 Hello artist and welcome to Monet Cafe Outdoors. This is at our little farmhouse and we just love it here even though it's small. It's where we moved after the flooding of our home in 2017 and you know we just count our blessings for everything. We have some cows next door to us. Jackson loves being able to run around everywhere and I thought I'd include this little footage. Often you don't see outside of Monet Cafe. Again this is our little farmhouse. It was really a wreck of a house after our other home flooded. We totally renovated it and not that this is supposed to be a home renovation video but take a look at the house before and after. That's our other business that we do and I often think I should make a YouTube channel for home renovations. My husband's so good at it. That was the before kitchen picture. Here's the after kitchen. I thought you guys might like to see this and look at this bathroom. Oh my gosh it has every color of tile. I should like that as an artist but I like our new renovation better and this is us in our travel trailer we were living in while renovating the property. Poor hubby so tired and I was just thankful to have some shoes. I lost so many things in the flood. Alright here's the little room that was the former Monet Cafe and this is my little 10 by 13 room where I work and I know a lot of you guys have to do the same thing just make things work. I have stuff all over my kitchen sometimes. This is like at five in the morning when I got up and I will be making a video soon. It's called A Day in the Life of an Artist. My daughter-in-law was so sweet to record some footage so I'll be putting that together soon. Okay let's get started with this outdoor painting. Okay so here we go. I'm going to be painting actually three versions from the same reference photo. I know many artists have the same challenge I do sometimes about overworking something so I literally did this last one out of my imagination afterwards with the goal of staying loose and spontaneous and I want to give photo credit for our very own Annette Meyer Atkins who's in our Monet Cafe group. Lovely photo. Also the set that I'll be using for this painting is the Maggie Price basic set of 60. It's a Terry Ludwig set of pastels and I love it. It was just easy to bring outside that was one of the main reasons. So I'm excited I think this will be fun. I hope to do more outside before the weather gets too awfully hot here in Florida but I'm thankful you guys have joined me today and let's get started on this little painting and please Lord just bless this and bless everyone who's watching this. I'm just so grateful to be able to paint. All right guys here we go. Oh and be sure to watch to the end for a little more footage of my favorite cow Oreo and also I'll talk more about our brand new bracelet design you'll see me wearing it in the video. All right one of my greatest challenges I can tell I'm gonna have here I'm gonna try to talk over the road noise I do have to pull my hair back so it doesn't blow the wind is so crazy but one of the biggest challenges is going to be seeing this reference image I have it on my iPad here and it's literally so bright out here it's kind of hard for me to see it so I'll just try to do the best I can so what I've got going on here is in this reference photo I'm gonna kind of break it down a little bit halfway is right about here on my paper and the layer for the water the pretty water is a little bit higher than that it's not quite thirds but it's basically in here somewhere okay and then we've got a nice tree again I I don't even have to squint to make basic shapes here because it's already hard for me to see anything I'm just kind of like a giant value study here and then I've got some what I loved about this it's got a little bank that kind of comes out here what I loved about this was these beautiful meadowy type of grasses that are growing here there's just such a dense area of grasses I don't want it to trail off the side I want to keep this up and I do like it's kind of dark in this area here so I'm gonna accentuate that but that is your basic composition there it's not really all that much oh I do have some more trees back there let me just kind of sketch them in there's a little hill kind of coming down bank I should say and then we've got some taller trees back here they're not quite all the way to the top of the paper little space in it some tree here then another tree here I want to try not to space them to equidistant apart and then back in here we've got some trees that are growing right smaller they're right by the water here okay and there's going to be a little bit of a reflection here there's some trees kind of in the background again I really cannot see what I'm painting here oh I see what it is now it's like a hill kind of going up oh that's kind of neat it's kind of a little bank and a hill that kind of goes up behind there so combination of some trees some grasses and some water should make for a lovely painting the wind literally got so strong for this part of the video you can see my easel shaking so much from it you couldn't really even hear what I was saying so I'm doing a basic value study combination under painting with some very warm pinks beautiful pink tones I have four different pink values here or this one's magenta like a very dark pink and so I'm just getting in all of the values with that color family and then I will be using a piece of pipe foam insulation to blend it in I wanted to talk again about this Sennelier pastel card it is I believe the same surface that I used for the last video I did and I really love the surface it lends itself towards a very painterly style I did have a little mark on I think I did that by rubbing the paper on something but it's a great surface I happen to like working on dark surfaces it's just I don't know it already kind of sets a mood now I'm working with the medium value it's well it's the next one down from the darkest and I'm just kind of looking in my reference image which you can't see very good because of the iPad I would recommend I mean I totally recommend if you paint outside to paint plenty or paint what's in front of you instead of from a reference photo but it didn't work out in my case with my crazy life and the cows were moving all around in the field but but if you do something where you just want to get outside and paint with a reference image it's probably best in this case to not use an iPad if it's really bright because I really could barely see it it probably would be better if you print it out your reference photo and if it's windy like this tape it down really good I could have pulled my hair back a little tighter too it's all whipping around in there so again I'm just really getting in a