 Welcome to Monet Café, Artistic Friends and Visitors. I'm artist Susan Jenkins and I'm very excited about bringing you this new step-by-step format which should make lessons even easier for you. And if you're new here, please subscribe to this channel to keep more art lessons coming your way. Hello and welcome to Monet Café, Subscribers and New Visitors. I'm excited because this is the first painting that I'm doing of the new year 2021. And I'm excited because I have a lot of new things coming this year and some new ways of teaching that should make it really easy to follow and great for beginners. So let's get started. I'm going to share a little bit more about my supplies and subject matter. I really love this subject matter. It is a field of some wild flowers. I loved the periwinkle color of the flowers and currently in the Monet Café Art Group on Facebook, the theme for this month is Fields and Flowers. And I am particularly drawn to fields and flowers anyway. So it's a happy subject matter and I thought something that would be fun to start off the new year. And I have to give credit to one of my patrons provided this reference photo in my Patreon group. Her name is Andrea. Thank you, Andrea. As soon as I saw this photo, I loved it. So I'm going to kind of break down the reference image prior to painting and also let me go over some of my supplies that I'm going to use. I am going to be showing you all of the pastels that I'll use and for my patrons, the videos on Monet Café always have free tutorials, but my patrons sometimes get a little bit extra. And if you're not sure, Patreon of what Patreon is, it's a place where people can support this channel for $5 a month and get a little extra art instruction and some behind the scenes content. So my patrons will get a color chart of all of the pastels I use, but I will be showing them during the tutorial. Now I haven't used this particular set in a while. I barely used it actually, really. It's a Diane Townsend. Let me get the box top. It's a Diane Townsend Greens, okay? They are these big chunky pastels that are really, really cool. Let me hold it closer. I'll try to take a picture and insert it. And I love these greens. They're very interesting. And I thought the reference photo had some of those interesting greens in it. So I thought I'd play with those a bit. And also, let me leave the reference image up here, I also thought I would use this Sennelier set of 40. I love this little set. Now Sennelier pastels are very soft. And I have found, personally, the colors are some of the most vibrant that you can get in the pastel brands available. I mean, look at these reds. These blues actually were some that I used in a painting that was pretty popular here on YouTube. It was a field of blue flowers. And so many people asked me what my blues were. And I think quite a few of them were these blues in here. So it's got some really vibrant colors. And I liked these, again, periwinkle blues back here. It also has some nice kind of magenta pink tones in here. And even some little almost salmony color I'm seeing in here somewhere. It even has some nice neutrals. So I may be pulling some from here, some from here and various other pastels, but I will show them. And again, my patrons, you'll get the color chart. So let me get started and I'm going to break it down very simply for you so that it's even more easy to follow than previous videos. Yay! I'm excited. Oh, and once again, I wanted to mention that I'm wearing another one of the Love in Faith t-shirts. I love this company. I love the positive messages of hope and encouragement. And also, I always have a clickable link in the about section of the video where you can click and find your own. I have a coupon code in the about section, but they sometimes have coupon codes and have shirts like 60% off. So check it out and share some positivity. All right. Now we're getting started. Now let's take a look at this. Typically with landscape paintings, we're going to have values that are darker in the foreground, especially like these foreground grasses. Now upon first inspection, if you're not familiar with painting or how things work with value, we often would just see all of this is all very light. Oh, we see this bright green and we want to go light value, light value everywhere. Light value just means lighter on the grayscale, okay? The difference between white and black. Where does it fall? So our darker values are usually like right here in these foreground grasses, okay? That's really going to give that illusion of these things are up close. And values gradually get lighter as they recede into the distance and color also gets a bit more muted. Now we know typical things like, of course, focus gets less and things get smaller in the distance. So that is usually something that people kind of understand pretty easily. But if you can learn these tricks about value, it's really going to improve your painting. Also, vertical elements such as trees in a landscape are always darker than flat areas as in a field or grasses, because the sun can't shine this way. It's shining from above. So that's just a good thing to keep in mind. But distant trees, if they're even further away, here's a perfect example. This is like a mountain in the background. And we know these trees are green, but these are most likely the same trees growing on this mountain. Why are they bluish purple? Well that's because color temperature cools off in the distance and it also gets lighter in value. So see that whatever these trees are on the hill, they are not as dark as this, right? And they're cooler