 Welcome to Monet Cafe. I'm artist Susan Jenkins. I hope you enjoy this pastel painting tutorial of some lovely sheep in a field at sunset. We're gonna learn a lot in this lesson, including some information about a product, a set of pastels that's quite affordable, Paul Rubin's pastels, and I'll be talking about this, my surface, my techniques, and lots more. If you would go ahead and like this video, go ahead and subscribe if you haven't already, and if you hit the little bell next to the subscribe button, you'll be notified of any future videos I post. This free video tutorial is brought to you because of the faithful support from my patrons on my Patreon page. For $5 a month you can support this channel and you get extra content. The Paul Rubin's company recently asked me to review their soft pastels, which I did, and you can find a more in-depth product review video on my channel. I'll include a link in the description of this video. And one great thing about the Paul Rubin set is the price. 40 pastels for only $44, and I'll have the link in the description as well. But the main thing is look at this color. I do this finger test whenever I get a new set of pastels, and that is proof right there of how beautiful the color is and how well they apply. The surface I'll be using is called Pastel Matte by Claire Fontaine. I love the surface. Here lately I've been taping my surface to a backing board that's just a piece of foam core board. Because I'm working flat with filming lately, I take my board out quite a bit to tap off the pastel dust. The image is from Unsplash.com. It's a great site for copyright-free reference images, and thanks to the photographer Jesse Smith for such a lovely photo. Much of this tutorial is real-time, especially at the beginning. I will speed up some at the end, but you're going to get a lot of real-time instruction. Now this is just a little piece of Vine Charcoal. Vine or Willow Charcoal it's called. It's a product that works great with soft pastels. It's kind of made out of the same material. And I usually don't use pencil because it can be a little slick and sometimes show even through the pastels. So I'm getting a super basic composition. This composition was real simple. Look at that. It's a band of dark trees, upper left, distant horizon line that I'm getting there, some distant trees, and also just some shadows, grasses, and I'm not even going to attempt to address those sheep until later. Actually I zoomed into the photo later and found out they were cows. But that's proof that you just need to suggest things. You know, the mind can interpret. I interpreted them as sheep. And now I'm using, I'm going to zoom out here so you can see all of the pastels that I'm choosing from the Paul Rubin set. This is a really beautiful golden light to medium yellow that I'm just blocking in. This is called the blocking in stage. I'm not worried about details. I'm looking at these big geometric shapes and getting them in. I loved this orange color. You may notice the set has, sometimes you have to, if they're brand new pastels, you kind of have to turn them and maneuver them in a way so that you don't get those little edges on them. But I noticed in this set there were a lot of warm tones. Do you notice that? I also notice there were not hard. There were hardly any greens, I should say. There are some very neutral grains on the left side there. One, two, three, the fourth and fifth one down on the left side are some really sagey neutral greens. So not many greens at all and no purples except this one right here. It's a real neutral purple. It's going to look kind of gray when I put it down, but it's a little cool. It leans a little bit towards purple. So I found the colors interesting. Paul Rubins has another set, a 35 set. They have promised me they're going to send me. So I'm hoping to see some other colors in that set, but I found this very interesting. I like to challenge myself with color palettes that I don't buy habit or nature go to. And one of the reasons I chose this photo was because it did have a lot of warm tones in it. And I noticed the set had a lot of warm tones. So notice I'm doing directional strokes. And even though I'm going to be doing a wash on this, I'm going to use alcohol. You can use water and I'm going to wash all this in because this pastel matte is white. I like pastel matte, the colored pads, but I also like to use white because I feel that when you do a wash of pastel like I'm going to be doing with a white underpainting, it comes out brighter and more luminous with the white surface. And then you lose all of that little white showing through. So you'll see that in a minute. So I'm just adding in some of the basic colors that I'm seeing in this landscape. And it's okay if they're a little a little exaggerated at this point because this is an underpainting. And I know these trees are leaning. It's mostly a big band of dark. And I'm not going to go with my darkest dark just yet. I'm getting in some of this nice gray that I chose before. And just kind of blocking things and getting the shape of things. I think when we're first beginning artist, I know this was me is that I wanted to get more detail in before it was needed. And oh, and this is an example of did you see how I just flipped that pastel on one of the