 Welcome to Monet Café, artists, visitors, and subscribers. I'm artist Susan Jenkins. Today we're going to have so much fun here in Monet Café painting little cute little birds. These are going to be a little bit more whimsical and actually my patrons will have a chance to win this painting. Now the painting tutorial for this particular painting will be available only for my patrons but again there'll be a chance to win and if you sign up to become one of my patrons before the end of January I'm going to have a drawing on February 3rd then you too can have a chance to win this painting and have access to all of my patreon content videos. Okay so if you're going to do any kind of a painting where you don't have a reference photo and you're kind of coming up with an idea on your own it's a good idea to do some research. So I looked at those cute little paintings I just printed a few of them out and I played around with doing some sketches of birds on a wire. There's all kinds of different ways you can do this and my goal here is to encourage you of course you can recreate what I paint here but to learn to create things yourself and it's often a good idea just to do some sketches like this and have some fun play around. Now I just have a piece of sketch paper here and I'm going to kind of talk you through some of the ideas and ways that you can approach drawing and painting whimsical birds. All right here is the first one. One of them is by drawing kind of like a pear shape. You see how that it's kind of like a pear then you draw a little beak and a tail on it and again these are very simple whimsical birds. We're not getting into bird realism here or bird anatomy but this is a general idea. I thought it would be fun to draw one upside down. That's the neat thing about birds is they have such personality you just never know what they're going to do. I noticed too how I kind of drew that little crest on that one that was upside down that would be more representative of like a cardinal or a blue jay or even a parrot. You know they kind of have that feather that goes across the top of their head. So watch again. Oh no this is my different technique. A circle and a circle. This might be the easier one. You basically draw a little circle for a head, a big circle for a body, some little feet and a tail and that one I gave a crest to him too. Here is another with the little pear shape idea with a little tail. The tails kind of go back sometimes down sometimes. If you look at any reference photo you can get a general idea. And again this is just one approach. If you choose to do the little pear whimsical bird with the tail that's one way to do it. And I think I found I liked the little circular method better and I'll share why later doing the two circles. This is still again a little this guy looks like a parrot. Again kind of with the little the shape of his head almost with that little crest there. This was an example of some that I saw some artist had done where the birds were facing the opposite direction. I thought it was really kind of interesting and they were all kind of cuddled together like a family. I thought that was so cute. Okay more birds and more techniques. This is kind of my little sketch of the birds that were looking up. I just thought they looked like they were looking up and thinking of something hopeful or praising the Lord. And again kind of a pear shape with a little wing. There again little pear shape and you put the beak on the top. And the wing is kind of like just a little S shape curve. And the one in the middle had a little shorter tail. You might want to do one looking the opposite direction. So you know I'm speeding these up but I think you could get the idea. You could kind of watch and kind of try to recreate it. Oh and I added a little extra one. A little guy on the side. I always like to add one looking kind of like off into the distance. I keep a a bunch of different supplies but a bag of little pieces of pastel paper. In this case I had some Sennelier paper. Now here is my Terry Ludwig Maggie Price set. I'm going to show you or my patrons actually in the longer extended version me actually picking out all the pastels. This is my little example of my repurposed Sennelier Lecart box that some pastels actually came in. It makes for a great little working palette because it has the little sections. I added the little black foam in each section. That's my little piece of aluminum foil that basically just catches my pastel dust. It works great. Now it's time to get started with some actual pastels. Okay this is the painting these next two actually are going to be the ones that are on the Monet Cafe YouTube channel. The final one with the birds on the wire with the moonlight in the back. That's going to be for the extended Patreon version. This is a piece of the Sennelier Lecart paper I showed before pulling it out of the bag and it's a nice kind of coarse surface. It does take a lot of layers. I'm just getting an idea sketching this out with a little charcoal pencil. Here's how I was explaining my circle technique. I find it's the two circles is nice for kind of getting the proportions of the bird and also when I draw the lower circle I draw it on the branch or above the branch wherever it needs to be. In this case I noticed the little kingfisher. He was sitting his little rear