 Hello and welcome to Monet Café. I'm artist Susan Jenkins. We're gonna have some fun today And if you're new here, please subscribe and hit that little bell icon to be notified of future videos Hello and welcome to Monet Café. I'm artist Susan Jenkins and before we get started with the lesson just a couple of things I'd like to say one Congratulations to all of you my subscribers. We recently hit 30,000 subscribers on this channel And I have to congratulate you because over the years. I've simply done what you've suggested and as I say often I think this channel caters to an audience that may not have other artistic resources and I like to focus a lot on beginner lessons as well So we're gonna keep that energy up and keep moving forward in Monet Café and once again congratulations Next I'd like to say that you know because I have the opportunity to be in front of the camera sometimes and Many of you know that I am not shy about sharing my faith and goodness knows I think in this world today We need messages of hope and love and that's part of what art's about to you know It's the beauty of art and so I have been looking for quite some time for a company I might could collaborate with So that I could maybe wear some things that shared a message of hope and love and so I recently found a company contacted the owner and I would like to share with you a little bit about what I'm wearing here and How you can support that company as well the name of the company that shares these wonderful t-shirts good quality too Is called love in faith and I'd like to share what this shirt says I love Philippians the whole book of Philippians, but Philippians 4-8 and shame on me for not having it memorized I have Philippians 4-13 memorized I can do all things the Christ who strengthens me, but this one says finally Well, it didn't have the finally brothers and sisters whatever is true. Whatever is noble. Whatever is right. Whatever is pure Whatever is lovely. Whatever is admirable if anything is excellent or praiseworthy think about such things Now I don't know if this is the same version as this in IV version here But isn't that a message of hope and love and so fortunately the owner has agreed to give a 20% off discount By using the coupon code Susan with a capital S 20 and there'll be a clickable link in the about section of the video here But I didn't want to say that I was impressed with the quality of this shirt It's nice and soft and the size is perfect. I like a medium I don't like things too tight and so this is really nice. It's a little longer for me But I just scrunched it up right here. So thank you Jenna with this company I hope to be wearing more of these shirts in the future to continue sharing messages of hope to this world And my artistic viewers and now I am going to be sharing an art video tutorial Many of you may remember I did a video a few videos back where I Created my own recipe for making our own pastel surface I know pastel papers can get expensive if you know much about pastel painting Many artists prefer a little bit of a sanded surface you get more layering with pastels and so quite often I had used the product of clear Gesso and This is probably the least expensive way to make your own pastel surface and it works great and clear Gesso Has a couple of benefits to it one is it's clear So if you do an underpainting on a piece of watercolor paper matte board whatever You can put the Gesso on top of it and it'll show through what you did the other advantage is it has a little bit of grit to it like sand and That creates a little bit of a sanded surface to apply pastel on top of and I get mine on Amazon I believe because I don't think Dick Blick has these big bottles But anyway, so clear Gesso is a great product and it works awesome But I recently like I said made a new recipe. I was painting on these wood slices from Arteza By the way, I've got some more coming. That's really exciting. I can't wait to do these paintings But I came up with a better recipe. I think by adding a product called marble dust. Let me grab that All right, this is marble dust and it's pretty inexpensive I did get this one on Dick Blick four pound bag for I think it's less than $10 and a little goes a long way It has the consistency of baby powder and I saw a recipe or a tutorial on YouTube where Gentleman artist made his own recipe and it didn't work for me as well So I came up with my own measurements and that is let me show you here. I Used this is just a little sample container that I have in here I did my experiment and I mixed up two parts of clear Gesso to one part of marble dust I think I had I don't know a half a cup of clear Gesso and a quarter cup of marble dust and what I found about this is The marble dust this is the best way that I can describe it that I think is what's happening The marble dust gives a bit more Consistency to the surface than just the clear Gesso alone and I found it made wonderful surfaces So one of the questions was can you use this on something besides wood because that's what the video was and So this video here you're going to see me creating four different boards these this is just matte board where I have applied first I Applied an underpainting now. This is the simplest kind of underpainting, which is just to give it a color I don't like working on white often So I I'm going to show you three different products that I get four different products that I use to create a colored Board and then I apply the recipe of clear Gesso and marble dust to it and it does make a Nice surface now the marble dust does give it a little bit more of a cloudiness than the clear Gesso alone So if that's a concern just use clear Gesso But anyway, I'm going to show you now how I made these boards with different under paintings and also This painting so you're gonna get a whole lot in this video. All right, here we go. It's gonna be a lot of fun I've already shared the basic very simple recipe which