in color temperature, whereas this is warmer. I have one of my videos that's five ways to create perspective in your artwork. I believe that's what it's called. But it goes over these five little tips that if you can learn these, it makes your skills so much better as an artist. Alright, so some of the things I really liked about this reference image is this rejoicing type of feel of these flowers and their randomness. Look back in here. You see some of these flowers just popping up back here. These are just going to be hinted at in the final painting. I also love the groupings of some of these white flowers, but notice again how out of focus and blurry these things are. So that's just a general idea. Oh, I also love how some of these pink flowers are buried. A lot of things are buried down deep into the grasses. That leads me to one other point here. I've learned over the years something that I think I'm getting better at and have gotten better at over the years is something that's so important, which is focal point that means what is the area of interest in this image? What do you want it to be? And it's usually something that initially drew you to the painting to begin with because we don't want everything to be a focal point. One of the I guess the most amateur thing that happens with a beginning artist is we feel we have to detail everything and your art is going to be much more suggestive, interpretive and impressionistic if we can learn to limit our focal points. I did a preliminary painting, which is often good to do before starting a larger piece. This was about an eight by 10. And I decided to keep the focus more about the white and the purplish blue flowers. Here are my pastels. I will be talking about them more as I work. But once again, the Diane Townsend's, the Sennelier 40 half stick set and some various other pastels. Now, here's my setup. I know sometimes I don't scan around like this, but I am using a piece of Fisher 400 pastel paper. I love this sanded surface because it's practically just like you art paper, but it doesn't warp or curl on me. I've had a real problem with you art paper curling. So at pro art panels where I showed is where you can get this paper and it's priced competitively with you art paper, a really great surface. I love it. I am just sketching in a very basic outline to follow because there's not a whole lot other than a bunch of field and flowers. I'm just kind of getting in where these background trees are going to be. And I'm using a piece of willow charcoal, also called vine charcoal. Charcoal is an excellent material to use when working with soft pastels because it's basically the same product. And you can blend your pastels right over this without a problem. I've sped this up just a tad and this video will have a decent amount of real time footage, but it will be available on my Patreon page with mostly real time content. I do have to chop it up a bit with minimal speeding it up. But just to keep the video from being, you know, like an hour and a half long. So my patrons will get more real time, a little bit more commentary, but you guys here are going to get plenty of information as well. Oh, I forgot the mountain in the background. There is like a mountain and it's always a good idea to have your mountains kind of curving up on the edges rather than frowning, drooping off the edges and it just makes a more pleasing composition. All right. So what am I doing now? Now, this is real time. I have decided for the underpainting that I'm going to use different values of cool reds and a cool red just so you know, leans a little more towards pink. These are the ones that I chose in the middle of this photograph right here. And basically with these different values, I am doing a value study with the similar color family. So the mountain is darker than the sky. The sky is almost always in a landscape painting the lightest thing. And I know that mountain is darker than that. So I'm giving it kind of that reddish color that's a little bit darker in value. Now, what's the darkest thing? It's those trees. So I'm going to get the trees and kind of some of the foreground and a little visual path with a darker pastel. This is just a darker kind of neutral purple. And I don't need really a super dark pastel like some of the like the eggplant. Terry Ludwig, I do end up using that one, I believe for some of the deeper parts of the tree. But this is just the initial block in stage. So all we're focused on right now is value. Now, while I'm working on the darker areas here, let me talk a little bit about why would I have chosen those colors as an underpainting? By the time you see the end of the painting, you will see an influence of these colors peeking through and they make for a nice combination with all of the greens. I love to use warmer tones for an underpainting if a scene has primarily green and pinks and golden colors usually work well for that. Now, these trees that are a little bit further away and behind the the foreground trees are I'm going ahead and giving them this dark value, even though I will be lightening their value and cooling them off a little bit with color temperature as I work. But once again, don't get too fussy on this block in stage and don't get frustrated if it looks rather amateur or kindergartenish looking. A lot of people say your painting has to go through an adolescent phase before it starts to look like something. Now, what am I doing here? I'm using my dark pastel to make kind of. I know in this painting, you saw the one that I did the preliminary, I decided to make the path almost go right towards