 Welcome, artists, into Monet Café Studio. I'm going to share with you a new technique that I used, combining alcohol and pastel in a way that I haven't before, and I absolutely love it. In this lesson, you will learn how to create an underpainting with some very soft pastels and liquefy them with regular drugstore alcohol in a technique that I haven't really done before, and I am such a fan of this technique that I am definitely going to use it again. So get ready to learn my new favorite way to start a pastel painting, and I think you're gonna love it. Let's first talk about this absolutely gorgeous reference image that I got from unsplash.com. The theme this month in Monet Café is painting marsh landscapes, and I have so been enjoying finding some beautiful marshy landscapes for my Patreon page. I have an album collected just for them to use this month. And since I live in the Tampa Bay area of Florida, I actually have many of my own marsh landscape reference images as well. Now I did tweak this image myself in Photoshop. I wanted to add some clouds to the sky, and if you're a patron of mine on my Patreon page, you will have access to this reference image. I often suggest to do a quick little sketch before you start a painting. Often you will work out some issues ahead of time before you commit to painting. And for this, I'm just using a little piece of drawing paper with a Prismacolor New Pastel. It's just a hard pastel. It's a good brand for sketching. And as you can see, I'm using my finger to do some blending. And one thing I learned from doing this preliminary sketch was that I didn't want such a square format. The reference image on unsplash was a bit more square, and I want it to be more of a portrait or tall format. So I changed the final painting to an 11 by 14 aspect ratio. The surface that I used for this painting is one that I love. It's called Fisher 400. The 400 represents the grit or the grain of it. It's a sanded pastel paper. If you're not familiar with sanded pastel papers, it's literally kind of like sandpaper, but a professional quality. The reason I like Fisher 400, it's almost just like UART, if any of you have heard of UART paper, but it doesn't warp or curl. So that's why I love it. I will primarily be using a set of very soft pastels. These are the Schminke 120 half-stick set. They are super soft and super vibrant. And after I purchased my set a few years ago, they didn't offer this half-stick set anymore. Well, good news, they do now. The set is available now on dakotapastels.com. Let's go to the Pastels tab and choose Schminke. And then click the Schminke half-stick sets. And they have it in two half sets, set A and a set B. Or you can buy the full 120 set. Now it's a really good price on the set and it's back-ordered. Everybody knows it's a good price. But as I always say, use what you have. Use what surface you have and what pastels you have. I don't mean to always encourage you guys to buy new products, but I like to share what I'm using. For this new technique or method that I'll be using, though, I do recommend that you use soft pastels. I mean on the range from hardness to softness. And before I get started sharing this new technique of using an alcohol underpainting with pastels, let me give you some content from a previous video. So you may know that I love underpaintings and I often like to do a tone of a color underneath my painting. It really influences the final piece. For this one, I used purple. And much will be the same techniques as to what I did with this particular video. But in this case, I took a spritzer bottle and I spray alcohol onto the surface and blend it with a brush. And I usually like to be a little haphazard and free with my alcohol. So it creates really a lot of drips and it makes the underpainting very loose. And I absolutely will still use this underpainting technique. I do like how an underpainting can influence the final color of a painting. This new technique though, is one that I think you're gonna love. All right, are you ready to get started? Here we go. I've gotten in a very light sketch in charcoal just so I don't have to do a lot of thinking. As I'm beginning this underpainting, I kind of have an idea of where some of the big elements are. I used primarily this Schminkus set for the underpainting, but soon you'll see where I add in a Sennelier pastel as well. And what I'm doing here is just getting in the basic values and colors before starting. And you'll see me add alcohol to this. And this is going to create what is called an underpainting. If you're brand new to painting or pastel painting, I remember when I first heard the term underpainting, I was like, what are you talking about? Why would you do a painting under a painting? Why don't you just start the final painting? And there are multiple reasons for that. I have many videos describing it and explaining different underpainting techniques, but it really does influence your final painting. I'll leave it at that for this tutorial. And since I have done underpaintings before, quite a few tutorials using alcohol, why is this technique different? And that's what I'm gonna explain to you right now. For this painting tutorial, I'm going to do an underpainting that is called local color. And local color is pretty easy. It actually refers to the actual color that you see in a scene. So I'm creating an underpainting with some of the same colors and values that I see in my reference image. Now, I know my reference image appears very warm and a little bit darker, but I'm getting in general colors and values. I know that my clouds are kinda gonna be a smoky gray blue. There's some magenta in the clouds. You know, the landscape is kind of green. So I'm really just getting in the basic colors and values, focused more primarily on values, getting the values right. Some of the warmth and more dramatic colors will be applied more once my underpainting is dry. And before I describe more of my process here, I wanted to give credit to the artist that inspired me to kind of tweak how I was doing my underpaintings for this particular strategy or technique. I recently saw a video by artist Liz Haywood Sullivan. Oh my goodness, her work is stupendous. And in the lesson, she shared some of these underpainting techniques and I realized I really liked her philosophy and her reasoning why she was using these techniques. So that's what I'm gonna explain and describe to you today. So like I said, I saw a video painting tutorial that she performed for a live audience and in the demonstration of the video, I saw