sides? I was barely getting any application. I had one of my patrons ask me to address this. There are some pastels. It seems like darks sometimes do this that they feel like they're not applying correctly. And so often I will take that pastel, get me a piece of brown craft paper. You'll see me do this later and just scrub it scrub it down and it'll it'll eventually start applying better. So you'll see me do that later. Here comes the alcohol. I was making another point a second ago and I forgot what it was. But I'm just spraying. I have a spritzer bottle and I have a couple of different brushes I'm using. I think I abandoned that brush in a minute. I think it was too soft. Let's see. And this particular yellow didn't stay as bright. I don't think it's the Paul Rubens pastels. I think it's just that particular color. So sometimes different colors behave differently. They're made from different elements of the earth. And so I'm speeding this up. But you see now how I'm covering up the white. I'm getting me in a basic value and color study just to get started. I also like to turn when I'm doing trees turn my surface upside down. That's why this board comes in handy and let the gravity pull the tree branches. I let the underpainting dry and then I continue to develop the painting. First I want to darken those trees a bit more. I grabbed what was probably the darkest dark in the set. It's not black. None of these colors. Well, one of them might be black. I don't think it is though. I think they're mostly like really dark blues. Some that lean a little bit maybe towards green and just some interesting dark. So that's one advantage about the set. I really did like they have like four different good darks. I would like to actually rearrange the set and maybe put one row that had mostly warmer tones working towards cooler and then have my darks and my neutrals somehow arranged in the set. And now I'm just adding, if you notice in the reference photo, those branches of the tree that are leaning over, they are quite a bit lighter than the other parts of the mass of trees. And I've got those distant trees in the background that are not going to be nearly as dark as the dark trees in the foreground. Remember values lighten in the distance. And I wanted to point out with this painting to that I often say that values cool off in the distance, which indeed they do. And that's usually why I will take a band. Oh, that's one of those kind of greens I just use there. It's a real neutral green. And I'm getting it in a little bit in some of these trees in the foreground. But while values do cool off, like I said, trees in the distance, I'll also I'll often use a cooler green than a warmer green. But in this case, what do we have happening back there? Look at that sun. It's illuminating everything. It's casting a golden light. So you'll later see me give some warmth to those trees in the background. That's an exception to the rule. You know how I'm always saying typically things cool off in the background. So we want to keep in mind the way nature really works and the way light behaves. And if you just start becoming a student of nature, pay attention when you're out riding around or looking at a beautiful sunset, watch and notice how light behaves and how it affects the things around it. Now, this is just a little packing peanut, you know how you package and protect your contents in a package. And I found these blend quite nicely on pastel mat and even some other papers. Pastel mat is often awesome because it is a sanded surface. I say that with a question in my voice because it doesn't feel sanded. I don't know really how they make it. That would be interesting to find out because it layers like sanded surfaces. That's what I should say, but it it really feels rather soft, but it still does take a lot of layering. So I've gotten more blending done. I've gotten a few more of those shadowy grass colors in. I'm still establishing values. If you squint your eyes and look at the reference photo, there's quite a bit of dark. We've got mostly dark in the tree line dark in the foreground. And then it all gradually lightens up going from the lower left up to the right. Now I'm adding some warmth. I know that sun is coming from the back. It's hitting on the tops of some of the grasses, but I want to be careful not to get too much warmth over there to the left, because those trees and just the distance is cooling things off a bit. So my warmest values, I mean, my warmest colors are going to be in that area, especially way back there and then just radiating forward like I'm doing now. And now I'm using those directional strokes. Again, careful not to bring it too far to where the trees are making things cooler. And I'm sneaking in where the sunlight is actually kind of peaking through some of those trees, just sprinkling its light, I should say through the trees and hitting some of the grasses, even some that are a little bit closer to the viewer. I thought I'd play around with some of these kind of reddish colors. One of the reds is a little more pinkish. And so I would use that one more in the shadowy areas and the warmer reds more where the sun is hitting. Just developing this tree line a little bit more cooling it off not cooling it off, lightening the value with a little bit of a lighter