 Hello, my friends and welcome to Monet Cafe. I am very happy to be back in Monet Cafe myself in my home studio because I have done some traveling over the past few weeks. And I did get to do a little painting, which was nice. I got about three little paintings done while traveling. It was business and family for the trip. But I missed you guys and I missed being in my studio. But the great thing is I am so excited about our new little Facebook page that another subscriber recommended that we start. I unfortunately originally started it as a Facebook page and I have since changed it to a closed group. And I did that because it allows us to keep some of our work private. Sometimes you might be sharing something you want some critiques about or some advice about and you don't want it to be a page that everyone can see. So please come and find the Facebook page called Monet Cafe. Again, it's not a page. It's a closed group and you will have to ask to join. But I will gladly welcome any of my YouTube subscribers to join our group. What's great about the group is we can share things amongst each other. Unlike the YouTube channel, you guys can share a comment and I can reply back. And we don't get the dynamic of a group conversation. What I've loved while I was traveling is I got to share some of my artwork and got to talk with some of you guys on there and some of the members on there have shared their artwork. And what's neat is I'm seeing some of you guys talk and learn from each other as well. So it's really neat. So come on over to Monet Cafe Facebook. I'll share the link in this video so you'll know how to join. So without further ado, I wanted to talk a little bit in this video about some of the challenges that you're having. I've learned from the Facebook page that there's a challenge that a lot of people have the same challenge I had with how to get started with a pastel and not to get too fussy too quick, not to get in a lot of detail too quickly. And another thing is again on value is how do we determine the value in a painting? You know, I always talk about it. And so do, you know, any professional artist talks about the importance of value. So I thought we'd go a little bit deeper into that right here. And I had another subscriber ask if I could show how I sort out my values and choose my colors and values for a particular painting. I've picked a reference photo that's just a basic photo of a tree in a field. And I love things that have distance because that gives you the ability to use your value and make it work for you in the painting and create a sense of illusion with that. So what I'm gonna be doing here is these pastels are ones that I have chosen for this particular painting. I tried to keep it not very traditional, I guess you'd say, not like a lot of bright greens and things. I wanted to keep a more muted, neutral palette to keep it really, really simple. So I've just got a selection of pastels. What I did to choose these colors is I looked at the reference photo and I started analyzing the darks and the lights first. Now there's a lot of green in this but you can see they're cool greens. They're not warm greens. Cool greens lean more towards the blue end of the color scale and warm greens will lean more towards the yellow. And I wanted to, you learn as an artist, you get to use your artistic license and you get better at this the more you do. First of all, you just wanna paint, you have a tendency to paint exactly what you see. And so when I first started painting, I would just do a whole bunch of green in this. And now I'm learning that I can use some more cool greens, some purples and some other values and colors to push back that field in the back to make it appear like it's further away. So I wanna get started now. The first thing I'm gonna do is have a little test with you guys and let's pick out these pastels together in a value scale according to light and dark. So I'm going to get my camera more stable and we'll get started with that. It should be fun. All right, here we go. I actually decided just to go ahead and hold my camera here. I think we can make this suffice. All right, so in this little arrangement of pastels, again, I'm keeping this kind of a cooler neutral palette here to make it easy. We've got a variation of values here. I'll show you right now another quick little tool. It's called a gray scale and value finder. This is a handy tool. If you're on location doing plein air painting or you're doing from a photograph, you can use this little scale. And what you do is I'll put my painting up here to give you an idea. What you do is you take the value finder. Let's say we're looking at this value right back in here and you take these little keyholes and you try to find the closest to the value. You can tell the tree, I'll do that upper portion of the tree there because it's a little lighter. That's too dark there. That's still too dark. We're just doing the upper part of that tree. That's getting closer. But when you get to distant trees, you're more in a value scale of this one called value five. Now, the lighter