 Welcome to Monet Café Studio. Are you ready for something magical? Today you're gonna learn my five steps to ethereal painting. We'll start by sketching with a marker. I'll tell you why I love this approach. We'll be using other mediums to create drama and excitement in your work. Also we're gonna play with textures. This is so fun. I think you're gonna love it. And if you know me of course I'll be playing with color. And of course I'll be adding soft pastels for a final and vibrant layer. And I'll be using these mediums and techniques to teach you my ethereal style of painting. Let's get started. I found an image of a lion that I loved from Unsplash.com, a great site for copyright free reference images. I did some photo altering to it. And if you are a patron of mine on my Patreon page you will receive my altered images. But if you are here on the Monet Café channel you'll get a link to the original image in the description of this video. Here's a list of my supplies but keep in mind they'll also be in the description of this video. And I will mention them as they appear in the lesson. I used color fixed pastel paper, charcoal pencils, tombo markers, some acrylic ink, a couple of brushes, a thin brush and a thick brush, some gouache paint. I used a couple of organic stencils and various soft pastels. The surface I'm using is one that's pretty affordable for a soft pastel surface. It's Art Spectrum Color Fix Pastel Paper. It comes in various colors and what I love about it is it is water-friendly. You can use various other mediums. Also if you buy a single sheet it's not that much. It's about $4 for a single 9 by 12 sheet but I have this rainbow pack. It has 20 sheets of various colors. I really love just the variety of being able to choose different colors. And the color I chose it's kind of a gray blue color. But as I always say, use what you have and all of these products will be in the description of this video. I got inspired before starting this painting by an artist I love. I have followed her for years. Her name's Kimberly Kelly Santini. She has an absolutely beautiful, ethereal and organic style I love how she creates her animal paintings in a way where she incorporates elements of nature within the painting. And she's not an artist that is bound by what she sees in her reference image but she has the freedom of going outside the line so to speak, literally and figuratively. And she also is not afraid of color and even in these these are kind of monochromatic but she is just magical in her technique. I particularly like this one or these fox paintings. I love her fox series but this one of the little raccoon I'm gonna zoom in on it so you can see. She has just some beautiful floral elements involved or integrated and I'm just inspired by her work. I really love the element of line and linear mark making that Kimberly has in her paintings and I've been using this technique for a little while now of creating a sketch or an underpainting with a marker. I have multiple reasons for that and I'll explain in a minute but first let me tell you about these. They're Tombow markers. These are Tombow grayscale markers. There's ten of them. I like that they have two ends, well of course they have two ends, but they have a fine tip and a brush pen and I'm using the fine tip end right now. And this first step is one I'm calling linear and expressive mark making. I feel this can set a foundation for just some excitement and movement and some general lines. We're not trying to get in everything with respect to our subject matter. Just the lines that have energy and motion and excitement. And you can probably see that light charcoal sketch that I did in charcoal pencil underneath. That was just to get the basic form of the lion so I didn't have to think when I went to get the marker down. And I'm using the marker because it is not going to bleed when I add the wet media. I'm going to be adding some other mediums that are liquid and if I just had the charcoal pencil down it would just bleed and I would lose it. It would kind of get rid of it. So I found that this marker technique works great and once I get a few of these gestural lines and I'm actually just using a kneaded eraser to erase most of the charcoal. And by the way if you're a patron of mine on my Patreon page you will get a copy of this sketch. Now the first wet media that I'll be using is some acrylic ink. I'm sorry it's a little out of focus there. I'm using only the one color actually. This purple lake that's in front. It's a really dark purple. I love using this product with pastel paintings. It's really a great way to get down initial values. I'm using a brush. This happens to be a Windsor Newton. Kind of a nice brush. It's a sable brush. You could use any brush you have with a fine tip. And of course some water and a container. Now I'm just going to put a few drops of my purple lake into my little dish and then I'm ready to paint. And now for step number two which I'm calling a combination or a variety of mark making techniques. I'm doing a combination of some fine gestural just linear marks and also changing my strokes often and my wits often to something more broad and large and expressive. Now let me go into more detail about this process. I first began with the smaller more fine tip brush with the purple lake and I just started outlining the subject. And it was definitely the eyes and the nose those distinguished features of a lion. Notice I didn't try to draw with charcoal or with the marker every piece of his fur. I just wanted to create some drama with an exciting sketchy mark making technique. Once I got in the eyes nose and mouth I switched to a larger brush because I wanted to give that wild and free feeling of his mane and what I'm doing here is just kind of looking at the image and seeing where some of the darker to middle values are and I'm making my brush strokes and very dynamic and directional strokes keeping my strokes very loose and just following the form and direction of how his mane is coming out