes. And now, like I said, you could have used a brush before. But now because I'm working with some of the little edges, I used a small fan brush. And I'm just turning this little fan brush here and there to give the feeling. A lot of this gets covered up, but it gets the mood going. The feeling of little wispy branches coming out from the trees. Much of this that I've been applying so far has been diluted. It's the Purple Lake with some water. Like I said, I kind of play around with the different proportions of water to acrylic ink. But pretty soon, you're going to see me applying more of the acrylic ink in almost 100%. And what I'm doing here is I'm just, now that's 100% acrylic ink. That's going to be my darkest value. Anything in the foreground, especially vertical elements like trees, are typically your darkest value in a painting. And then gradually things lighten up as they go into a distance. Just that knowledge alone and being able to apply that is going to give depth to your painting. Just decreasing values or making them lighter in the distance. So you see how that's already feeling like it has a sense of depth. And now I get the question all the time, why an underpainting if you cover it up all the time? Oh, here I'm doing my reflections. I'll get back to that. Basically just pulling down. I'm getting some of the acrylic ink on the fan brush and just pulling down the basic values that are in the trees and pulling it down for those reflections. But the value, I mean the benefit of an underpainting is that I try not to cover it all up. And so some of this beautiful golden color will peek through to your painting. And it influences your color choices. And regarding color choices, let's talk about this pastel set. It is the 120 half stick set of Schminke, I always say Schminke pastels. It's a German made pastel. And I'm going to share with you a little bit about it and some of your options for pastels for this particular tutorial. Now I found this very interesting on the Schminke website. You can actually find a video on how their pastels are made. I'm fascinated by this. I went to Mount Vision Pastel Manufacturing Company here in Tampa to learn of this process. One of the reasons better pastel, soft pastels are so vibrant, beautiful, and expensive is because they are made primarily from pure pigment. That's why you get such great color. There's very little binder in these pastels. So he describes in this video a lot about this manufacturing process. And I love the fact that these pastels are so buttery and smooth. But I will share they are quite expensive. It was neat how they showed how they hand label these. Now personally, I don't like labels. I don't like the fuss of having to take them off. And the great thing is with half stick sets, you don't have any labels on them. And also too, you get more color for your money. I got my half stick set from Dakota Pastels. I love this company. They have so many things related to pastels. But they were out of this particular set. I did some searching around. I found another little Schminke set on Amazon. But I could not find this 120 half stick set available. But I'm going to share with you a great set that is a great price right now. This is the Sennelier, also soft and wonderful pastels. It's their 120 half stick set called the Paris Collection. It's only $153 right now. Normally over $200. And I also have this in my Amazon shop. I have the link to my Amazon shop in every video under the category of pastels and painting products. You'll see a lot of the pastels I recommend. And the second one in is the Sennelier Paris Collection set. I love this set. So it's a great alternative to the Schminke pastels that I'll be using. So you can browse through my Amazon shop and find other pastels that I recommend. All right, we're really gonna paint now. I love painting in the early morning hours and enjoying my cup of coffee. This is a cup my mama bought me. Many of you know my mama passed away about six months ago. And I miss her so much. She was always the first one I would share a new painting or a completed painting with. All right, so I've got one of these beautiful blues that I'm using for the sky and the water. Like I mentioned at the beginning, you've got a nice kind of v-shape coming in with the sky and then kind of a little reverse v if you look at the reference photo of the reflection in the water. The rest of all that dark in the water are the reflections from the trees and even the lily pads themselves. So the point of this video is about Monet and lily pad or lily pond painting and also Impressionism. And with a painting that you would like to be more painterly and impressionistic, try to avoid getting too caught up on any one thing right away. Work the hole in other words. Also try to avoid over blending or feeling like you've got to get such a firm application of pastel down. It's best to have really light strokes at the beginning. And I'm using a piece of pipe foam insulation right now to blend with. I don't blend really many times in a painting other than the initial stages, occasionally I will, but blending originally will just kind of cover things. I did like that yellow poking peeking through, but you see you still see the influence of that Indian yellow in the sky, especially in the sky and even in the water. So even though I am applying pastels, I think you will see even by the end of the painting that the underpainting color does influence the final piece. I've done experiments where I've actually done the same painting, one with two different underpainting strategies, and it definitely affects the final. So now I'm getting in some deeper blues. Notice what I'm doing here. I had a chart in the last