gray. And now I'm going to start giving a little more interest to the sky. Like I said, when I put the yellow down and used the alcohol, it really gave it a pale color. Now this yellow is rather neutral and dull. But I knew the other ones seemed a little too bright or a little too dark. So I'm just giving a little bit of that down carving that distant tree line out a little bit with some negative painting. And I'm lightening it up often when there's a sunset or really in just about any sunny scene, you're going to get lighter values down towards the tree line. And that light that I used, for me, it didn't really have enough color. But it was my option for one of my lighter lights. Now I'm taking this value that has a little a little bit of a darker value yellow. And up in the heavens or up high, even when there's a sunset, typically things get a little darker in value. And working in a little blue, even though I didn't see it in the image, I didn't want this to be such a monochromatic or analogous painting, I should say with all yellows and reds, I wanted to bring in a little bit of other color as well. So I'm just giving the sky a little bit more texture and working some of that yellow into those trees as well. I really liked this color. It's kind of a salmon or melon color. And it was really kind of neat and fun. And so now I'm just adding a little bit of pizzazz. I'm starting to gradually work on some of the brighter colors. And now I'll be continually working on building the values and colors of this field. And I didn't want to get too detailed anywhere too soon. That's something that has taken me years to learn is to not get hung up on any one area and to learn to work the painting as a whole. Your painting is going to feel much more believable if you if you use this technique. There were kind of like some pretty, I don't know, lighter parts to some of the grasses picking up. So I played with that little sagey green color. And I will say that even though these wouldn't be a normal go to color selection of mine, this particular color arrangement, it was challenging and fun to use these colors. I a lot more neutral colors than I would have normally used. But this particular scene did pretty much inspire those selections. And the tree line is a little bit, you know, just kind of a blob of gray right now. But I will be developing that more as I go now I'm working a little bit more on some of the dark shadowy areas that foreground is quite a bit darker than I have right now. And I know I want to give it a little bit more dark. Now I think here in a minute is where I'll show you that pastel like I was saying at the beginning of this video, sometimes darker pastels in especially the Sennelier brand. And I had one of my patrons say that these pastels seemed very much like Sennelier pastels and if I had to give them a just a comparison as to other brands, I would say that she was right. These are very much like Sennelier pastels, but they have dark sometimes in that brand and in this one that sometimes feel a little hard. So I'm going I thought I was going to do it right now but in a minute you'll see me get a piece of brown craft paper and just kind of scrub off some of the harder edge here I go to grab it. And also when the edges of pastels when they're brand new, they have little tails on them. You kind of see it there. So I'll just scrub them down. That's a really neat blue huh to to make more of a flat edge to it. And then I'll I'll be able to mark much better. So yeah, now this is actually applying much better now. So I added some fun blues to this. And this is an example of how even if you don't see it in the scene, you can explore and make your own color choices based on a few simple rules. I know that the colors in those trees, there is some warmth to them, especially the parts where you'll see me even doing more of that peeking through of the light. But they're I know in the shadows there typically is coolness. So I used a cooler dark. And I used a cooler dark in those foreground grasses because they're more buried. And they're getting the shadowy side of that distant sun. So that's how I was able to pick a few colors that weren't local to the scene. And if you keep those things in mind, you just stay with those general rules and you can do the same, which is basically using a value that's pretty correct with respect to your reference image, and using a color temperature that makes sense, you know, in nature. So those are just some simple little tips to get exploratory with color. And as you can see, my scene has got some kind of fun colors going on now. So I know I've got a few of these trees. This is part of establishing a focal point. Some of these trees stand out more than others. And this is also not only a focal point strategy of what's called contrast. Contrast is something your eye will naturally go to something dark next to something light, like those dark branches next to that light sky. Another focal point strategy is something I believe the term is convergence. But I like to use the term pointing literally pointing the viewer in the direction of where you want them to look and those trees to the right that are leaning to the right are definitely using that focal point strategy pulling the viewer up and into that beautiful sky in the distance. And