values down here are gonna be more for your sky and things that are even further into the distance, mountains, things like that. And then of course, when you get to your ground and your foreground, you get more into these darker values in here. So it's a handy dandy little tool. So I just thought I'd share that. But right now, because we've had some other people ask, I want you guys to help me. Would you please help me arrange these pastels? We're gonna go, let's start light to dark. So a trick that I have is to squint my eyes or if you have a dimmable light, you can dim your light to do this. So if I squint my eyes and I look at these pastels, I'm gonna do them first kind of quickly and then we'll get them more correct as we go. I know these and they're kind of dirty. So I often clean them off. I'm on a little newsprint here to get a cleaner pastel. So this one has a little more yellow in it. This one has a little more blue. What you look for with value is kind of brightness. So some people would say, well, it's kind of hard to tell those apart. But if I squint my eyes, this one's just a little bit brighter than that one, okay? So now I'm gonna squint my eyes and I'm just gonna keep going with these and arranging them according to value. So let me start doing that. And you guys, I'll try to do it a little slowly so you guys can squint along with me. What do you think would be next here? Hmm, okay. Then sometimes what I'll do when I get questionable about something, I'll start putting the darkest over there. You can easily see this as the darkest dark. And then we've got some of these greens and other purples and things over here. This one's pretty dark too, but it's not quite as dark as that. You can kind of tell next to the foam, the black foam next to it. Of course, we've got a dark here and this one's pretty dark. Okay, we've still got some of our middle ones in here. I'm still thinking about which ones are the lightest ones in here. It's kind of interesting here. Is this a dark? I'm running out of room in my little tray here. This is kind of a bright green I was gonna use for some of the foreground grasses. You can squint your eyes and see that's pretty bright too. So it's gonna fall somewhere in here. This one is darker than this. It's darker than this. Might switch those. It's darker than that. You squint your eyes. I think it's darker than this. I think we're getting there now. I think I'll kind of rearrange these to give me some more room. Okay, so we've got dark, dark, less dark and it's going down from there. Okay, so we're getting there. This one's darker. So you see it's almost like a little game. That's what you do. Just think of it as a game. So I'm still thinking about this right here. Remember too, I have someone, I've gotten kind of close to some of you guys on YouTube and on Facebook that I experienced some of your struggles and one particular subscriber, she's precious. She has mentioned and I know it's the same thing other people are challenged with. So I love sharing it. Is that it's hard sometimes when you're dealing with different colors to determine the value. If you're all in the same family of blue, it's just kind of easy. But once you start adding in different hues, it gets a little harder. So when we've got a blue next to a pink, it's like, ah, which one's darker? But again, do the squinting of the eyes and it really does help a lot. I still got this blue back in here. Obviously, it's pretty bright though, you know? Now I'm gonna share with you another trick. I'm gonna leave it as is. I think I've got some things I need to switch around. But I'm gonna leave this, this one's lighter actually. Nope, I'm gonna leave it. Even if there's something wrong to show you my test, you take a black and white photo or you take a photo and you convert it to black and white and then you can more easily see the value. So let's do that right now, even if some of these are in the wrong place, all right? All right, so now I've taken my black and white photo and I was pretty close but I was able to see a couple of things that needed to be changed. One of them was this little green that I had on the bottom that was just kind of sitting here. I could see from the photo that it is more in this area here. And I could also see that this blue, I'm going from memory now because I'm not looking at the photo, was over here, it actually is a little more into this value area here. And then I also saw from the photo that again, this is back to determining with color. It gets a little bit harder but from the black and white photo, it was my observation that this was a little bit brighter and lighter in value than this one here. These were the rest of these were pretty good. So anyway, that is just a quick little way for you to kind of get an idea of value. And once again, all of these things, they become natural the more you do it. And sometimes we have a tendency to look at other artists work and we think they were always that good and they weren't. And I really need to share some of my beginning work because I listened to some of your, or look at some of your