 Hello, artistic friends. I'm so glad you've joined me for this special Monet Cafe Studio production. In this soft pastel painting tutorial, you will witness me painting a rejoicing snowman as he raises his mittens in praise at the star of Bethlehem. I'll also be sharing with you some of my techniques for creating colored Christmas lights. Don't you love all that color? And I'll also give you tips of how to create a star like the star of Bethlehem that really twinkles. So it should be a lot of fun. Now, this is not the real-time tutorial that is over on my Patreon page. If you would like the full real-time tutorial, it is about an hour and 40 minutes. You might want to consider becoming a patron of mine, and it's only $5 a month. You get my full tutorials, extra content, and you get to become part of my Patreon family. Plus, I get to see your work, so come on and join the family. So this is just my practice sketch. I really wanted to portray this snowman as just exuberant, overseeing the star of Bethlehem. So it is always a good idea to work these things out before you commit to a serious painting. The surface I'm working on here is a piece of pastel matte. It is a wonderful soft pastel surface that receives multiple layers of pastel. It's water-friendly. I don't do anything with any wet mediums in this tutorial. It's only soft pastels. There's his hands raised in praise. Again, this is the kind of edited version without all the real-time content, but I think you're really still going to enjoy this process. And the only thing I've been using so far is this little dark blue stick of pastel. It's a Prismacolor new pastel. They don't sell them in individual sticks anymore, but you could use anything just to give a value study. Now, what I'm doing here, you might be thinking, what on earth is laying a foundation to capture some of the warmth that will be coming from this star? I go into this really in full detail in the Patreon version, so I'll try to give you a general idea. Now, we think in our mind, oh, it's a yellow star, maybe with some white and a blue sky around it. Oh, and I apologize for the light looking super bright in some portions here. That corrects itself in just a minute. But there's actually more color in this than you would think, or at least artistically, that's how I think. I am laying a foundation with some magenta, some pinks, some oranges and reds, and I'm layering dark to light. I don't want to get my lightest values in until some of my final marks. This isn't even the lightest yellow that I'm going to add. You see how the light keeps changing when I move my hand? So the color in temperature is going to radiate out from the star from warm to cool. So think of it as a gradual transition from warm to cool. Oh, and I want to add a little bit of a halo or a reflection of light hitting on that mountaintop. That happens so often at the horizon line, even in a night scene. But it definitely happens in a day scene where there's a little bit of a lighter value down at the horizon line. So that's just my basic foundation. And what I'm doing now is this is called a blocking end stage. I wanted to get my light source established because that's very key to this painting. And now I'm kind of blocking in some of these tree shapes. I know the trees are going to be some of my darker elements in the painting. And I'm using darker, I did a Terry Ludwig eggplant color. And now I've got a lighter value for some of these distant trees. It's kind of a neutral blue. The reason is value gets lighter as things go into the distance. And this is a very general phase right here. Now you may be thinking, what reference image are you working from? I actually used the help of artificial intelligence. I like to use a program called Adobe Firefly. There's a few others that I like, but that's the one that I use to create some ideas of snowmen and stars like this in the sky. I didn't paint from one reference image per se. I used multiple images as inspiration and kind of came up with my own idea. So now you can see I'm adding some of the starlight shining out brilliantly. And this will all, it won't be this stark and dramatic the whole time. I'm going to keep layering and gradually I will, things will start to kind of blend in the sky. But I'll still have that influence of warmth. That's how the star is really going to look like it's alive. And it's a star of Bethlehem. I mean, it's got to be fantastic, right? I do add a little bit of green to these trees. I mean, they are evergreen trees, but I do know I'm going to add a suggestion after I do the green of snow on these trees. Now our brains normally, before you're an artist, you go white, right? Snow. Well, look at that color. I'm using blue. I'm even using a darker kind of a blue right here because some of the snow is in shadow and it's not always white. It's often blue, especially like at night and in areas of shadow. So this is just giving an idea that there may be some snow on these trees. I did not want to add snow at the end of this painting as snow falling because, I mean, look, there's a brilliant star in the sky. There's not a cloud in the sky. So it wouldn't really make sense to add snow, but I do add more stars and I got a fun little trick for doing that. I can't wait to share with you. Now, I'm going to paint a little while until I get to the colored lights in the trees and I've got a captive audience. Now, if you're going to keep watching this video, I'm going to share some narration, my own personal narration of a Christmas message for you. I'm going to add some music and I want to share with you what I believe is the reason for the season. I hope you won't be offended and I hope that the spirit of Christmas, which is Christ, will permeate your soul and bring you joy. And I'll be back for more painting narration when I get to the colored lights in the trees. As I paint this joyous snowman, I hope to not only reveal to you a tutorial with soft pastel, but I hope to unravel a true story that spans the ages. A story of hope and redemption woven into the very fabric of our existence. While many of us are familiar with the heartwarming account of Christ's birth found in the New Testament book of Luke, let's take a moment to rewind the pages of our Bibles. Our story begins, not in Bethlehem, but in the very first book of the Bible. It is in Genesis 3.15 that God reveals the first glimmer of His plan, a promise to crush the head of the enemy, a promise of redemption. It's actually in the garden marred by sin that the anticipation of a coming redeemer begins. So as I paint this snowman, it's my hope and prayer to delve deeper into the story of the Star of Bethlehem. Let's remember the centuries of longing that led to this moment when the star shone brightly in the night