those trees. I don't often like to put things in the center, but this photograph had them in the center and the horizon line is in an upper third. So that's a visually pleasing composition, but I thought it would be neat to have these flowers just cascading out of a an idea of a path or a deeper, darker value underneath the grasses. All right, now I've got a little bit of a brighter. Oops, I dropped it. A little bit of a brighter pastel. It's a little bit darker than the mountain, but it's brighter in color intensity. And so I'm just kind of scumbling it in here. I'm not pressing super hard. It just happens to be a pastel that is very vibrant. It shows up a lot even without giving much pressure. And it's a good idea not to have a lot of pressure. Oh, pardon my crazy face there. I started this after my intro. I don't have any makeup on. I've started doing earbuds now so that I can leave this scratchy sound. A lot of times I would tell you guys that I can't play the sound of the video because I play music while I paint. And often it's always it's copyright music. So YouTube will give me a strike if I play that music. So now I'm like, duh, why don't I use earbuds? And then it's silent for you guys. So you can hear the the pastels actually on the sanded surface, which I think sounds so neat. So now I've gone with a little bit lighter. It's kind of a a salmony getting a little bit more towards an orangey color. And I'm getting gradually lighter as the pastels go into the distance. And noticed I color covered up a little bit of that path with some of the red. And all of this is going to get blended in and covered up. I shouldn't say all of it. Once again, I think you will see the underpainting peeking through by the time I'm done with the painting. I like to purposely leave it in little bits of places and not have such a heavy hand that I cover it up. So here we go. Look at that. It looks like a mess, right? But now I'm going to use a technique that will really blend this. Now, I don't often show this in its hardware store format. This is pipe foam insulation. This is kind of a beat up little piece. But it's actually what's used to insulate your pipes in colder climates. We don't need that here in Florida. But I literally can just get it at the hardware store. I cut off pieces like you just saw me doing and it's an excellent blending tool. I use other blending tools, but I think originally I learned this from artist Karen Margulis and she uses it so well. But it works great to basically we're trying to cover up all the white of that paper. Now, one of my goals with my patron support, I talk about my patrons a lot, my Patreon page. It's how you guys can support me. It's five dollars a month and it really helps make this channel get better. And you guys get some extra content. But one of my goals, a piece of equipment for my studio is a better easel. You see me holding my easel. It's because I still have a kind of a cheap French easel. And it wiggles and wobbles when I I'm heavy handed like something like this. So I always have to kind of grab ahold of it so you're not seeing the image shape. But notice how that just blended in, covered a lot of the white of the paper. Now, I do do this in sections so I don't get the dark all over the place. It's OK if it blends kind of around a little bit. It doesn't have to be so specific. But when I go to lighter areas, if I have some dark on it, I use a different part of the pipe foam insulation or I wipe it off. A lot of times I will start with the lightest part, the sky, but I didn't in this case. So I'm just kind of working around the mountain area, kind of behind the trees. And again, just keeping this really loose and the end result is a soft, moody, impressionistic feel. I really love this strategy for doing an underpainting. It sets the mood and sets the stage for your painting. And you kind of got a little roadmap to work with. So it's a fast and easy way to get started. I sped this last part up just a little bit. But I think you get the idea of how to do this. All right, sometimes I tap my painting just to get some of the pastel dust off. All right, time to get to happy painting. And I love to keep my coffee or tea next to me when I paint. Now, you'll probably notice I'm putting all of the colors that I use to the left side of my painting surface, and now I'm getting a dark. I think this one is the Terry Ludwig egg plant. Terry Ludwig is the manufacturer. See how dark that is? It looks black when it goes on, even though it's just a dark purple. And I don't use black often because it's it's really a flat, dead color. And other dark colored pastels look so much more lively and rich. So I'm just getting in. You notice how sporadically I'm doing this? I mean, I do have some rhyme and reason. I am giving tree shapes, but I'm not drawing a tree. I'm still blocking in and just getting that dark value in. And this is basically a repeat of when I did the darker value with the purple. You notice how light, once I blended that medium to dark value purple, see how much lighter it got. So this is just kind of reestablishing the darks and giving it a little bit more of a deep value, which really helps to create a focal point and interest in the painting. So I'm doing the trees and then I'm going to do the path as well. Same strategy, just kind of giving some and, you know, these grasses are going to be really tall. I won't have a whole lot of field showing. It's mostly all these grasses even going into the distance. It's kind of like one of those photos where you get down on the ground and you take a photo and you can't really see