again is one part of the marble dust and two parts of this clear Gesso so as you could see I already put in a quarter cup of marble dust and Now a half a cup or two quarters of the clear Gesso I mix it up real good and I also found that when I kept it in the little container I just used an old like container from some feta cheese that I could shake it up real well before I use it or reuse it again and It seems to stay fairly Well mixed it doesn't separate too much in other words I was explaining here how before I had added some acrylic ink right to the mixture and it just lightened it up too much So I'm gonna show you a different way to tone your boards All right. Now if you are using matte board it has Two different textures on each side. I'm choosing sometimes. I I like the more textured one and sometimes I like the smooth one, but since I'm applying this pastel surface Concoction to it. I'm just gonna go ahead and do it on the smooth side So let's do this first board. I said I have four of them in eight by ten Boards and I'm gonna show you go ahead and show you This one product that I used But I actually have a bigger bottle of this the quinacridone nickel azo gold I I call this technique along with this product the Rita Kirkman technique if you haven't seen the artwork of Rita Kirkman, she I just love her work man, she's good and She to my knowledge invented the technique where she uses this With no, that's not what we're doing today fine pumice gel Combined I have the recipe up here. I have a video on how to do this I'll see if I can put these videos that I've done in the past in the description section of this video So you can find them, but she can she mixes these two together kind of like I did the marble dust and the clear gesso and she applies it to board and Then she uses this product to do like a value study with whatever her subject matter is and oh her results Just it her paintings just glow from underneath. So that's one of the reasons I like this color So all I'm doing is I'm going to apply this quinacridone nickel azo gold alone to this board before we put our homemade pastel do-it-yourself Recipe on here. Alright, so has the best way for me to do this if I just put this on the board and try to spread it It's gonna be crazy. Um I'm I'm experimenting again. I don't know if I've done it this way before I'm gonna spray this board. This is not Victoria's secret Passionate kisses This is an old bottle. It's actually got some alcohol in it. I can't remember if I mixed it with Water it might just be yeah, I think I did maybe a little water and a little alcohol Then I've got another bottle that's got just water So I'm gonna spray this a little bit with this so that this will spread more easily So let me do that real quick Some of you I know if you don't like the smell of alcohol. I use it just because it dries faster You can use water but um, all right, so now I Think I'll let me put it In this little dish here instead of just on the board so Putting some in the dish I might need a little more and I better hurry because that alcohol is going to dry fast and let's go for it Now this is pretty Concentrated in its color. So that's why I put it on the board first I mean the alcohol on the board first. See it's drying already because it will be too thick and It's okay if it doesn't go on super smooth See if you apply more water, it'll go on more like this because If you're doing a painting over it sometimes the variations just make it look more painterly, you know so here's our Awesome gorgeous golden color and I'm using a brush. That's purposely Not real smooth. It's got a lot of texture to it And I think it's kind of neat when it comes out with some kind of weirdness to it like that So there's my first board, but if you want more consistency You could apply a smoother coat of water. You could apply it more consistently You even could dilute this a little bit with water if you wanted to so all right So there's our our first board before we apply it. I think that's kind of neat doesn't have an old world look to it All right time for board number two. Once again, I'm gonna use the smooth side This time I'm going to apply pastel, you know We don't always have to find some other kind of product to tone our our surfaces We can use good old pastel that we're using anyway to cover it up with so this is a new pastel by Prismacolor and This is just kind of a bright orangey pink And I really like this color and especially warmer colors do better for under painting colors for Landscapes because it's more of a complement to the greens and blues that might be in a landscape with this one I wasn't real happy with the final result because the colors weren't vibrant enough I basically I do this technique all the time with pastels to on watercolor paper And I think I might have failed to mention you can use watercolor paper for the same thing that I'm doing here So I used a chamois cloth to blend it again I do this technique a lot, but it just still didn't have the vibrancy and it wasn't real consistent So you'll see later. I actually Retone this paper with something else All right, now it is time for board number three and for this one I haven't done this in a while, but I actually have a video on Making your own boards using acrylic paint and by the way I have another video on eight ways to make your own pastel surface And I have like I said another video on using these products what I call the Rita Kirkman technique Just tons of ways for you guys to save money making your own pastel surfaces because I know Pastel papers get expensive and sometimes some of you live in areas I love that Monet cafe is all over the world live in areas where you may be limited in what you can get so this time I'm going to do the smooth side. Am I yeah, and then I'll do the rough side again I'm speeding this one up a bit, but basically I'm using acrylic paint and I really like to use acrylic paints That are a bit more