value study with the four different values of this pink and in just a second you're gonna see me blend it in oh another thing I wanted to mention is you know pay attention to what is the lightest thing the darkest thing in your reference image and the lightest thing in your reference image and in this case it was the sky I'm getting it a little darker right now because I'm gonna layer on top of it and I do get a little darker if that darker pink up in the upper horizon or upper heavens that's how it typically is in nature and then of course whatever's in the sky if you've got a body of water you know you're gonna get that sky color reflected down into the water so that's why I did that now I do know that I'm gonna need to darken up some other things as well as I work but this is just again just to get the basics in and here is where I'm using the pipe foam insulation a little piece of pipe foam insulation is all you need from the hardware store it works great for blending it just kind of takes away the roughness or the spaces that you still see in the paper and gives it that nice moody painterly feel so now kind of got a basic value study going here is my Maggie price set that I'm using the Terry Ludwig Maggie price basic set of 60 I think it has a great assortment I'm talking there about it has some good neutrals in it but it's mostly very bright colors which I like but it does have some decent neutrals in it as well but it's really got a really nice assortment of pastels it would be a set that you could do a whole painting with like I'm doing here and sometimes it's nice just to have a set even though you know as pastel artists we want all the pastels in the world sometimes because of our pocket books like mine we we can't do that all right so I am going to add some music to this I wanted to keep you know what I think I think I won't I think I'm just even though it's windy at this point I did quit talking because I knew you wouldn't really hear me so I think I'm just going to keep the sound of the wind I apologize for some of the trucks we do live on a road where there are some big trucks that come by and there's a phosphate mine about seven miles up from us so it does get a little loud that's the only really negative about where we're living now so enjoy this little painting stay tuned to the end it does help my YouTube standings you know if you complete a video and also if you haven't subscribed to my channel I would love it if you would do that and click the little bell icon if you'd like to get notified whenever I post a new video that way you won't have to search for it you'll just get a notification whenever I post anything new and also join our Monet cafe art group on Facebook if you haven't already I'm making this one video by the way this has been a lot of work over the past almost 12 days now I've been doing this 12 days of healing for my patrons on my patreon page if you would like to become a patron get a little extra it's only $5 a month you can cancel it anytime and I have a little bit more of an intimate place with my patrons where we can communicate more I get to see your artwork more and again it's patreon.com slash Susan Jenkins but this one video I was saying I'm gonna include on both so I'm talking to both my patrons and my friends in Monet cafe my subscribers there so that everybody can get the benefit of this outdoor painting lesson and again if you are wanting to learn more about pastels and you don't know anything and you'd like to get some feedback on what you're trying to accomplish the Monet cafe art group on Facebook is a great place to do that we're nearly at 10,000 members but don't let that intimidate you it's a group of artists of all kinds of levels we're talking about brand new I love it when I see somebody post on there I have no idea what I'm doing with somebody tell me the best pastels to buy or you get all kinds of communication with people who have been doing this a while and artists are so friendly and nice in that group I just love it and of course I have my Facebook group just for my patrons and of course my Patreon page as well so you're in the right place if you want some artistic information and lessons and tutorials and I love how this channel Monet cafe on YouTube is literally all over the world and probably my favorite thing about this channel is I started it because I had a hard time finding information I wasn't able at the time in my life when I started pursuing some of my artistic desires that I couldn't afford to go to workshops I didn't have the time at at one point in my life I was a single mom with three kids and life was just challenging you guys I know many of you can relate but so I know that there are many people that I mean here in America that are challenged but even in other countries that you just don't have the painting resources or education and so I love it when I get feedback from you guys appreciating what this channel is able to provide for you all right now I'm going to be quiet just enjoy the sound of the wind me painting and stay tuned to the end to see a little bit more about Oreo my favorite cow in the field and also a little bit more about the bracelets the designer that did our Monet cafe artist series bracelets I gave her an idea because I had seen these little stones literally the ones that I'm wearing in this painting right now they look like pastels I mean it looks like you could take them off the bracelet and just paint with them they have that kind of matte finish and they're very textural and guess what you can add essential oils drops of oil to the stones and they remain with you almost all day I mean I smelled so good that's why that's why you'll see at the end of the video Oreo was smelling it too and she loved it so all right guys enjoy stay tuned to the end and I'll be bringing you more videos soon oh yeah and this is real time by the way I'm not speeding this up other than the little bit at the beginning enjoy I wanted to add here that I really liked it at this loose phase that was one of the goals of this video was to describe how you know sometimes we can overwork a painting and we need to step back and just take a break from it and really think about where we want to go with it I felt that I I did keep going with it you know and I fortunately snapped a pic of it at the stage where I kind of liked the looseness and what happens when we overwork a painting and just keep at it and keep at it we really lose the freshness and we also use the brilliance and and the color of the pastels that's kind of inherent to that medium pastels are an amazing medium because they are almost pure pigment I mean depending on the brand the variety of pastel you buy they have different amounts of binder in them but it is really such