now I'm using why would I be using a brownish tone here? Well, the light is filtering through these trees. And light is warm, right? So I wanted to use a warm color. It's not really a green. There's such a silhouette in this case. So I decided to use a brown because it's a little warmer. And and also to like I said, there aren't many greens in the set. There wasn't a green really of the correct value that I would have used anyway. So now I'm working some of those browns down into the grasses. And just playing having fun with this, I think I missed a little footage here. I apologize. But you know, you get the idea I've layered in most of the values using directional strokes and some fun colors. And now I'm working on these sheep, which like I said, were actually cows. When I zoomed in, I did not realize it. They looked like sheep. And I like the the concept of them being sheep. I have some sheep that live up the road from me actually. And I'm trying to resist the urge. I'm using the general pattern of the sheeps and the reference photo as a guide. But I talk about this often when creating flower videos or paintings, that we have a tendency to pattern things even when we're trying not to to put things in little rows and or little I already have them all kind of on the same horizon line, if you want to call it that. So I need to go in and make some that are kind of doing their own thing. So now I'm using a lighter gray to just not only give a lighter area to the backs of some of those, like I'm doing now, but the ones that are further away, they're more in the sunshine, which means they're going to be lighter value. They're also further away, which means they're going to be lighter in value, not as dark. So that's why I went ahead and used that gray. I do think I give them a little bit more of a contrast down towards their legs, those distant ones. And now I got an even darker color for the backs of some of these sheep. Now why would I do that? Well, they're more in the shade. So your values are going to gradually just get a little darker as they move from the right upper right down to the lower left. So and really, these are just shapes. I probably could have developed my sheep to look maybe a little more like sheep. But this is proof that your mind will often our brains are an amazing thing. It's something I believe it's called closure, where your brain can put things together with very little information. So if you just kind of suggest the shape of the sheep, and the fact that most of their heads are kind of down, it's just kind of a little hunched over shape. Then before you know it, it looks like you've got a field of sheep. Often we try to give too much information. What's that called TMI? So resist the urge to over detail, especially when something is in the distance like this, you're just not really going to be able to see that detail with the human eye. I mean, I know if we take a photograph, a lot of cameras, iPhones, whatever, automatically try to focus everything. So when you take a photo and you zoom all the way in, you can see more detail, but naturally our eyes and that's how we're trying to paint, we're trying to paint what our eyes would see. We don't see as much detail like that. Now this yellow was pretty exciting, right? I felt like it was a little too Ooh, I don't know. It was artificial, maybe a little artificial. I don't know. It just it didn't suit the sky. Great. But I'm using this with a technique I use often. We can layer pastels, right? We actually even though we can't mix pastels like we can with watercolor and oil, we can mix them by layering. We come up with new color combinations by simply layering some colors and layering other colors on top of them, especially if you don't press too hard, keep a light touch. And then before you know it, those colors just start to work together and vibrate and become new color combinations. So that's kind of what I'm doing here. That's the concept here. And also you notice I didn't blend even though that one kind of salmon color went in a little bit segmented, a little blotchy. I didn't worry about blending, blending, blending because what happens when you do that and trust me, I did this when I created skies before when I was a beginner artist, I felt like, well, I'm doing a little blending. This is the final just to to soften this with a little bit of my finger, not much, but I would get some sort of blending tool and I would blend every layer. And have you ever had your color in a pastel painting start to look dead or muddied? Well, that's from over blending. So resist the urge to blend too much. And now I am getting I got some of that sagey green to layer over a little bit of the brown. Now what I'm doing is I'm working in some of the salmon color. Notice in the reference image, the light is filtering through those branches. And what happens, these are called sky holes. It's the little spaces in between branches and leaves. And it's usually more painterly and beautiful in a painting to paint negatively like this rather than trying to paint every branch on top of the sky or every leaf, you're painting the sky in between the mass of leaves you've created. So that's usually a good technique. But what I was going to say is with sky holes, often your values are just a tad darker. When you start