 Hey guys, this is Susan Jenkins and welcome to Monet Café. This is more of a relaxed video here I'm just taking a breather after lots going on with my mom and being away from home And this is a photo I took when I was at my little farmhouse That I love, you know, a lot of you know my channel No, we've been through a lot in our lives over the past couple of years and But I've grown to love the simpler things And this is a little six inch by nine inch painting that I did today fairly quickly While staying in the basement of my mom and dad's home during my mom's cancer treatment and I thought I'd share with you Video I'm gonna speed it up a bit in places, but this is you art paper and I'm using these Daener-Rowney acrylic inks and I'm toning this a golden color But I wanted to show you you could use anything to tone it You could use the pastel. I just showed this happens to be a kind of a golden color Neo color wax pastel I use these a lot So I'm only showing these to show you that you don't have to use the acrylic inks Just get a even a kind of a golden color pastel and you can do the same thing I'm doing here with pastel You would just lightly Put the pastel all over the whole thing and then wet it with either alcohol or water But here I'm showing you how to use these acrylic inks. I am speeding this part up I'm wetting the paper first almost like you would do a wet watercolor under painting and it just makes the acrylic inks Flow better now the reason I like the acrylic inks is because they don't take up any tooth of the paper and you preserve your layering techniques or ability now I'm just using a new pastel to get a quick sketch in I'll pop the the image up here of the Actual reference photo in a minute, but I'm getting in a little trail there to kind of lead the eye through But now what I'm doing is I'm using the day around the acrylic inks. This one's called sepia. It's kind of a dark I don't know. It's almost like a greenish brown color I'm also going to be using the purple lake color of the acrylic ink now This is neat. I like this technique of using this to get your darkest values in first Most of you know if you've been watching my channel enough It's good to go ahead and get your dark values in when pastel painting and these acrylic inks are a great way to do that You don't you have to use the pastels yet. I'm using a little fan brush. You just saw there I could have used a bigger one, but I'm kind of limited in my supplies while I'm out of town staying with my mom and dad So I got my darkest darks down there and you'll notice they gradually kind of lighten up the more that I Spread them out. So I'm spreading the leaves or the edges of the tree Trying to get that a little lighter on the edges But this is all you know, you can be kind of a little haphazard with this You want to get the general shape of a tree? But you're just keeping it loose and that's the beautiful thing again about an underpain But just look at that golden tone to paper isn't that gorgeous? I just blotted this with a paper towel was a little bit wet And now I'm going to go ahead and do a little bit of the dark on the little trail This is literally just a visual to draw your eye back into the painting to make a better composition and Again, look how loose and crazy. I am with that now. I'm going to get that Second tree that's a little further back. Notice how I'm getting it a little lighter in value I don't have my acrylic ink so dark on my brush now I lightened it up a little bit more and I just kind of Suggested those trees that are further back, you know that things get lighter in value as they increase in distance Now I just I wet that a little bit and I'm using that purple lake to get the the land there also notice how I add a little bit to the trees and I also make it a little darker in The foreground there the very edge of the when you your eye enters the painting there Everything's always a little darker up close now. I had already dried this with a blow dryer I'm getting that foreground tree the first tree a little darker than the next tree again Things lightening value as they increase in distance now I'm also darkening that trail, but I'm lightening it up as it gets in the background now I darkened these later, but I those background trees. I had a little light too light there But now I'm just going ahead and getting in the sky colors kind of having fun with this one I'm purposely trying to keep some of that beautiful orange glow showing through I'm gradually getting down where I'm adding some of the darker wispy clouds I'm getting hints of where they are and I'll try to do a video one day more where I talk about specifically more about doing sunsets and Or sunrises and kind of how light and color behaves At that type of mood or that time of day So I think I'm just going to go ahead and play some music Now let you guys enjoy the rest of the process But I I hope you learned a little bit something about the under painting there And getting in your dark values and how values behave with distance and perspective So hopefully you learned something please comment like the video Subscribe share the video it all helps my channel Just get to other people who like pastel paintings youtube has a way they kind of Share your video more the more activity it gets so I appreciate that and if you haven't yet done so Feel free to join our group on facebook called mone cafe art group That is probably I think probably on facebook one of the greatest resources now for pastel artists because you literally have Artist of every level I mean we've got some of the greatest pastel artist as members in our group And they'll give you some feedback sometimes. I mean you can get so much Useful pastel information in our group. All right. I'm going to be quiet now. Enjoy the painting I certainly enjoyed this while I was away from home and and I missed my little backyard and my sunset So anyway, I love all my friends here in this group and I really want to say a big shout out And thank you to my beautiful patrons. I truly don't know when I've felt so blessed Then to have people from all over the world supporting me and and helping me financially and just Mostly just giving me love and support that just means so much to me. All right guys Have a blessed evening. It's evening where I am and happy painting