comments and I'm like, wow, that's exactly some of the same stuff I was challenged with and some of the same frustrations I have. So hopefully I can find some of my old work and just show you guys. Yep, we all take the same journey together. Okay, so now we're gonna actually start with the painting and have a lot more learning to do. Here we go, all right. So here we are with just a piece of UART paper. I think this is, that's bigger than a five by seven I think. But anyway, it's a vertical format like my reference photo. And the first thing I'm gonna do is you know a lot of times I do an under painting but I don't want in this video to use anything that the viewers may not have. So sometimes I use the neocolor wax pastels and sometimes I'll do watercolor under painting but this is gonna be purely pastel and I am gonna do a little under painting but I'm just gonna do it with pastels and water, okay? So what I'm gonna do is I just have this little new pastel here that sometimes it's good just for sketching things in. I like to break my pastels because sometimes I like to use the wide part. So this is just to focus on getting in a general sketch. We're sort of getting some values in with this but mostly we're just getting in the shapes here, okay? So we're just kind of, again, simple, simple, simple, simple and big shapes to small shapes. You work big and basic then before you get to any detail, okay? So we're just gonna get in. A lot of times I don't even really do a sketch with a line sometimes artists do but if I have some big shapes like this I'll just, I'm just using the side of my pastel. I'm just looking at this tree as I'm working and again, I've stressed this in some other videos. Drawing skills are important. I know right now it doesn't look like I'm drawing but I'm using drawing skills. What I'm doing with my eye is measuring things. I keep looking at my reference photo. I was blessed to have an art class in my graphic design, quite a few art classes in my graphic design major in school and I learned some core lessons that really helped which is draw what you see, not what you think you see. We often, our brains tell us this is a tree. It has to look like this but sometimes trees don't go in the ways that are what we're seeing. So we need to, or what our mind is telling us. So we need to just look and think of it as a shape not as a tree, okay? So that is always a good thing to do is look at the shapes. Don't let your brain get in the way of telling you what it is. Now I'm going very softly right here. I'm just getting in, again, this is more just for me to lay my pastels on. This is a much lighter thing down here so I'm just going really lightly. There is a, behind this tree, we've got the sky. Again, I'm looking at the shape in my reference photo and the sky makes like a, almost like a bowl like a side here, a bottom, and then a side here. So I just, I see that shape. I'm not thinking I'm doing a sky. I'm thinking about that shape. Now I'm just going to dab this. I'm just getting hints of this background field there just to know it's there. Now I do have down, this is about a good composition here. It's about a third of the way down is where this horizon line is. And it just kind of, it's going to be really light in the background. Then I've got another little division here which goes kind of in front of this tree. And there's some bushes back behind this tree but I'm not going to worry about that right now. Now, one of my lightest lights, of course, is the sky. Almost always the lightest light. And then sometimes your grasses and some flowers and things, my paper's curved up so it's making a weird shape. But I've got a nice little shadow behind this tree. Okay. And there's a real light section in here. It gets a little dark behind there but I'll do that with pastels. Again, this is just for a sketch. And then I've got always at the roots of the grasses, you typically have darker values, okay? It's like, you've got the shadows from the grasses going down to the ground. They're closer, things closer are usually a darker value. Now this field, it does have, it almost looks like some weedy kind of grasses but they've got some light colors to them. But I'm not going to put those lights down just yet, okay? We want to put the darks down first and then put the lights over top of it, okay? So that was a really, really quick little idea just to get where I'm going with this. So then when I look at my reference photo now, I don't have to worry about where things are as much. You still want to place things correctly but now I'm just going to start working on value. So this is going to be a value underpainting using what's called local color. Local color just means the color of the scene. And you know, I improvise with colors myself as far as changing them but it's basically the colors of the scene as compared to or in contrast to complimentary color. You can do an underpainting using the complimentary color. I love those types of underpaintings because it really gives a little punch to the painting. For example, a complimentary color to green might