a true essence of earth to me you know we get our colors and everything from you know what God has given us in our beautiful creation of there goes Jackson walking around he literally kept laying his ball behind my feet while I was painting and I backed up and tripped quite a few times he loves playing catch but anyway the pastel medium is just fantastic I know many people can relate and once you try them and once you sort of start figuring things out with them you really become addicted to this beautiful medium I was adding some of these purples into the shadows purple is a great color and blues are great shadow colors that really can create that sense of something being deep down like in the roots of those grasses there and and it's also a good color purples and teals like I'm using there are good colors for pushing things back in the distance when you have a tree line that's far away I apologize for my hair there that is going to make them look like they're they're further away colors decrease in value or I should say pastels or things in general decrease in value they're not as dark in the distance and they also get cooler in color temperature as the distance increases and that's why you know like if you're somewhere where you see distant mountains far away and they just look so soft and they're not real dark and they look almost purple that's the reason and the physical reason the scientific reason why that happens is because there's a lot of atmosphere between you and something that's really far away oh and just listen to the peregrine falcons that visit my yard actually they sit on the telephone wire at my house a lot and they hunt for little critters and things that run around in the field but they're just beautiful there's two varieties of them these are the little ones and that there's another variety or species of peregrine falcon that's a little bigger and then we have some hawks these hawks called Cooper's Hawks that visit our yard to that are awesome and squirrels and all kinds of critters and anyway I just love nature and I know you know you guys can relate because if you like art you gotta like nature you know that's just it all goes together so again this I liked this phase of this painting so if you participate in this I'm talking up to my patrons now and I'll share more in my post when I post this to you patrons but I would like it if you would do the same thing that I have done which is work on this painting use my reference photo if you like which again is from one of our members in Monet cafe art group or come up with your own of a similar subject matter and do a painting and try to snap a shot of it when it is in the loose phase where you're kind of liking this I mean and you can leave it at that phase if you want and not go any further or you can continue to paint and then get a really good photo of that or it doesn't have to be really good photo get your best photo you can of it when you're completed to so kind of like that to be the challenge to analyze your work and see where you may be at the point of overworking it and then also you may want to do patrons or anybody listening what I did when I came back in and I was I can't remember something else was going my iPad had died and I literally just painted the same reference image I had that little piece of the UART paper at the bottom not UART paper this is Sennelier Lecart card at the bottom of this painting I had a space there and it was kind of a long horizontal composition and so just from imagination I just repainted the photo well actually I had my my actual painting above it to kind of look at as well but I did it kind of from just imagination I tried to keep it really fresh and unfortunately I didn't film myself doing it but I did it rather quickly and I stopped when it was still at that very loose phase so that's the one I showed you a pic of it at the beginning of this video and at the end of the video I'll show all three of them again but again I'm just loving those bracelets I'm so thankful our designer made those anyway again if you guys would like to get one they're going to be like just around $20 plus shipping so very affordable but I like the loose phase and I want to do a reminder to myself to slow down it's been hard to slow down these past few days with trying to do all these paintings but anyway alright guys enjoy here's the point where I'm adding a little bit of the little flowers that were actually in the reference image I wasn't real happy with the size of that one later I or the shape of it was what it was it was just too yellow right there on top so I do alter that one alright guys enjoy more of the sounds of the wind and just me painting now here's where I'm pretty much finishing it up and I'm giving you shots of all of the paintings this is the completed one this is when I snapped a shot at the loose phase do you see the difference and here is the crazy colorful one from my imagination but you can definitely see a difference in the freshness of the color alright guys enjoy my little Oreo and a little bit more about the bracelets if you'd like to get one by the way you might have seen I was I was petting my cow Oreo she's actually really liked these bracelets and I think I know why this is the new series I believe I want to make sure I'm running this by the jewelry designer I believe we're gonna call it the colorful earth series we already have the artist series which is the ones the money that they got the Van Gogh but these I saw these little stones they look like pastels don't they I don't know if you can see them let me see if I can get my hand up here they literally look like pastels we have two designs of these one is alternating beads with oh it's got the little Monet cafe charm but one of them is alternating colorful beads I'm gonna tell you something really special about these beads in a minute and one of them is all of them with the wood surrounding them okay here's what's so neat and why I think Oreo really like they have they're adjustable to they have this nice little silver here that you don't I should call them not beads they're stones and they are for applying essential oils they smell so good right now while I'm painting because you literally if you're into essential oils like just a few drops of essential oils on your stones and they will just smell so good my husband came in and was like oh you smell good honey so I hope you guys enjoyed seeing those new bracelet designs I really love these so if you would like to get one there will be a clickable link in the description section of this video also on my website Susan Jenkins fine art comm so I hope you enjoyed it if you're a patron of mind please try this and share it in our Google album alright guys happy painting and be blessed