from his face. And now I'll be switching back to the small brush. Remember that painting I showed you of Kimberly Santini's where she had some of the outline marks so I got my small brush again and I just looked at some areas where I might can make some marks that gave that feeling of energy and life and followed perhaps where his whiskers are where some of the mane was extending out and this is kind of intuitive and that's really a good word a good way to describe this type of painting. It's intuitive and free and I think it's really a lot of fun and every so often you know if you follow my channel along I do paintings that are impressionistic and not quite as interpretive and intuitive as this but I do love the style of painting. So this is just me getting in some more marks that I thought added drama to this painting. Going to add a couple more colors before I get to the soft pastel and I decided to use a product one of my patrons mentioned this actually it's called acrylic gouache and I have this product it's called Turner acrylic gouache but you could use other products for this part of the painting. I like acrylic gouache or gouache in general because it's an opaque medium and you can control its opacity by how much water you add. So I'll be adding a decent amount of water and I'm mixing up some colors mostly I used this ochre color and kind of a peachy color and I lightened it with white. Now for step number three that I'm calling adding a variety of textures and yes this is a stencil. I had so much fun just playing with this style of ethereal or organic painting and if you noticed in or if you do notice in Kimberly's paintings she has almost a stenciling type of technique. I wonder if she really uses stencils to incorporate in her work. So it's very textural and my board kept moving on me it would really be better to do this laying it flat. I grabbed a brush again just to get some of that lighter value underneath his eye and in his muzzle there a little bit. Now I'm going to get some blue to add to this kind of a turquoisey blue and I looked through the colors I decided to combine two of these. One was a cobalt blue and the other was an aqua blue. I'm calling this next step expression or freedom of color. In artwork we do not have to stay bound by whatever we see we can really get expressive with color and I believe these types of ethereal paintings are very expressive with color. Don't be afraid to break out your artistic license and have fun. And by the way this gray paper that you're seeing I love it. It's called a gray matters pad. It's actually just like a little palette. It's really great to have a gray surface to mix colors on because it's a really neutral surface. It's way better than trying to mix colors on white. And I'm adding this combination of blues to areas that seem to have middle values and they're kind of a shadowy under painting of sorts prior to adding some more of the maybe traditional lion colors on top with soft pastel. And I really liked this color. And also with gouache as I'm applying it here I have it I would say the consistency of not mustard that would be too thick. Maybe not quite milk that would be too thin. Let me think of something maybe like olive oil. That's probably kind of how I have the thickness of it and it causes it to still be somewhat transparent. You see how you can see through it. So my point is I don't want you to if you try the gouache don't apply it so thickly. I still want this to be nice and transparent. That's what I really love about Kimberly's paintings. They are so soft and translucent. And I really love that style. And I'm staying very loose and free with gestural mark making just like I did when using the acrylic ink. And another great thing about using these types of products with soft pastel painting, the acrylic ink, the gouache or if you used watercolor, you're not taking up any of the tooth or the sanded part of the surface which pastels cling to soft pastels. So you're really almost like starting from fresh with soft pastels once you use these types of products to begin. Alright, time for more fun. I had this other stencil. It looked kind of like a barren tree. So I decided let's add some warmth to this. So I got an ochre and kind of an earthy green and I just I added a little bit more of this bright yellow. I wanted to lighten it up a bit. So I kept mixing until I got a consistency that was a little bit of a lighter, mossy green. And because my board kept moving every time I was pressing this, I decided to put some tape on it. And I was going to try to hold my board, but I didn't do very well at that. So as you can see, a lot of this was experimentation for me. And if you do this, it might be better for this process to lay your board flat on a surface so that you can press harder and get the parts of the stencil to show up a little bit better. But again, this is supposed to be loose and free and a bit mystical. So it's actually okay if some of these don't come out so perfect. Often I think we try to make our work too perfect and it comes out as very stiff. So just have fun with this and play with it. And I must say I had a lot of fun with this painting. Sometimes, you know, I teach a lot obviously and I make a lot of videos. And sometimes it's fun for me just to play like this. Alright, I'm almost done playing with these stencils. And now it's time to add soft pastel. And I'm speeding up the pastel portion a bit so you can see this lion come to life. And I'm using various soft pastels. I just had kind of a collection of pastels in front of me from previous paintings. And again, I was just being spontaneous with this painting. And I wanted to get this video to you guys. I actually had finished this painting last week. But I got a little sick. If you're a patron of mine, you guys know I was a little under the weather. I think it's a flu or something. But I can tell I'm on the mend, which is a good thing because I have another painting I want to share with our furry friends theme this month before the month of