be an orange or a reddish or something. So you would lay down those colors and do all complimentary colors as you're underpainting and then put the local color on top. But you can also just do local color, okay? So I already know that the sky is the lightest thing. I've got my little pastels already arranged in value like we did. So this should help. I don't keep them that way normally but like I said, because you get better at that, this is really kind of whiter than I want for this but I might add a little bit of this. This one has a little bit more of a bluish hint to it. And almost always skies are darker up at the upper atmosphere. I'm not even gonna worry about my sky holes all that much. You know, usually you put those in in between the tree. You don't draw the tree, you carve the tree out with the sky holes but this again is just for getting values in. We're gonna work big to small. Okay, so now I have a tree back here. Now let's look, I'll try to keep my values arranged this way. Going light to dark. If I was to draw this group of background trees, they look almost like they're not mountains, the trees in the background but they could be mountains too, okay? So it is not going to be way over here, that's too dark. You know, they're really far away so they're gonna be closer to the lighter values. Okay, so I'm going to just kind of get in an idea of those and I'm working, there's a lot of Terry Ludwig's on here. There's a few that are different but mostly Terry Ludwig's so. We kind of got this kind of going in here and again some of this might peek through that tree later but I'm not gonna worry about that right now. Okay, so now we have this tree here. Trees are always one of the darkest things if you have them in your reference photo because they're upright, okay? And the sun is shining down and maybe the tops of the trees or some of these parts of the tree are going to be lighter but the bases of the trees and in between it and the sides, they're always going to be darker. So this tree back here is going to be darker. I might even go a little darker than that. It's usually better to lay dark down and then lay light down on top of it. So I'm gonna give this one a little darker value than it'll end up but it's okay because we're gonna add the lighter shadows on top of that. That's the neat thing about pastel. You can just kind of layer and work with stuff. Now this one here, it's actually lighter in the reference photo. Yeah, I need to change that. See, it's just even me. I'm always adjusting and working on things. Yeah, this one's going to be more of a value like in here. And by the way, I may take this more to completion but the point of this is not for me to make this finished fantastic painting. It's more just for a value lesson. Okay, and I might even take, might even take a little bit of this darker. This is the darkest dark that I have and I might even take some of that and add in here because I know I do have, and see how I'm not drawing in leaves. I'm working with shapes. I see that there's shadows in towards the middle section of this tree. It's gonna lighten up later. But again, down at the base of these bushes that are at the ground, and that's a little darker too, okay? So got an idea there. Now I got this field back here. Actually I've got something that's a little darker value. These are like the trees or the mountains in the background. And I used this for that color or value. And so now getting down, there's either some bushes or the bases of these trees down closer to the ground, they're a little darker value because they're closer to the ground, okay? So we got a little bit of that going on there. And now in here, we've got kind of a really neat color going on there. What have we got there? And I can lighten this up too. I think I'm gonna do this here. It's like a little bit of a field. And directional strokes are another thing that's really gonna help your painting. If your field is flowing and meandering, take your pastel in that direction, okay? So in other words, me doing this pastel this way is not going to work for a very painterly effect or a nice painting. We wanna keep it going in the directions of the motion that it's in. Okay, now I'm squinting my eyes again and I may lay down some lighter values on top of this. I'm squinting my eyes and I'm looking back here. This is one of the lighter values in the field. It's like the sun shining down on it. But you know what? I still wanna give it a little bit of dirt, okay? So let me see here. What am I gonna do here? See, I'm always learning here too. This is the one I just used. Let's see here. I have a tendency to wanna put down, see, I might even do something a little crazy here. Okay, see, this is a darker value than what I see right now. But if I put this dark value down and then I lay a lighter value on top of it, it's gonna lighten it up, okay? And I can put a little bit of this blue in this field back here. I might be getting a little too detailed too quickly. Again, I'm just constantly squinting my eyes. That's gonna, this is definitely gonna lighten up, okay? So I