translucent and these golden tubes are neat because they give you a little swatch across these three black lines and if you can see through it like this particular color Green gold it is very translucent, and I feel they work better that one is kind of too I feel they work better for under paintings or when you're toning a board like this because you still keep the vibrancy of the Paper showing through it still stays very light and vibrant. All right, so what I'm doing that one got kind of Stuck shut you want to make sure I don't always do this I need to though clean the edges of your acrylic tube The top of it really good before you put the cap back on because it can kind of dry shut So I got some in a little dish. I'm adding some water based on my previous two techniques I wanted to make sure I got it really Where it would apply very easily and it did I really liked this technique a lot It's I use my my brush again. That's just my crazy textured brush on purpose I love this brush and I I like the texture But if you don't like the texture you can use a foam roller or a foam brush Or just a brush that isn't so crazy like my brush right here, but isn't that a gorgeous color? Also, too, if you wanted like I just showed you could take a paper towel and kind of wipe it smooth But but I'm gonna leave it textured and this gorgeous green For this board. I'm going to be using acrylic inks. These are Daener roundy acrylic inks I love these. I love their vibrancy I also love how if you're using these on pastel papers And you don't want to take up a lot of the tooth These don't take up any tooth of the paper in this case It doesn't matter as much because we're putting our own pastel surface on top of the board But that particular color is called dark green even though it's very like Turquoise a little more blue green to me, but I wanted the board to be more turquoise So I used this one color called turquoise So I added this color to the dark green to get a little bit of a brighter color Isn't that pretty? I think just the creation process of all this is so fun. So same old same old I'm still using my really heavily textured brush and This is the one by the way This surface is the one that I will be using to create the painting that you will see and this is the board that I mentioned wanting more vibrancy So I decided to use the acrylic inks once again this time I'm using a combination of these two that I love this combo. It is fluorescent pink and Indian yellow They actually kind of give me a color similar to the quinoa crudone Nicolaiso gold But perhaps a little bit more Pizzazz to them and probably because of that fluorescent pink But anyway, I love this color combo of these acrylic inks I did add a little water to this one and I felt it worked better So you guys are all learning from my trial and error So I everything just seemed to apply better with a little bit of water now my brush handle came off So in this one I am getting more of a smooth application rather than my my bristly brush And I actually kind of even liked a little bit of that pink new pastel that I had underneath it So once again very similar to the Quinoa crudone Nicolaiso gold so if you don't have the that Golden type of fluid acrylic then you can use acrylic inks if you have those I'm giving you guys an excuse to buy too many new products, right? And finally we are going to be adding the homemade pastel surface recipe of the clear gesso and the marble dust and I used two different types of Applications for one I use the brush and then I use the foam brush as well So for this first one, I'm just going to use a regular brush, and I'm only going to do one coat I find that's all we need. I went ahead and just took the handle off since it was falling off anyway so just one coat and I think I may have mentioned before that because the marble dust has been added It doesn't stay this cloudy, but it is a bit more cloudy a bit more opaque than just clear gesso alone But you'll see once the boards dry. You still can quite easily see the underpainting color underneath and here they are four homemade boards with different colors and I love Creating these ahead of time so that when I'm in the mood to paint I can just go grab something and often I get this question all the time is why do you do an underpainting and Sometimes it's just for the sheer creativity of it But often I find it sets a mood and it inspires me maybe to paint scenery or things differently than I normally would But for this painting, I'm going to use the turquoise one. I felt the turquoise board Suited the subject matter quite well. I'm using a photo from Judith Williams She's in our Monet cafe art group on Facebook And it's such a great resource because we have a reference album where our members over 10,000 members I think almost 11,000 now can submit their Photographs for other artists in the group to use so I think it's great that often for people like me who don't get to Go places a lot now, especially with COVID-19 We can find places far and wide all over the world and reference material for from our very own group members It's cool. I Will be speeding up the painting Demonstration portion of this video because the video was already so long with so much content And I am going to add some music later for your listening pleasure but I am going to talk to you guys a little bit and share with you a little bit about my reasoning for some of my choices and Also, too, if you're a patron of mine from my patreon page www.patreon.com Susan Jenkins, I Believe I'm going to take the painting portion and slow it down for you guys and put it on my patreon page And if you're not a patron of mine It is really easy to do. It's only $5 a month. I do give extra instruction. We have a lot of fun We have a weekly schedule. There's homework. There's story time There is PE lesson my patron education lesson and my patrons have their own special album to share their work in so and as Well as a Facebook