end was sitting right on the branch and so is the little I think of this other one as the girl. She is just squatted down right there on that branch so I draw the circle right on it and her little feet are going to be kind of tucked underneath there. But you see the concept of the two I didn't have to literally draw the two circles with that second one but it's the same idea. There's a circular part for the head and a circular part for the body. So if that helps you in sketching that might be a neat little tip. Now these king fixtures they have short little almost like rectangular tails. They're really cute. I wanted to let you know too this image that I'm using I'm literally just doing this for practice. You are welcome to recreate this painting use this photo but because it's not from a site I think it was from some nature site with some facts about kingfishers but don't market it as your own work. I mean give it away as a gift but just keep that in mind this is not a copyright free photo. This is just for some bird practice and I'll probably give this one away as a gift or keep it myself. Anyway so I wanted to give some little tips on working with these pastels with doing birds. I find that it works very similar in strategy to painting a landscape and if you've watched many of my videos you know I always talk about darks first work dark to light and even with flowers you work dark to light and the way I like to think of it is you've got to get the darks down first for the light to have something to contrast against or to hang on to or to show up. So that usually is the best way to approach this at least for me anyway. So you can see I've kind of gotten all the darker values in. I know that those little light areas by his eye and his back of his head there they're going to be lighter than that but again I got down a little bit of a darker value first. Now you see how those little brighter bits of turquoise on the back there they show up now because I had a darker value underneath and it's always a good idea with a bird or something especially whimsical like this to have the black eye and then one little white dot for the reflection and you can kind of control where it looks like the bird is looking. I have found of course look how big that Terry Ludwig pastel is compared to this little teeny bird that I'm painting. There's pros and cons about this. A con is that again like you just saw me with that pencil sometimes you just can't get it in the right place because it's so big you can't find a corner. I'm using a little teeny new pastel of white to get that white in the eye. The the pro of using big chunky pastels is it really helps you to stay loose and painterly. You can only kind of get the big blocking in shapes that I find it helps things to stay loose and painterly. Okay again so with this second little birdie notice I got the darker blue on the back and the darker reddish brownish tone for the belly and now I'm adding the highlights. I'm using the pastel to kind of curve that belly so it has some dimension to it. Now I'm adding a little bit of the lighter blue on top of that darker blue. It gives it some depth same with the little tail and I also wanted to mention here that the size of this Sennelier Lecart paper I'm using when you saw the bag and I pulled out a bunch of them I had cut up pre-cut a lot of them to be what's called A-C-E-O size. That's an acronym that stands for Art Cards Editions and Originals. It has a history to why it's called that. I just call them artist trading cards because they're little and artists like to use them to give away to other artists. I always think that will be a neat thing to do in our Monet Cafe group to see who would like to participate and pair up artists to swap their work with these little artist trading cards. So they're kind of fun. The size is three and a half by two and a half or flip-flop if you want to do it vertically. Mine are a little bit bigger than that that I'm working on now because I had drawn I mean I cut them with a little slight border so if I wanted to tape around the edges and have a little border I could. So mine's a little bit bigger than the standard artist trading card size. All right I love to add purple for shadows and some of my darks. It just really adds some dimension and some more color. I also want to mention that while these are this reference photo is not a copyright-free reference photo the one painting that I will do that will be exclusive for my patrons of the birds on a wire you saw at the beginning that's out of my head okay so that's my my creation that you are welcome to recreate you can recreate this one too but with the other one you could recreate it. I often get asked by artists hey I recreated your painting can I sell it can I share it of course you can that's why I have this channel I do this for you and to share it for me too of course I love painting but I love sharing and if you guys want to recreate something that I let you know this is a fine photo to use and you do whatever you want to do with it. I mean obviously it would be great if you give me some credit and say hey I got this I love to see that too I thanks Susan I recreated your painting and also on Instagram if you want a hashtag Monet Cafe Art Group I've noticed a lot of people have done that and it's getting quite a bit of your artwork on that