 Hello subscribers and first-time visitors to Monet Cafe. This is artist Susan Jenkins and today I'm going to try my hand. It's something a bit new for me. I have been just impressed and really enjoying the work of An artist Deborah Stewart. She's a pastel artist that does abstract work Now I don't like all abstract work. Some of it just gets a little too unreal to me But I love I actually get a little bit abstract with some of my colors and looseness on occasion And I thought I'm so drawn to it her work and others that I think do it very well that I thought I'd try Doing this a bit myself. So what I have here is I do like here lately I've been doing a lot of working on watercolor paper to begin with now This is just a large piece of cold pressed watercolor paper. The back side is the rough side And the reason I do that is because the reason I flip it over to the smooth side is because I in this particular case Don't want the roughness showing when I apply the pastel sometimes I kind of like that But in this case I wanted to go ahead. I'm going to do a little bit of watercolor underpainting I'm going to put on some music and just Enjoy this process. There's something about it becomes almost spiritual to me when I work So that's why I thought I would like to do this abstract type of painting now I'm going to apply the watercolor as an underpainting Then after I'm happy with that I may apply some pastels just some lines and things to get a little abstract Then after that I'm going to apply clear liquid gesso. I'll show it But I'm clear liquid gesso has a grit to it So once I put that on it will allow me to get pastel on here in a few layers Now I apply it with a foam brush because it goes on really smoothly But you can use a regular paint brush too and you'll get more of the texture So and the reason I use the clear someone asked why don't you just use regular gesso? Regular gesso has a grit too, but the clear allows you to see through to what you've already painted it will Blend it a little bit, you know the watercolor or the pastel you have on here, but it's okay Especially if you're doing something abstract what I've got here is just my little handy-dandy travel water kit watercolor kit which I really like just because it's easy and practical and I have of course my water and some paper towels This is my little makeshift tray to catch pastels when they fall so they don't fall all over my Desk here, and then I've also made a selection. I've pre-selected some pastels This may change as the music Gets me more in a place where I see color and I've had people ask that how do I choose some of the colors when I punch it up? Sometimes I just see it. I just I don't know I just see it and often it's because of the music and perhaps the Just the connection with God in my mind So this is how I'm gonna start, but I've got a whole bunch of other pastels I can choose from so anyway I'm gonna get started and I just pray this comes out as something that is pleasing to the eye. Let's do it