the flatness of the field. You mostly just see tall grasses. So that's kind of the general concept. And here I'm using the blending tool again. But notice I'm blending those background trees to give them a little bit more mood like they're far away, a little more impressionistic. And it lightens their value a bit. I do use it a little bit on these foreground trees, but I do it with a lighter touch so it still keeps a darker value. Remember, things closer to you are usually darker in value. So especially vertical things like these trees. So I'm trying to keep those trees darker than the background trees. And I will do this more as I work with color and in different values of colors. All right, same deal. OK, so it seemed like a, you know, ditto. I just saw this. It's kind of the same thing. I'm just blending in this dark path so that it's a little more moody and impressionistic. And it's giving a foundation for the green grasses that I'm going to be painting. But I just realized that I forgot to blend in the sky. So I cleaned off or found a new spot on my pipe foam insulation and just gently blending it in, once again, trying to not have all of that creamy colored paper showing through on the Fisher 400 paper. And 400, by the way, when I say Fisher 400 or you art 400, it's just the amount of grit that the paper has. Think of it like hardware store sandpaper. You know, you have four hundred, six hundred, a thousand. And 400 is a really nice grit to work on with pastel painting. I thought I'd give a little close up so that you can see maybe a little bit better of how it applies. And now it's time to get started. So let's add some color to this lovely glowing underpainting. And local color just means the color that is in the scene, the color that you see. It's not a complementary color. It's the actual color that you want your final painting to become. So I am applying various greens. You'll see me using mostly right now I'm working dark to light. So I'm using that darker green. It's kind of a forest evergreen, darker green. I'm just still kind of scumbling it into the trees, not making any particular branches or anything at this point. And now I picked up a little bit of a darker blue pastel. I find that the darker values are so much more interesting. If you can use a combination of dark colors and not just one color. By the way, this is sped up. Oh, now I have that Terry Ludwig eggplant. I'm reinforcing some of the darker values down towards the roots. And I think I add a little bit more to the foreground grasses. But right now I'm speeding this up just a bit to keep the file size small. And for the video not to be like an hour and a half long, I think it's probably going to end up at close to an hour because I have kept a lot of real time. And again, even though this is sped up, it's not sped up so quickly, you know, like in some of the speed videos that you see. And also, too, I am still commenting here on the Monet Cafe channel. But in a minute, I'm going to add some music and you can enjoy the rest of the painting process. And you can really see what I'm doing. Like I said, I'm I'm showing most of the pastels. That's the Terry Ludwig dark set. It has some nice darks, but it has some nice not quite so darks as well. Like this one that I'm using, it's a cooler green that I'm using to gently stroke over these background trees. And what's that that's going to do? It's going to push them back further in the distance. They feel further away because the value is lighter and the color temperature is cooler. Often you'll see me with a pastel. If I use it somewhere, I'll see if I can use it somewhere else. And I knew I like some of these cooler medium to dark values in some of those deep grasses. Once again, I'll do a little more commentary here. And then Monet Cafe, you will see the rest of the video to music. And again, I think you can still see what I'm doing and hopefully recreate the painting. And if you choose to do that, if you're not a patron of mine, share your results in the Monet Cafe art group on Facebook. That's a free resource for you. Lots of people share and chat and communicate together. It's a lot of fun. I decided to grab this. This is one of the Sennelier 40 half stick set that I just showed there. This a little bit warmer. A lot of those grasses had some golden tones to them. So I thought I'd make that field a little bit warmer with that. All right. So now enjoy. And patrons, you are going to get more commentary at this point. But keep watching those of you in Monet Cafe, because I will be back popping in towards the end and give some more information and feedback. All right. Well, the painting was pretty close to done at this point. I did enjoy this. I really do love these warm under paintings. Now, can you see how it is peeking through? It's even peeking through the sky a little bit in the mountains, especially in that middle ground field and even some around the perimeter and the bottom of those tall grasses. So I hope everyone enjoyed that Monet Cafe subscribers and my patrons. Let me know if you like this step by step format where I'm trying to break it down a little bit more. Here are all of the pastels I used. Once again, my patrons, I'm going to take some good images of this and provide it to you in your Patreon post so you can get a good up close look at it. Here's the final. Oh, what do I name this painting? I think I will call it Hope Lives Here. And this painting will be available in my Etsy shop if you'd like to get it along with my preliminary painting as well. Thanks for joining me. Bless you all. Happy New Year and happy painting.