hashtag so that would be a neat idea Monet Cafe Art Group I do have the little hyphen at Cafe in that just so you know anyway okay so here we go same thing with this little branch I decided not to have any craziness of the other branches in the background and just have that one but notice the branch I put the dark color down first now I'm adding some of these spicier kind of a pinkish red it's a cool red and now I'm getting a little bit lighter remember what I said about later I would add the lights to the little areas under their neck adding a little more highlights for their eyes and and these are so fun if you wanted to do a different variety of bird it's the same concept I noticed that if you use that little circle technique they just have different proportions you know and based on how they're leaning or how they're looking but play around with it with some sketches and and you could really create whatever bird species that you would like now I'm adding a little bit of the lighter topi color on top of the branch I think I might add some maybe brown now in this background I'm moving that to get to that part this is I'll also do this in the other painting I do with the birds on the wire for my patron page it's the same technique that I am basically just taking the pastel and lightly kind of glazing around the birds in the background and notice I didn't have to cover the whole area I think that's one of the mistakes that I made early in art and I think a lot of artists do is you feel like you've got to really get a saturated or or heavy application of pastel down and blend blend blend and you don't that actually ends ends up taking away from the painterly look and it also crushes the pastel so you don't get that vibrancy anymore you end up getting kind of a dead flat color instead of a richness to it that these pastels have with their little crystals that they have at them so don't over blend and don't feel like you've got to rub rub rub or press so hard just continue to layer with some colors and you'll get as you can see I've got I'm like what on my third or fourth color here and just working around the birds and it creates just I don't know just a more of an interesting background than if you just blended or uses used one or two colors also notice that in my birds and in my background I have what I love and I strive for is loose painterly edges you don't see any hard hard lines I should say I have edges more than lines I didn't draw with the pastels any hard circular lines around the birds or any outlines around the birds it's really where one edge meets the other edge and that's what gives that soft painterly feeling okay I'm going to add some music here I'm so sorry about my hair sometimes I just have to get my head over and I can't work around my little camera that I have set up so I'm going to put on some music let you guys watch the rest of this little demonstration I've got the basics done here so I'm just adding a little bit of spice here and there and then we'll go on to our second whimsical bird painting oh that was so much fun I love doing these little birdies okay so here we go cute little king fishers on a branch now oh and dusty fingers you know that's part of pastel painting now it's time to get on to these other little whimsical birds that I did just kind of for practice I'm just going to for this demo gonna do the second two on the wire again these were just kind of for me to practice before I went on to a more serious painting and it was a lot of fun this piece of paper is what's called UART DARK and it doesn't look as dark in this video here but and it's it's kind of more of a gray than a black but this is the 800 grit and it is smoother obviously the higher the number the smoother it is than the normal 400 grit that I use and there's advantages and disadvantages to that the advantage is that because it's smoother you can get a little bit more detail work pastel pencils work great on this surface so if you're doing something that does have a bit more details for example if you have the really rough coarse paper it's more about layering and this surface you can really get some lines in there and not have it so bumpy I guess that's the way to put it and the disadvantage to the smoother surface is that because it's smoother you can't get quite as many layers I find you still can get a decent amount of layers on it but it's not quite the amount of layers you can get on the UART 400 so what's the advantage about layering anyway the advantage is multiple with a surface that you can get a lot of layering like I was explaining before when you layer colors on top of each other you create interest those those colors kind of vibrate and play upon each other and you get much more colorful and dynamic artwork that's what I find anyway swear if you just put flat colors down just a layer or two it's not as rich it's not as three-dimensional or as dynamic that's what I find so all right so this is you're watching here kind of a same deal as before I this I actually did this painting before I did the other kingfishers and so that's where I had kind of learned myself that it is better to get the darks down first here on this one I worked more on just getting the actual color in which you can do it that way too if you want but I liked the richness of layering the dark to light strategy or technique