 Welcome to Monet Cafe. Today's lesson should be enlightening and exciting for soft pastel artists. Yes, we can do a bit of color mixing with soft pastels. You might be surprised to know that this painting I created doesn't have one stick of green pastel. So come on in the studio with me and see how I created green without green using soft pastels. Hello artist and welcome to Monet Cafe. I've got my little buddy Jackson with me here because he keeps tripping around the studio with his little claws. And we are still in the midst of the month of June where the theme and the focus is painting green. And we're gonna have a lot of fun painting green today. Oh, you're shaking Jackson. And I think you're gonna learn a lot. Typically, soft pastels are not known for their mixing ability. But I think we're gonna make some new discoveries today that should make a lot of artists very excited. All right, here we go. You ready, Jackson? It looks real excited. In this painting demonstration, I'm going to provide an example of how we can actually, yes, even with soft pastels, do a bit of mixing to create our own greens. Now, I like doing this with soft pastels similar to how I like to paint with other mediums, such as acrylic watercolor and a little bit with oil. But greens are so much more interesting when they are combined by their color elements, which is, we all know from even just mixing colors in school, yellow and blue. And so I find that, you know, like with watercolor, rather than just grabbing a premixed green, it's so much more exciting when we let the yellow and the blue interact together. And it often creates a spontaneous color that has more of a painterly feel. So this is just going to be a very simple example where I create, this is, by the way, just a piece of canson, mittance, unsanded paper. And I'm using a paper that has a little bit of a tone to it. I didn't want to use white because I'm going to be using some lighter yellows to create my lightest values. So this is just, I would say it's neutral, maybe leans a little bit towards beige. But I'm using the backside. If you get these papers in the pad, it has kind of a honeycomb pattern on the front side when you open the pad. But on the backside, it's a little bit more smooth. So I'm going to be using the backside here. So let's watch how these yellows and blues react together on the surface. Now, we typically know if you've been painting with pastels for a while, one of the beauties of soft pastels is in their layering. And while we can't get a yellow and a blue and mix it together like we can with oil or acrylic, it's not wet, it's dry. We can get a degree of color illusion and mixing when we layer them and don't overlay or them keep the layers fairly light so those colors interact together. So let's get started with that quick example. A fairly simple green element to create or subject matter is a green apple. So I'll just be creating a green apple just from my imagination, keeping it very simplistic. And I'm going to use, I'm going to do two of them, actually, I'm going to use two different families of blues and yellows. For the first apple on the side, I'll be using warmer blues and yellows. So a warmer blue leans a little bit more towards green and a warmer yellow leans a little bit more towards orange. For the second apple, I will be using cooler blues and yellows. Cooler blues are a little bit more of what you think of as blue, like kind of like right in the middle, they don't lean too much towards purple. And cooler yellows, which are usually a little bit more of that lemony yellow color that you might imagine. And my first apple example will be using these orangey yellows and these blues, whoops, I got that one in the wrong place, and these blues that lean a little bit more towards green and turquoise. So let's just go ahead and create an apple. And what I'm going to do is I'm just going to start with a kind of a middle yellow here, just to get an apple shape in. And it's just going to be, you know, really pretty simple. This is a harder pastel. I think it's kind of like maybe a Rembrandt. And I often, rather than just drawing an apple like a circle, I think of apples as kind of multifaceted. They have sides and they have kind of almost corners and edges. So instead of drawing an apple or or layering in an apple that's just a total circle, often it's best to give it a little bit of geometric shape to it. So there is my beginning color. And now what I'm going to do, I'm going to imagine that the sun is coming from behind the apple and up to the right side. So I have my basic shape in. Now I'm going to go with this kind of light turquoise color. And what's going to happen is these colors are going to give an illusion of a little bit of a green color. So this is would be like my my value on the other side of the apple that's away from the sun. And it's in a little bit of shadow. Can you already see how that's creating a little bit of a green tone to it? And now I'm going to go ahead and get a little bit more of this shadowy side of the apple. And the darkest values are going to be kind of down here directly behind where the light source is. And you know, even though this is an unsanded paper, you still can get a little bit of layering in on it. Now I do have, I'm working flat, which I don't recommend for a lot of pastel painting. Your dust will stay on the surface. Sometimes if you breathe, if you're close to it, you can breathe in some of that pastel dust. So you know, just be careful with that. Now this is, oh gosh, I just love this color. It's a really pretty turquoisey color. And it's going to appear a little bit darker and it's a little bit jagged. But I'm going to get in a little bit more of this