video. Oh this is the 40 set of Sennelier pastels. This little 40 set is awesome. I've created paintings just in them with just this set alone. I got one of the pretty kind of turquoise colors there, but what I was going to say before is I have a neat chart I think that was in the video one or two before this where I have you can go click the link. It shows how landscapes behave from the horizon line. If you consider the sky way up in the high parts of the sky, the values are usually a bit darker and they gradually get lighter as they get to the horizon. Down in the landscape part, whether it's a reflection like this or grass, it's typically darker. At the bottom works to lighter at the horizon line. So just think of the horizon line as the meeting point to where things gradually get lighter. And of course with this with water whatever's above is going to be reflected below. I'll talk a little bit more about reflections in a minute. That set was the Terry Ludwig Dark set. Terry Ludwig Pastels is an American made pastel company. The people there are great. They're just great to deal with. The product is great. I love the shape of these pastels too. Mine, I break them. I don't always break the Terry Ludwig Pastels. They don't come in half sticks so sometimes I make my own half sticks. It's a nice little size to work with. But the dark set of Terry Ludwig's comes in two. It's set one and set two. So check that out. Good darks is really really important for establishing depth and value in your painting. And so this is kind of a burgundy deep mauve color. And I wanted to use this instead of going to something really dark. The darkest dark I usually ever use is a Terry Ludwig eggplant color. I think it's P100 something 100. And it is so dark it looks black but I avoid black because the black color is really void of color and I like a dark that has a little bit more of a hue to it. So I'm still using this little burgundy one but notice what's happening as I'm working on the background trees. I'm not applying as much pressure. I'm keeping it really light because what did we say before things in the distance typically get lighter in value. And be careful with reference images. You know the one that I'm using the distant trees look very dark. I would have had a tendency early on in my painting career to paint those as dark as the foreground trees. But when we learn these little techniques of painting we can establish more depth by learning these little rules. All right now like I said we're going to have some a lot of reflections in this painting. Why? Because we're dealing with water. And we're going to have reflections from the trees into the water. And then we've got the lily pads covering the lily. They're almost like lily fields. They're groupings of lily pads. We've got those covering the water. So it could be overwhelming at first because we're seeing all of this information and all of these shapes and detail. But that's the point of this video is learning to simplify it so that our painting is suggestive rather than realistic. And we still want to get some things right. What I'm doing now I am getting a general idea of where some of these lily pad groupings are. Literally just think of them as shapes. Don't get overwhelmed with so much of what's going on with each one. Just consider okay these are just shapes going into the distance. They're going to do the same thing other shapes do. They're going to gradually get smaller and closer together just like I talk about with flowers when we paint fields of flowers. So keep that in mind. Now I'm just getting some more of those. I'm measuring here. I'm measuring kind of where these lily pads are going to go or lily groupings and also where the reflections are. Typically here's a hint with reflections. I'll go back to talking about my measuring of the lily groupings. A hint with reflections is whatever is above that whole tree shape if you turn your painting sideways it's going to mirror image whatever is above. About the same size going down into the water. And the same with the background trees. So I am just getting in these general general. I'm using the vine charcoal or willow charcoal. It's just a stick of charcoal. I also have this on my amazon shop. I love these sticks because they help you to keep a gestural feel. Now you can see I've shaped in some of these lily pad groupings. Again it's just shapes going into the distance. I haven't painted any lily pads or anything real specific. Now I am using my little blending tool again to get in. Oh no I'm actually using am I yeah that's the blending tool to blend in some of these background trees just to get rid of some of that texture and everything showing through the magenta color or that fluorescent pink and an indian yellow color that I've used is still peeking through. Can you see that? So I'm blending them in to give them a bit more form to them. And I love the different variation of the tree line. The different shapes of trees. That tree was a little curved over I was pointing at. I'm going to fix that. Now I'm blending a little bit more of some of the darks in this tree. Also just to kind of soften things up a little bit. I also use my blending tool sometimes almost like a paintbrush. I get a little bit of the pastel on it and then I use it in another area like to paint with. Alright now I'm kind of shaping some of these forms. Now I'm thinking about the negative spaces between these lily groupings. Really we're doing a lot of negative painting in this whereas we're painting the spaces in between. I'm going to talk about that a bit more when I get to some of the trees. But we're definitely painting in between spaces between these lily pads. And if you have a problem