in this all right so since I shared a lot of commentary on the first little kingfisher painting I'm just going to play some music here for these two paintings this kingfisher and then the cardinal all right enjoy guys now wasn't that fun I really do enjoy doing these cute little birds now it is time now to go on to the final painting one that I I did see another painting I liked where it had like a whimsical birds on a wire with like a sun behind it and I liked that so I decided to use that theme but I my birds that I'm using are rins uh w-r-e-n and what I did is I just got online and found a whole bunch of different rins facing different ways there's one there kind of the one I'm drawing there some are looking up some are squawking at another one and there's one hanging upside down and so you can get real creative once you learn the little technique of kind of how to draw the little circle you can draw them where they go or where the bird is this one was leaning over so I just did and he was squawking so I just did the circles kind of leaning like that and his tail was up like he was angry and then he had his little wing so uh once you get the hang of these they're really not all that hard and um oh I wanted to show you look at this little teeny baby rin is that like the cutest thing you've ever seen I just had to show you that my heart just melted it's so cute anyway so um another technique too like I said is I lightly draw in the wire where it's going to be but I don't commit to it because it's better to kind of draw the wire under their feet when you're done you'll see what I'm talking about later this one was right on the wire so I drew the circle he again like the kingfisher's the beginning he was squatted down on the wire um so I that's how I uh I put the circle down there on the wire already this one too he had um his body sitting on the wire but if I'm correct this one had his legs all splayed out to the side and um I just thought that added some variety um and compositionally I'm trying to I almost put them in pairs a little bit and uh you don't want them to be like soldiers all in a row with the exact same spacing um so that's why with some of them I think the ones on the ends here I gave them a little bit more spacing uh it's kind of like flowers in a field trees in a field um you don't want them to all be equidistant apart there's a it's a lot more beautiful if you give some variety to it this little guy liked him kind of looking up like he was praising god or or praying or looking at another bird and then again I always like to have one little one that's just kind of doing his own thing now this one I drew it facing the other this way that you see here and I was like it just didn't feel right so I decided to flip flop him around uh again I didn't want him paying attention to the other birds I wanted him just doing his own thing I always think of myself as that bird so he's going to be just kind of like I just plopped down on this wire and I don't even care about these other birds I'm just looking over here at something else okay so that was kind of my reasoning and fun behind uh choosing the birds that I did again now you see how I'm drawing the wire under their feet that one bird's feet were kind of too low not that one but that one see how the wire had to dip down so what I do is I change the bird's feet to match the wire and when I do the painting you will see that too now here's my idea of the I ended up making it a moon a night scene so this was a moon and kind of a dark bluish sky this is just my charcoal black and white version just again it's always a good idea to get a little sketch or a little idea especially when it's something kind of from your imagination you know you better get something down before you commit to the pastels now this is the portion of the video that will be patreon only content so how do you become a patron if you're not already it's just five dollars a month you can cancel at any time and you go to www.patreon.com slash Susan Jenkins it's just a neat way that others can um support my channel and here's just a quick little screen recording of what the patreon page actually looks like i'm in the post section and you can see I share special content for my patreon page um also sometimes some behind the scenes information about my studio it's a little bit more intimate and also I have a patreon group in facebook so uh while here on the moon a cafe channel on youtube you can just comment back and forth and you can't share your work in the patreon group you can share your work of course you can also in the moon a cafe art group on facebook but in the patreon group because it's a smaller group I have more interaction with you and can give more critique and comments on your work okay so here's a just a little snippet a little slo-mo of some of the patreon content that will be in the next video of the birds on the wire moonlight scene where I actually will show uh myself picking out the pastels so I hope you enjoyed this whimsical bird lesson and again I'm looking forward to having the drawing where one of my patrons that signs up that is a current patron already or signs up before the end of january will win this fun little whimsical bird painting and uh I've enjoyed being with all of you today I hope you try this I hope you share it and as always happy painting