kind of shadowy side to this apple. And also we know there's going to be kind of like a little cast shadow happening, you know, maybe kind of over in this direction here. And now I'm going to go ahead and get in some other yellows here. This one is a little bit more, this is a blue earth. It's a Dakota Pastels brand. Some of my colors are actually interacting with each other now. So I'm going to get even some more of this pretty yellowy color and even make it a little bit more green. Get some of that off of there. You can see how these colors are kind of blending together. And now I'm going to go ahead, before I blend any more, I'm going to go ahead and get in some of my lighter values. I know that over here on this side of the apple, it's where that sunlight is going to hit. And we might get a little bit of it kind of coming over that edge of the apple there. And maybe a little bit of it hitting right here. You know, sometimes there's a little edge up here where the stem goes down. There's a little lip around there. And maybe just a little bit of that sunlight catching kind of around that side as well. And so now I want to make a little bit more of that green feeling. This is my, remember my lighter. I'm going really likely here now. This is my lighter turquoise color. Now can you see how we're getting green? Can you see that? So isn't that wonderful? That's just really so interesting. And a lot of pastel artists, including myself, when I first started, I would have just gone for green. And often colors can be so much more exciting when we allow them to mix together. Now, I know I'm going to have that little area in the apple that, you know, if the sun's on the other side, we're going to have that little shadow on that side that curves in. Of course, you can do a little blending with your finger if you want. And then, of course, we're going to have a stem. I told you these were going to be really simple. So let's just take our stem. Usually it's a little gestural mark that's thin and then comes up and gets a little thicker as it comes out. And then we can even add a little bit more of this dark under the shadowy side. And it's really just as simple as that. It's pretty cool, huh? So now I'm going to just blend a little bit here. Oh, also too, there's often a little kind of like a little highlight somewhere on it. It might not be right there with where the sun is. But that's just a pretty neat and simple way to create green that I think is actually a more interesting green than just grabbing pre-mixed greens out of the box. Now, you could get creative and come in and give that apple some of its typical apple feel, you know how we have sometimes little lines coming down and everything. So I'll leave that up to you of how easy or how far you want to take this. So let's go ahead now. That was using warmer colors to create green, warmer blues and yellows. And again, if you want, you can blend and you can see that even in blendings, you get a little bit more of that green feel. So all right, let's move on. So if you know my channel, you know me, you know I have a hard time stopping, which is what I'm doing right now. Stop Susan, just stop, stop, stop. Okay, let's move on to the next apple. Before we move on to the second apple, a real quick favor. If you haven't subscribed yet to this channel, what are you waiting for? Join the Monet Cafe family. Also, if you've liked this video so far, go ahead and click that like button and leave me a comment. This helps YouTube to share this video to more viewers. And for the extra content that I'm always talking about, including that painting that I showed at the beginning of this lesson, go ahead and become a patron of mine on my Patreon page. It's only $5 a month. You can cancel at any time. You unlock hundreds of free lessons and you become part of my beautiful Patreon family. All right, let's continue. Now for the second apple, I'm going to use more of the blues and yellows that I would say are more cool. And I'm going to start out with this yellow here, kind of like I did with that one. Can you see how this one is a little bit more lemony? And this one's a little bit more orangey. I don't know if you can see those subtle differences on the camera there, but let's kind of do the same thing here. I'm going to have to get over here to be able to get my shadow in. So I'm going to get this, just this general apple shape, kind of curve it around here. My apple's kind of leaning and I'm trying not to press too hard because I know I'm limited with layering. I am making directional strokes. I'm making strokes of how I think the form of the apple might be. So there's my general yellow. And now I'm going to come in with this lighter, kind of cooler blue or what most people think of as a blue. You can already see how it's turning green. Can you see that? And I'm just going to get it kind of on this side of the apple where the sun's not shining, but it's still gonna... I can even get it if you want it really more green. You can just go ahead and cover most of that up. Can you see that? That's green, right? Can you tell? And it's a little bit of a cooler, different kind of green than it originally made with this one. Now I'm going to get my next blue. We're going to keep the sun in the same location and I'm just going to come up a little bit on that shadowy side of the apple. I get a question often about why is pastel... how can it be considered a painting? And you notice how I'm laying my pastel on the side here? I'm covering more like blocking in with large, almost like you'd think of with brush strokes with other mediums and that's why it's considered painting. We're not doing linear strokes. We're making broad strokes and creating shapes