how she recommended using soft pastels to begin with. Let me pause right there and say, often you hear and I've even recommended doing harder or applying harder pastels for an underpainting. One of the reasons you use harder pastels is because they don't take up as much tooth of the paper if you've been painting with pastels for a while. You know exactly what I'm talking about. We have a layering ability, especially when you're using sanded surfaces like this. And if you use your really soft pastels first, they kind of clog up that texture or that sanded surface and you kind of can't get as many layers if you start with the softest ones. So why am I starting with the softest ones now? Well, Liz Haywood described, which it made total sense to me, that because we are going to be adding alcohol to this, what's gonna happen is the soft pastels are going to obviously liquefy. And when you wet pastels, you could also use water by the way, when you wet pastels, they become like paint. And when they do that, you're not really taking up your layering ability. It's like you've transformed the pastels to a different consistency. And the reason you don't want to use hard pastels with this technique is often when you add water or alcohol to some of the brands of pastels that are a little harder, they won't liquefy quite the same. They end up being very linear or you can't blend them as well. You see the individual lines or strokes. So number one, use softer brands of pastels for the underpainting. And secondly, we're going to add the alcohol, which will liquefy the pastels and really just give you a very fresh beginning to start applying the pastels on top once it's dry. I also did something a little differently than I normally do when I do an alcohol underpainting. And this also was something that I noticed Liz Haywood doing when she was painting. And I'll share more about that when I get to the alcohol application portion, which is coming up real soon. So as you can see, I've just been getting in colors and values that I see in my reference image. And as I said before, my colors aren't exact for the reference image, but they're general. And I will add my more dramatic colors after it's dry. And right now you're still seeing a lot of the creamy surface color of the paper showing through and another benefit of liquefying the pastel with water or alcohol is it allows the pastel to really cover up all those blank spaces of that creamy paper showing through. Another benefit for me in adding the alcohol is it's a lot of fun. By the way, I have sped up this section in a few sections because the actual full painting, the underpainting process, the alcohol and the painting all took about maybe two, two and a half hours. So I didn't wanna make this video that long, but you can always slow it down on YouTube, by the way, click the settings icon on the lower right of the screen and choose to slow down the speed. All right, I'm praying here because I haven't really done it in this way before and I'm just asking the Lord to help me out. It's always a good idea before painting. All right, here is the alcohol. I'm using 70% isopropyl alcohol. You can get it at just about any drugstore. And I'm using a pretty wide brush. This brush is a three-quarter inch Royal SoftGrip SG-711. I'll have it in the description of this video as a clickable link, but I did like that it's very soft. I wanted it to blend my underpainting with a nice even application without a lot of lines or texture showing. And the good thing is this brush is very affordable, but as I always say, use what you have. And I wanted to use something with a handle so I could hold this easily. So I just got a wide mouth coffee mug and filled it with alcohol more than you saw there. I filled it about a third of the way full. And something else I did a little differently than I normally do with this underpainting is per the example of Liz Heywood Sullivan, she doesn't rinse her brush out. She just dips it right back into the alcohol. Now, with all of my other underpaintings where I've used alcohol, I'm always saying keep paper towels handy, wipe it off. And I think maybe I even did do that a little with this one if it was one of the darker colors, like that color that looks almost black. It's a Terry Ludwig eggplant color. That is another one of the pastels I used that's not part of the Schminke set. I may have wiped it off on a paper towel after that, but I don't know, maybe I didn't. But I watched Liz Heywood create a painting. She never cleaned her brush. She just kept dipping it back into the alcohol. And it really diluted the color enough to apply it again. It's a time saver for sure. So that was, again, something else that I learned and did for this underpainting and it worked great. Now, what's happening here is the pastel is becoming liquefied. And in case you're wondering why alcohol versus water, alcohol dries faster. And especially if you're doing a painting demonstration, that does come in handy. But if you were working outside doing some plein air painting in the heat, the alcohol's really gonna dry fast. So you might wanna use some water in a situation like that. And you can see I'm working in sections. I keep dipping my brush back into the alcohol. And I wouldn't say I'm being so careful about not getting one area into the other or one color into the other, but I'm definitely being more careful than some of my previous underpaintings where like I said, I get a little haphazard and crazy and very liberal with my application of alcohol. And there is a time and a place for that too as well. If you wanna really loose and maybe intuitive type of painting, very impressionistic, you might wanna go with the drippy, crazy fun technique as well. And sometimes it's just fun to spray this alcohol on and watch it drip around. So definitely don't lose those types of techniques. And just remember though, it will produce a different result. So I'm definitely speeding this up so you can kinda see the whole process in action. And I know this isn't a video on how to paint reflections, but just as a quick note, a reflection is basically just a mirror image of what is above you mirror image below. I base it kind of on the horizon line. And because I added the clouds in Photoshop, I kinda had to guess where some of these clouds were in the water. But I think you can see how the alcohol and how the paint is liquefying, the pastels are liquefying, how it's changing kind of the whole mood of the scene and how it appears to be getting darker. And that's because I'm moving this pastel around to