or a challenge doing this I suggest to squint your eyes like a lot where you just have a barely a little slit and look at your reference image. And then you'll be able to filter out all of the detail and just see the shapes. And that's one of my biggest suggestions with impressionistic painting is to avoid overworking and over detailing things. We are suggesting things. And then what we have the liberty and the artistic license to do is then once you've suggested things then you have the opportunity to determine artistically what you want to say. What is the focal point. And for me the focal point was bringing some of those of course the water. I've got a great directional focal point right there just pulling you right in. I wanted the water to be more of the focal point than the sky. So even though I do work on the sky a little bit more even though the sky I add these gorgeous colors to it and everything I tone it down just a little bit at the end and I'll show you how I do that to be able to let that water be the focal point. So the water's the focal point and then you'll see towards the end I add specifically or strategically positioned lilies these bright pretty lilies kind of leading you in very gesturally into the painting. All right so now you see what I mean about suggestion. Look at these. These are just really light marks that I've made on top of the lily groupings. And here's what I'm gonna mention later about negative painting. You might be like well I'm using my blending tool again. You might be like well you're just covering up all those little spaces you added. Well I can kind of see them. I still can kind of see where they are. But what I'm going to do is I'm going to carve into this lily pad mass right now and I'm doing that by adding my darks. Now this is again the this is the Terry Ludwig dark this one I happen to have with a little bit of a sort of a point to it because I use this one often in this way. It kind of turns itself into a pastel with a point. But it helps me to kind of get into some of those spaces. So I'm just analyzing my reference photo giving my tree a little bit more dark. It's going to really make it feel like it's the foreground tree. And also too now I'm going to be getting to the point of where I'm not using my blending tool as much anymore because my pastels will eventually start to blend themselves. You might think some of the colors I'm using or this particular color looks so dark and it does right now. But when I start adding some of the other colors that's the beauty of this sanded paper. You can get so many layers and the colors start interacting with each other and playing with each other. So that's why it's really great to let your pastels blend each other because it's going to have that beautiful color interaction rather than just over blending everything and that muddies your color anyway. So it looks a little weird right now. This is what I heard some artists years ago called like the adolescent stage. You know how we're all a little dorky in our teenage years? Well not some people. I was but um but anyway I used to say to my husband all the time oh my gosh I can't paint look at this this is terrible. He'd be like you say that all the time keep working on it. It'll it'll get better and it would you know um not always but um don't get frustrated if your painting looks like this sometimes. Okay we we got to break out of that mold as to think your painting is going to look like this complete painting at the beginning stages. This is part of the painting process and uh and it does come together once you learn these things so be confident. So I'm just getting in little shapes. I'm really uh I'm zoning out and I'm just squiggling in little shapes of where I see dark values and I do think I use the blending tool um a little is it now? Not yet. Now I'm using a really dark like a foresty green. See how I'm letting the pastel do the blending here? I'm pulling down. Reflections typically come down um when you're creating them you're painting them into the water and I will use the blending tool a little later to pull my reflections down a bit more. It's going to soften this and make it feel like water. You'll see when I get to that. Now I'm still using that dark green um keep in mind these lily groupings even have little reflections. They have height. Anything that has height over the water you're going to get a little reflection. They're only going to be the height of the lily pad above the water um just like the trees are. So if you squint your eyes you can see where I've got the big darker groupings of trees uh coming down as reflections into the water and then pretty soon I'm going to start carving in those lily pad shapes. Adding a little bit of this foresty green to the background even though things typically cool off in the distance with color temperature often I make my and I still do with these make my background trees a little bit more um cooler like cooler greens um with this in particular I had such a what drew me to this reference image was there seemed to be this glow behind these trees that's why at the end you'll see me grab some of these yellowy greens to do on the treetops but it caused the trees to have more warmth that's what happens when the sun is there you get warmer in the sun and things do too as well when you got a sun set like that you've got distant trees sorry clear my throat um the sun's going to warm them up a bit now if the sun's really high in the sky or whatever your distant trees are going to be cooler so just keep in mind um your light source where it is and that will help you too um now I am veering from this reference photo with with some things and you'll get more confident as you paint