sky. Laced throughout the entire Bible, we can find a crimson thread as many prophetic voices in the Old Testament echo through the ages and foretell of the coming of the Promised One. In Isaiah, we hear of a child born, a son given. In Micah, the prophecy of Bethlehem as the birthplace of a ruler. The anticipation builds with each verse creating a tapestry of hope. And our journey through the Old Testament isn't just a historical exploration. It's a testament to the unwavering faithfulness of God. From Genesis to Malachi, the promise endures and the longing for a Messiah, a Savior, grows stronger. And it is my hope as I paint this wintery scene that you'll reflect on the beauty of the story that unfolds across the pages of Scripture. My friends, if you've never embraced this incredible story of redemption, I extend an invitation to discover the true meaning of Christmas. I pray you will accept Jesus, the promised Messiah, into your heart and life. For the best gift at Christmastime is one that's free. And now, yes, I will get back to this painting tutorial, but I pray that blessed someone and I'd love to hear about it in the comments if it did. Now, I changed my mind on the color of the scarf. I started painting it kind of a teal color, I added some magenta and some golden colors, and I just wasn't happy with it. So I decided to ask some of my friends and followers on Instagram and on my Patreon page and I would say a majority voted for the typical red and green, so I changed to scarf to have the traditional Christmas colors of red and green. And as I mentioned, I wanted to add some commentary on creating these colored lights, but I first had to get his arms back in the picture again. They had gotten kind of covered up with all of the layering. So I just basically wanted to keep them looking kind of like sticks, you know? A snowman typically has arms that are made out of twigs and sticks. So I gave it a little bit of a brown color and I gave it a few little highlights for where the star was reflecting on it. And I'm continuing to develop the scarf and the mittens. I kind of oversaturated some of the colors on the scarf and the hat because, hey, it's a fun and festive scene and it's a little fanciful, which is neat. And now, okay, so what my strategy is on these lights on the trees is I do it in typical fashion, even as I did the Star of Bethlehem. I get darker values in first and then I add my lightest values kind of in the centers and these don't have to be perfect, but I would recommend that they be random. You don't want all of your lights of the same color in a definite pattern. If you've ever strung lights on a tree, you know, they kind of fall in random places, so make sure you keep that pretty random. I also wanted to reflect some of the light from the star shining on the snow. So here's a little bit more of a close-up of the lights in the trees and now I'm going to share with you my little tip. I've done this before where I've shared with you how I make not only snow falling but also stars in a sky with pastel. I've taken my painting off. I've laid it flat. I put a piece of glassing on the landscape part to protect it. I don't want... I'm just going to do stars. I'm not doing snow. Again, this scene has a sky that doesn't have any clouds in it, so there's not going to be snow. So I had to protect my landscape and snowman. And now I'm using some Rembrandt pastels. I'm just getting some lighter colors. I don't want all of my stars to be just white. So I just used some lighter values. A little lavender, a little buttery yellow, and a really light yellow. And yes, that is a cheese grater. I got a little dish and I'm just grating some of my pastels. I'm trying to get decent sized chunks. A few times that I've done this, I got stars that were just too small. And also the reason I'm using a pastel that's a little bit harder is the last time I did this I used pastels that were too soft. I'm selling Goldilocks now. It's too hard, it's too soft. But it made... When I do the technique you'll see in a minute where I press down on the stars, it flattened them out with soft pastels. They just turned to mush. And so I thought the harder pastels would work better. Now I'm being a little fastidious about the placement of my stars here. Normally I don't care. I just let them spontaneously fall. I love the randomness of just letting them fall like this. But I was wanting to be a little bit careful about the placement this time. So I'm being more careful than normal. So now I'm getting a few of the yellow ones that I grated. And I'm trying to get them not too small but not so large that they just take over the whole scene. And you'll see I actually do get them too large because when I press down on it they do flatten out a little and they look a little too large but I fix that. So that's a little foreshadowing of what's going to happen. So I moved them around where I thought I wanted them. Be careful if you do what I'm doing here. I'm using an X-Acto blade to move some of them around and my finger. But you don't want to damage your surface. So I don't advise using an X-Acto blade. If I had pressed too hard I might have scratched my surface. I was kind of flicking them around. So now I've got my stars kind of where I want them. And I feel like the star of Bethlehem is still the central focus. And now how are these stars going to stay in place? I mean they're just going to fall off, right? When I pick it up, well, here's the trick for that. I got another piece of glassy and you could use tracing paper. I taped it down so it doesn't move. And I got a wine bottle. This is such an old wine bottle. It's from my middle son's wedding years ago. So it works to be able to flatten out and press down so hard on the snowflakes that I have added. And I roll quite a bit. And as you can see here, they did end up larger than I wanted. So I tapped it off. That helped. But I also just kind of brushed off some of the ones I didn't want. And then I softened them. I wanted them to look like they were glowing anyway. So here is the final. I hope this blessed you in many ways. And I hope you embraced my little Christmas message in the middle of it. And I have made this painting available as prints and products in my Fine Art America Shop. I'll have the link in the description of this video tutorial. I pray this blessed you with the wonderful true message of Christmas and that you enjoyed this tutorial. And if you recreate from this tutorial, I'd love to see your results. You can share with me on Instagram at Susan Jenkins Artist, Tag Me, or on Facebook at the Art of Susan Jenkins. And if you're a patron of mine, I know I'm going to get to see your beautiful snowman creations. All right everyone, Merry Christmas, God Bless, and Happy Painting.