putting them, the sky holes or colors deeper into the branches or the leaves, you get just a little bit of a darker value. Now here's where I use that cooler pink. And I decided to layer that over some of the distant trees. That's the example I said of where colors actually got warmer in the distance a little bit because of the sun shining on them. So if you've got a sunset painting, you've got some distant trees, and the sun is way down close to the horizon line, your trees are going to get a little of that cast warm light onto them. Now you notice I used a little bit of blue on some of the sheep. Their fleece is you know, white normally or whatever you would consider white. White is relative. It depends on the light that it's in as to how white it is. So I decided to give a little coolness to some of them. I thought it, I don't know, I just thought it looked pretty. And it made them stand out a little bit more against the warm grasses. Because if they if I had them a warm tone and the grass a warm tone, you wouldn't get any color contrast. So I still wasn't quite happy with the sky. You see, I worked a little bit more blue, just scumbling color, letting them work together and just playing around. And I wanted it warmer than the blue, but I wanted a little bit of it influence a little blue influence behind it somewhere. And now I'm going to add a little music and you can watch me develop the rest of this painting, but don't go anywhere. It really does help if you watch the whole video. Even if you just fast forward through it a little bit. It gives my YouTube's more YouTube suggests them more. And just the view time really helps this channel. And also please comment. I love your comments first and foremost. That also helps this video, the ratings of this video to get seen by more people. And of course, subscribe to this channel if you haven't already, I would really appreciate that. If you like my free lessons, the hundreds of free lessons I have on Monet Cafe, and you are financially able to, I would really appreciate your support on my Patreon page. It's $5 a month. That's it. You can cancel anytime. And your $5 a month combined with many of my other patrons is what keeps these videos coming. I had a job before I was a full time artist that I lost due to COVID. And I don't mean this to be a pity party or whatever. It was a blessing in disguise, right? That's how the Lord works often. When there's a storm in our lives, we don't realize there's a rainbow on the other side. And so I losing my job because of COVID, I had a bookkeeping business caused me to be able to focus 100% of my art career. And I'm telling you, if it wasn't for my Patreon support, I definitely wouldn't be able to keep this going. That is really, really such a blessing to my life and my husband's life. I appreciate it. I'm always bragging on my patrons, but you also get a little extra content. You get, we just had a critique session once a month. I try once a month to have my patrons submit artwork to a critique album. And I try to give as many as I can. I can't always do them all, but give my patrons little constructive feedback on their paintings. We have many other fun things we do. I have extra content, extra footage. I have contests sometimes and story time lessons, homework on the weekends, lots of fun. So I'd appreciate that. All right. Enough about that. Now, also too, if you recreate from this painting, if you're a patron of mine, you know, you can share it in our homework album. But if you're not a patron of mine, find me on Instagram. You can find me at Susan Jenkins Artist. And I love it when you tag me so I can see your recreations. Oh, good. I finally zoomed in here so you can see a little bit better. And I'm developing the sheep a little bit more that are really kind of like little blobs. But again, in the distance, hopefully, they sort of read a sheep. All right. Now, I'm really going to add the music right now. Enjoy. And we're almost done, but I will be back at the end. All right. Enjoy. And here is the final nice moody sunset sheep scene. And I wanted to share, I often do this at the beginning, but I want to share a little bit more about the products in this video. I have an Amazon shop and you can find these things in my shop called Idealist. You have categories you can choose from pastels and painting products. And in that category, I have the Paul Rubens set. And I have little descriptions. If you click that little icon at the bottom right of any of the pictures, I give my little feedback as to some of the brands and some of the reasons I like them. And also I have an Idealist. You have to go back to the Idealist. I have a category that is called pastel papers and more. And I have a lot of the surfaces that I use. So I have the pastel matte in here that's white and the colored ones. This is the white one that I used for this. Like I said, I like using this when I'm going to do an underpainting that's either in a wash like the pastels that I just did. I even do watercolor under paintings or acrylic ink underpaintings on this. And you can find my Amazon Shop link in every video. But I also itemize the products with individual links as well. Alright guys, I hope that helped you and blessed you. Please comment, like, subscribe. And as always, God bless and happy painting.