put that down just so I can put something else over top of it. And I think I might even put some of this over it. Now I'm gonna do an application of water to this for the underpainting. So I don't really need to do a whole lot of color mixing. Keep focused, Susan. I get to go in and get kinda carried away sometimes. Okay, now we know there is a really dark shadow back here. So I'm just gonna take my darkest dark and go ahead and put that down. And it goes kinda up to the tree and a little bit on this side of the tree. And then I know this tree, you learn, you get better at turning these pastels, they're really chunky, but you learned pressure is key and positioning is also key as to where, where is this, where's the point of it? You know, where's the edge? And that will help you in getting better at knowing where to place these strokes. Okay, now this tree also has some darker darks in here. So I'm looking, if you could see my head, I'm almost looking at the reference photo more than I'm looking at my pastel surface. I know I've got a nice little dark section coming out here and some things coming down more. And when I apply the water, some of this is all gonna merge together. So I don't need to worry about it all that much. Okay, so I'm squinting, I'm squinting. I got these going in. Okay, got my big shapes working. All right, now down in, let's see which color. Yeah, see, this is darker. I just checked this color against this one that I just put down. That's the one I put down. You can easily see this is darker than that, okay? So the lighter value is gonna push back more. It goes further in the distance. So I need to get rid of that. It's not gonna make that much of a difference. Okay, so there's that lighter green. So now I'm getting down in front of the tree a little bit. I know, even though I'm gonna add some lighter flowers on top of that, I know that I'm just using the side of the pastel. I know that these grasses, I can see they're darker. Okay, and definitely a darker value, okay? And now we've got an even darker value of roots and grasses coming down here. My new pastel already got some of that for me. Getting that dark value, but I'm gonna get it even more here with some of this. It's really important to get those darks down first because with pastel, you can lay those lights on top. A little bit of that going on behind there. Okay, so I'm gonna get a little more darks in here. Kind of like this green too. And I can add those light flowers later. So don't worry about the light flowers just yet. That's coming on top. Again, working big to small. Not worried about the flowers. I'm thinking more about the field, okay? Now I purposely tried to keep this a little sectional, so it might help you to work big to small yourself and work in sections, okay? So we've got a light sky, lightest thing in the painting. Also had somebody recommend me trying to get the shadows away from my hand. It's not a professional studio, but I'll try to work on lighting. I mean, a professional filming studio. So I'll try to work on lighting to make that better, but for now I'll hold my hand over here. Lightest thing is the sky. Darkest thing are these trees, especially this tree trunk and in here. This is a little darker right now than it's gonna be, but that's okay, cause that allows me to add those lighter values on top of it. We're getting the darks in here. Then we've got some lighter values in the far distant mountains or trees coming into this field. I know I've got a section of light. I'm gonna keep that kind of light right now. And then the medium to dark values down here. I'm actually even gonna add a little bit of my darkest dark. It's a purple down here. Again, see, you know, your brain would say, I gotta do green down there. But no, throw in some different colors you can use, but also same time, keep some color harmony in your pastel selections. Okay, so here we have just a general idea of blocking in shapes, keeping it simple. And now we're gonna apply. I think I'll just do, well, I think I actually will do rubbing alcohol. I've had some people ask what kind of alcohol. And it was kind of funny to me because someone was like, what's the difference between denatured alcohol and regular alcohol? Denatured is what a lot of artists recommend. And I didn't even know what denatured alcohol was. But a artist friend was nice enough to share on one of our videos here that it's basically alcohol, regular rubbing alcohol, that's had the alcohol content taken out of it for drinking purposes. Crazy that anybody would drink rubbing alcohol. I don't know. But anyway, so it's kind of the same thing. So it doesn't matter if it's rubbing alcohol or denatured alcohol, someone even recommended you could use vodka. I haven't tried that and I probably won't since I don't drink vodka. And I don't think red wine would work good. Anyway, all right, let's get serious now. I'm gonna get the rubbing alcohol and apply this to make an underpainment. Okay, I have gotten my rubbing alcohol and I'm getting a brush right now. And when I walked away to get the alcohol, I noticed when I was