April is through. Alright, so you can see the beauty of soft pastels. I do love so many mediums. But there's really just something about the soft pastel medium. It is so earthy. And it's so unique that you get to hold these sticks of color in your hand. You are in direct contact with the color and the surface you're painting on. And I don't know, there's just something very organic about that for me. And pastels really are some of the most vibrant in color of any medium. I think they are the most vibrant of color in any medium. And let me explain why in case you're new to soft pastels. Many paints in their different forms have to have a binder, something to adhere them to the color. Say, for example, acrylic has to have a binder. It's not just pure color, it has to have some sort of a liquid binder, same with oil, same with watercolor. And the same is true for pastels to a degree. But the most quality soft pastels are almost 100% pure color. They have very little binder. And that's why there are certain brands of pastels that lend themselves to being very soft and incredibly vibrant. And while they are an opaque medium, meaning if you press really hard with soft pastels, you won't really be able to see through it. They're not necessarily totally opaque, because you can control the pressure of how hard you press with the soft pastel, which will give you more of a translucent feel. You can see how the paper, the underpainting is showing through. Now I did add some blue you notice above the eyes. His eyes look a little weird right now I start to develop that later. And a little blue right there on his mouth. There is look for those subtle areas of the image where you see some shadows. And almost always one day I'm going to do a people portrait month. But almost always underneath the lid of the eye is a little bit of a shadow because the light is usually from above and you get just a little bit of a shadow usually kind of a bluish or a grayish middle value will work just fine. So this is one of the eyes to really stand out. So I got the pastel we many pastel artists love for a good dark is called the eggplant color by Terry Ludwig pastels. It's a dark dark purple. It appears as black, but it's really if you add water to it by the way you can add water to soft pastels. I do it all the time. You can lay down some pastel get some water and turn it into a wash like an underpainting. But if you did that with this eggplant color, you would see for sure that it's definitely a beautiful dark purple. So this is just giving some drama making his eyes stand out. And now I'm going to work on these eyes a little bit more. You notice I put a little green there in the corner of his eyes and a little blue. Really, it doesn't matter the color as long as you get the value right. There's a little bit more of that blue for the shadows of his eyes. And I noticed the pupils of his eyes weren't as black or as dark as the outline of his eyes. Also the gold I had put down before I needed it to be a little bit darker. His eyes are still a little bit in shadow. And here's where I'm adding a little bit of that medium darker value blue. And this is one thing you want to get right is the eyes the shape of the eyes and just the direction of the pupils. If you get that off, it just really it shows so easily when you have something in the eye that's a little bit off. It reads very quickly. You can read something's off. Everybody can catch it even if you're not an artist. I had a little highlight. You can see that golden color, a little bit more purple and a magenta color. I'm just having fun here with color and even a little more green. I hope you can already see how the variations of mark making linear strokes, textures and color have really begun to have that ethereal style. Dreamy is another good word for it. The remainder of this lesson with my full commentary is only available on my Patreon page. But I'm going to speed this up here on the Monet Cafe channel and share with you step number five. Let me take a quick little station break before I do though. I would love it if you would go ahead and like this video if you like it. Also leave me comments, subscribe. I love to hear from you and it really does help YouTube share this video more often. Also if you'd like to get that extra content I'm always talking about and become part of my Patreon family, it's real easy. It's only $5 a month. You can cancel at any time. But the best part is you become part of a group of artists that are just so beautiful learning together. I get to see your work. It really is a beautiful family. And for step number five it's called interesting elements. And it's kind of a culmination of what you've seen me doing throughout this whole process is not being afraid to introduce elements and textures and actually objects that aren't necessarily something you would think of or imagine in a painting or image of a lion. You know we think of trees and we think of grasses and fur. But we can actually add in organic elements of course. We could add in geometric elements and it's just really a chance to have a lot of freedom and creativity and individuality. And I use the word dreamy before and that's kind of what I think is a great adjective for this type of painting. When you think of a dream it's usually a lot of elements that almost don't make sense but instead is something that breaks the restraints of this world and crosses over into something that's a bit more spiritual. That's another good adjective. And now I'm getting really crazy and fun with mark making. All right here is the final. I hope you will let me know if these five tips or techniques for creating art with a more ethereal style is helpful for you. And I decided to call this piece Thy Kingdom Come. I love the verse in the book of Matthew that says Thy Kingdom Come. Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. I hope you learned a lot everyone. As always become a patron if you like. Please subscribe. Check out more videos and as always God bless and happy painting.