more than lines. So hopefully that will help someone. Alright, so now that was my middle value blue. So now I'm gonna get my darkest blue here and I'm just going to... am I still in the camera? Yeah. I'm just going to do the same thing which is kind of come around and bring some of that shadowy side up and around this apple kind of on the back side here and also down in the shadow, the cast shadow. And now let's go back and get this yellow here. This is a really pretty yellow and let's just get like some of that sunlight that's coming around and coming around this side of the apple, maybe a little too far around that side of the apple. And now my my touch is getting lighter as I'm going... I don't want this to get too light so I'm physically... my hand is having a lighter application as I'm layering down some of this yellow here. And now let's see here. Some of these yellows were similar in color. I think I'm gonna go ahead and get one of these because I like... I like this kind of middle value one here. So I'm just going to use a little bit of the orangey one here to layer. You can see how much pastel dust is applying. Now let me go ahead with this light. We're going to get some of that highlight just to kind of go ahead and establish some of those values. I'm going to bring it down into that little area where the stem is. A little bit of it over here. You see how I'm resisting the urge to just make curves? Rather I am making kind of like those little geometric kind of shapes. And all of a sudden we are getting green. Look at that. That's crazy, isn't it? It's crazy awesome. I think it's crazy awesome. Layer a little bit more of this cooler blue here. I'm starting to lose my layering ability but what's neat is once you get a few layers down they start to blend themselves. You see how I'm just using this harder pastel and it's starting to blend. And that's a way to actually blend with pastels without using your finger or a blending tool. It's by using actually pastels when they start to layer enough. Now I'm going to get this darker blue, get a little bit more of it down there and I'm actually just going to blend this in with my finger a little bit. And if I had an even darker pastel I would get even a darker value right down there underneath that apple. And we've got to get a little bit of the stem color in there or the stem shadow in there on this side. Again the sun's coming from here so we're going to get a little bit of that shadow where that little divot is. And I think I do want to add a little bit more yellow right across this side here and a little bit more of those signature apple shapes, linear shapes and it's starting to look like an apple. Maybe not the best apple in the world but it is feeling apple-ish. I do like this blue here. I think I need a little bit more of this darker shadowy on this side here. So isn't that interesting? You know, don't think that you can't create new colors by blending pastels. Let me get this darker pastel here and let's do the same thing, thin and a little gestural mark. That one didn't do too good because my paper moved on me. And lo and behold you have two apples and I could come in here. This is probably the lightest pastel and just give that little, you know, couple little things that you get with where the sunlight hits. This is the warmer yellow but you get the idea. So look at that, making our own greens with just two colors, blue and yellow. Now I am going to do one other thing with the cast shadow. I am going to give it a little bit of green. We're mixing yellow down here. This is the warmer yellow but it doesn't really matter. What happens with light and shadow and color is a little bit of that green. Next time you see an apple sitting on a counter, look at the shadow, especially close to the apple. Some of the green color will carry over underneath. So, you know, there you go. You have a little bit of that green casting down onto the table in the shadow area. So that's a simple way to get green with I think even a more fun green than if I just use green. That's what I should have done on a third one using just green colors. To me this is way more fun and way more painterly. Now of course if you wanted to carry this further you could come in with some cooler colors like some purples. Let me grab that. You guys probably know I love the color purple. So you could get some darker colors here and really get the idea of that shadow making it a little bit darker and giving this a little bit more value. So and then even in here it's hard with these chunky pastels to know where is my pastel. I'm just going to use the same color here too. So that's just some simple, simple rules, right? It's not all that hard. You could even get a little bit of this lighter purple to create a little coolness on this shadow side. And looky there. We've just used a few colors to get an idea or a feeling of an apple. Here I'm showing the colors that I used for each apple and of course this first one was the one with more of the teal. I would say any color that leans towards green in this would be that teal color in the first apple. But as you can see looky there. We have an optical illusion of green without even using any true green in these apple paintings. I'd say the first apple came out to be more of a feeling of green, but I could have continued to blend with the second apple and achieved even more of that illusion. All right don't forget if you're a patron of mine you're going to get the full tutorial for this painting which used zero green. Isn't that crazy? Color is just so fun. I hope you learned a lot with this lesson. Please subscribe if you haven't already. Go ahead and like this video and as always God bless and happy painting.