cover up all of that kind of cream color of the paper that was showing through before. And I'm gonna give you another benefit to this particular type of alcohol and pastel application underpainting in just a minute after I talk about these pastels. Here are the pastels that I used for the underpainting. If you have the Schminke set, you can see the ones that I lifted up. And if you see white hair all over it, our cat got into my studio one time and laid on this set of pastels. And so she just still has some of her hair on there. I keep her out of the studio, by the way, cat lovers. I don't let her breathe my pastels. So in other than the Terry Ludwig egg plant color, this is the one that I used for the darks in the trees. There was one other pastel I used. It was this pretty magenta color that was in the Sennelier 40 half stick set. The Schminke set didn't really have any nice magentas. And I wanted some of that in the sky. Now my underpainting is dry. And before I start painting, I wanna show you another little set of pastels that I used. I knew I wanted some neutral colors as well. And the Schminke set is very vibrant. So I grabbed my set of Jack Richardson color wheel neutrals. It's 20 neutral colors that I find that's a really handy set to have as some good neutrals in any painting. And while we all love vibrant color, or most of us do anyway, if you have a painting that is all highly saturated color, nothing is going to get attention because everything is literally shouting with color. So having some neutrals incorporated in your painting is definitely going to give your painting a bit more focus if you wanna get good focal point energy going on. And this little set is a really great one. So this is one from the set. It's kind of a, almost a smoky blue color, a nice middle darker value. And I'm using it to just get some pastel value and color down in some of the darker cloud areas. Notice I have it on its side and I'm turning my pastel as I paint in directions that will mimic direction and shape of the cloud. Now let me share with you the other benefit from painting in this way. And that is you will end up, if you pay attention and keep a light touch, without so much pastel application. And the reason is, you've already got so much information down in your underpainting, it's local color. So you're really just going to be enhancing areas and maybe exaggerating some areas with color. And you don't have to put down nearly as many pastel applications. So Liz Heywood Sullivan shared that her end result is things are much less dusty in her studio and her final pastel paintings aren't heavy laden with pastels. It's really a much fresher look because of that. And I think it's definitely a technique that I'm going to be using more of in the future. And I think your painting is going to be more painterly. It's going to have more energy. And if you've ever done what I'm gonna mention now, you know exactly what I'm talking about, have you ever just worked on an area or a whole painting so much and layered so much that in the end your painting just feels kind of muddied and it loses that spontaneity and feeling of like energy and motion and movement. A lot of times that is because we have layered and layered and layered or corrected and over corrected. And this technique to me will give you a result of a more fresh and painterly and colorful painting for the final. And in the description of this video, I'm going to highlight those, I think it was four points about why I think this technique is a great underpainting technique and some of the advantages over different underpainting techniques that many artists have done and I have done. So that should be a nice little recap in the description of this video. Hey, while you're at it, would you go ahead and click that like button, the thumbs up button if you're still watching? I can't tell you how that affects how YouTube will share this video. So other artists can see it. And if you comment, hey, that's like icing on the cake, that's even more. So I really appreciate that and subscribe, of course. But this is the portion where my patrons are going to get the remainder of this tutorial, but don't worry, you guys are gonna get a little speed version of the rest of the painting. And if you're like, what's a patron? A patron is, I think of it as a family member of mine, an artistic brother and sister. And it's the people who support me on my Patreon page. It's only $5 a month and that $5 a month, it's not a subscription that you have to do monthly. You can cancel it anytime. But that little bit from, you know, a few artists really helps keep these free videos coming to Monet Cafe and my patrons get the full lessons and also I get to see your work. My patrons share their work in a homework album and it's just a beautiful community of artists. And I tell you what, it's very refreshing to have that little network of artist friends in a world that's so divisive. I find it's just a happy place. And now sit back, relax and watch this marshy landscape come to life as I add soft pastels. Also, it's only a couple of more minutes to the end of the video. So please watch to the end. That also helps with my YouTube standing and how it will share this video. If you would like the full version of this painting tutorial that's on my Patreon page, which includes commentary throughout the, almost the whole rest of the painting and much slower speeds, you can click the link that you'll see here in the top right or in the description of this video. All right, here's some lovely music. Enjoy and I'll be back at the end. Adding a few finishing marks, softening some of the edges of the clouds and carving into them negatively to make some fun and soft cloud shapes. Also, I added a little bit more vibrant greens to the grasses. And here's a closer view where I zoom in. I'm sorry for the vertical format. I think I filmed this for Instagram, but you can sort of see a little bit more of the detail. And I loved the soft moody effect. And I've seen marsh scenes very similar to this. What a blessing, right? So I hope you enjoyed this, learned a lot. I think if you try the technique and the way I did this under painting, I think you'll love it. So let me know what you think in the comments. Subscribe, of course, if you haven't already. Become a patron if you would like the full content of this video. By the way, they're ad-free on my Patreon page as well. And check out more of the lessons here on the Monet Cafe channel. There are hundreds of free lessons. All right, everyone, God bless and happy painting.