group so there's a lot going on there But a lot of people support my patreon page Just to be able to keep Monet cafe going here on YouTube you guys if you've been a subscriber long You know, I pour my heart and soul into this and I think it's a passion of mine because I had a struggle in life Learning art and finding time to learn art and all the resources. There's so much more available now than when I got started So, you know, I'm not the only one doing this. There's plenty of artists on YouTube giving some free art instruction But again, if you'd like to support me on patreon, it really does help especially in these times and I do appreciate it. So patrons. I probably will be giving you up a more detailed version of this But I did want to share a little bit with you guys here in Monet cafe about this. I was intrigued by the photograph I'm going to talk about the pastels too. I was intrigued by the photograph. It had such an interesting lighting and mood and I found out that again the credit goes to Judith Williams one of our group members in our Monet cafe art group on Facebook and The photo was actually from New Mexico and I kind of felt that I I could see in the distance that there were There was some warmth to the mountains and it looked kind of deserty But I think it seemed to be one of those Interesting times of day when you literally have the sun setting and the moon rising at the same time and it was like the foreground was very blue and the background because of the Sun probably behind the person doing taking the picture Was still that mountain in the back was catching some of the sunlight So it was very intriguing to me to have the the cool and the warmth in the same photo and that moon rising now Also, too, I think I do want to do another video I'll probably probably talk about this more in the patreon version of this demo that I do talk a little bit more about Photos and sometimes what to leave in and what to leave out in this particular photo. There was a lot of Debris and things I couldn't even determine what it was. I had it pretty small when I was looking at it, but There were some unnecessary things that you know as artists We can use our artistic license and just leave in the things we think are important and leave out the things that aren't so So that's that was kind of some of my thinking with this and I really was happy with the surface It did do well. I used again. I've been using my little chamois cloth method I know in the past I've used different methods to blend things I don't like to over blend but sometimes on initial layers Blending is a good idea and I used my little chamois cloth and it works great on the surface I've shared in some past videos. It doesn't work great on UART paper It's just a bit too sanded but for this homemade surface it worked great And let me talk a little bit real quickly and then I'll play some music for you guys about the pastels that I'm using I will at the very end of this video show you you see how I'm marking them all as I'm painting This is kind of my new strategy. Thanks to you guys for giving me those suggestions I've been asking you what you like to see and your comments helped me so much. I really appreciate appreciate your feedback I do try to cater to that so I've been marking my pastels as I use them and at the very end I do a cleaner version. I mark them all and I give a little code I'll tell you what that is at the end of the video the TL the S The JR I'll tell you what those are But anyway, I used a lot of the we can see them right there the Terry Ludwig Umber shadows and shades. Look at those colors. Aren't they gorgeous? I just thought they had kind of that New Mexico feel You know the especially the warmer tones and there even were some of those purples and grays that I use there Now with these sets often I like to keep a set intact if I if I pulled them all over the ones I was using to the left side I'd have to go back and put them all back in and that's probably my pet peeve about pastels I really don't like putting them away and reorganizing them because I just want to paint so my strategy with a set as I usually turn them straight up vertical like you see and then I know the ones that I've already used so so I love this set and Real quickly, let me just brag on the Terry Ludwig company. I have never met either Jof I don't know if it's Jeff or Jof the way he spells his name Ludwig and Terry Ludwig But I have gotten to kind of know them somewhat from social media And I'll tell you what that is an awesome company and I feel they have some really great values as well So I like to support them not only because their pastels are awesome But they're just awesome the company's awesome. All right, so enjoy some music I will show all the pastels at the end and patrons I will try to get the slower version with some more instruction pretty soon Oh, and by the way, this painting the completed painting is available in my Etsy shop now And I always have a clickable link to my Etsy shop and all of my other links in the about section of my videos I felt the perfect song for this painting tutorial was one of my favorite songs by Beethoven Moonlight Sonata Painted for a little bit longer on this, but I thought I'd just go ahead and show you the final Once again, I was very happy with using this homemade surface And I'm excited to be doing more paintings on the other boards I thought I'd zoom in closely so you could see the surface and the pastels. All right now here is where I am Very quickly marking all of the pastels that I used and I'll also provide a still image for you to look at But basically I've got terry Ludwig's unison sinelli a rim brand jack richison And here is the still image so you can see it more closely You can pause this at any time if you'd like to see the colors or the brands more closely All right guys, I hope you liked that Please like this video if you did comment become a patron and as always happy painting