with that um I do recommend good drawing skills it is a good idea to practice sketching and drawing the better you get at that the better your paintings are going to be I've been talking for about 25 minutes so I think I'm going to add some music and give you guys some captions every so often here also too I am going to share a lovely quote with you from Monet Cafe or a couple of quotes this month in Monet Cafe we've been focusing on Monet inspired artwork and of course I love Monet you know that's why I named this channel Monet Cafe and I just love his philosophies on things he says everyone discusses my art and pretends to understand as if it were necessary to understand when it's simply necessary to love I like that I would like to paint the way a bird sings me too that's so cool what keeps my heart awake is colorful silence man I can see colors in the silence does anybody else dream of color I do all the time it's on the strength of observation and reflection that one finds a way Claude Monet what a cool dude and just so you know this final video will end up being nearly 40 minutes also too just so you know the final I mean the original painting took I think under three hours but probably close to that so don't feel like you have to rush things like this often I don't take that long to paint something but I really wanted to just take my time and create something that I felt good about so I did love this painting also too you'll see at the end I have this original as long as it's available on my Etsy shop and it's an 11 by 14 image I also have it available on my Fine Art America account where you can buy prints and other products with this painting they do great work you can get actually canvas prints even of your own work if you're an artist you can upload your images make sure they're good high resolution images and do or get a canvas print made and you can hang it directly on your wall I like canvas prints I always recommend getting them in a matte finish rather than the glossy just so you know look I can't be quiet you probably see me trying right now to make sure I have my reflections the same as the sky what I'm doing there on the side there is I'm rubbing the pastel because any handmade oh then I'm praising the Lord I'm listening to praise and worship music any handmade pastels because of the way they cut them you might have seen in the beginning part of this video they get these little tails on them so sometimes you have to rub that off so you can use the side like I do so that's what I was doing there all right here's a little rough of that stage you see how I carved in the lily pads I use the dark reflection of the trees to carve in the lily pads look at that gorgeous blue isn't that so pretty it's like a teal blue I can't quit talking to you guys but see how the skies come into life now so this is when it starts getting fun all that process before has really just been getting in my general values my general colors my really loose beginnings and now I can start getting fun with color so okay now I will be quiet was there something else I was trying to say another point if you guys have been on this channel long you know I can get on a tangent but I'm pretty good at coming back to my point I may have forgotten this one though so anyway if you guys are part of my patreon group god bless you if I will give a final salutation at the end if you're part of the Monet cafe art group on facebook you guys are awesome I I don't talk about y'all as much as I do my patrons but I should I just love that we have over 14,000 members in that group that that's a free group get on facebook find Monet cafe art group I just love seeing how many levels of artists there are on there and how everybody helps each other so golly I might as well just keep talking here you see how now I'm adding a little bit of these greens I'm getting my my values are gradually getting lighter I don't want to go too light too soon but with pastels we typically work dark to light you've got to put something dark down for the contrast to be able to put something light on top of it so I'm still just suggesting things notice I will never in this whole painting draw a leaf or paint a leaf they're just little shapes I'm just suggesting the idea and when things are this far away you don't see you don't see leaves anyway I did give the suggestion of on the right the willow tree has those weeping things and I just suggested it that's all you do a little direction oh now here I'm getting some of these pretty greens member has said the sun was kind of hitting the tops of these trees so I'm just using some of these pretty greens I used I would say 80% of these schminke pastels but I did use some other pastels like I've been mentioning the Terry Ludwigs and things and once again patrons you're going to get the lowdown on everything so see how it's coming to life now see the little highlights it's starting to look like something right this is what you hope for okay guys now really I'm going to add some music I thought since this was a Monet inspired painting I don't know if classical music just seemed appropriate this is Blue Danube by Strauss I might have room for some other classical music after this song so enjoy and I'll be back well that music was certainly exciting I think it made the process fun so I hope you enjoyed this here is the final the original and it will be available in my etsy shop as long as it is available along with other originals of mine I really hope you learned something and that you had fun and if you haven't subscribed yet I hope you will we have a lot of fun here it's a great group and I just love that we have artists all over the world all right guys god bless and happy painting