pretty far from the surface of the painting, I could see the values looked believable. They looked accurate. So that's another tip is to step back from your work. That's why I often, if I'm not filming, I'm sitting right now, but I often like to work at my easel that's over there behind this little easel. And it's so that I can back up a lot because you can see things better far away and you can see the values better and the composition better. So it's just a good idea to do that. I have now some rubbing alcohol. It's just like I said, it's just isopropyl alcohol that I got from Walgreens, okay? And I have it in a little sake dish. I'll definitely have to rinse this out if I have any sake. But the reason I just use a small cup is this is a small painting and I don't wanna waste a whole lot of alcohol. I don't wanna dip it right out of the jug. That would be hard. But anyway, so I'm gonna use this. And as I work, I'm going to keep cleaning my brush with my paper towel. The reason for that is that I don't wanna mix these values together. So I'm dipping and I'm cleaning, okay? So I'll try to mention that as I work. So I typically work top to bottom because sometimes I like the way the colors run. Sometimes I'll even just kinda roll my paintbrush. And I wanna get too much. I got a little too much there. I don't want it to run like crazy now. Cleaning my brush off. So I also, when I dip my brush with alcohol, I dab it just a little, which I forgot to do that last time, so that I don't have too awfully much. Now this white, it's not gonna do a whole lot or it's kind of a bluish white when I add the alcohol. But the other colors will. And I've had people ask sometimes, what is the difference between using the rubbing alcohol versus using water? And it just dries faster. So it's just kind of a convenience. I don't notice a whole lot of difference. Can you already see these values in here? How it's going from light to dark, just adding this rubbing alcohol. And it's giving that illusion of distance. Oh, I hear my dog walking down the stairs of my studio. That's funny. Hey Jackson. Okay, so just a little bit of knowing the right thing and taking your time and getting values right is really going to help. Now sometimes too, to get that painterly look, sometimes I'll hold my brush in a different way and make strokes that are in different positions so it doesn't look so perfect. Take my tree up a little taller. That's actually a little too tall. But that's okay, cause I could always fix that. Okay, this tree's coming down in here a little bit. I've got this little bush in here. See my brush is already drying. That looks a little like a mess there, but I'll fix that. This here, this field actually comes around a little more. So I'm just going to bring it around and get a little bit of this going on behind the tree. Again, I don't want to get it too muted in this case. Sometimes I like the drips, but this is more for a lesson on getting the values right. So I don't want to get all crazy and too artistic. I just want to keep it kind of basic right now. Again, there's some darker values behind this tree, but when I go and wet those tree branches, that's going to kind of just blend all that out. Okay, so let me, usually I do go top to bottom typically. So again, you can see that this tree, I have added a whole bunch of the darkest starts. Now I'm going to dry my brush out pretty good cause I know these colors of the tree towards the edges, they're a little soft and muted in the photo and I like that look. So I'm going to kind of keep it that way. And this branch has come down. I'm constantly measuring with my eyes, seeing how do things relate to each other? How far, what's the shape like in here and how far does the tree branch come down in relation to the trunk, you know, or whatever. And this again is not supposed to be that fussy. I'm actually spending too much time on this. Let me just get a little fun and crazy with it. Again, I know this tree is going to have some sky holes in it but I'm not going to worry about that too much right now. We carve those out later. So all right, so I'm rinsing my brush off again to get that dark. So there's a lot of dark on there cause I don't want that color on this other little side that I'm going to be working here. Well, I think actually I will keep working on the dark right here. You know, we had that shadow that was down by the tree, cleaning it now cause I don't want all that dark, there's still some dark on there. And it actually, that's, I'm glad I did that because colors, when you wet them, pastels, when you wet them with this alcohol, they look darker than they dry. You can already see in the background some of the other stuff is drying pretty good. This is still a little dark but that's okay cause we're going to lay those light pastels down over it. So I'm just going to finish this to get the idea. We've got lots of dark down here. It almost seemed like, oh my gosh, it's too dark. That's too dark, but it's not going to be. It is a little darker than the tree which that shouldn't be that way but we can add more darks to this. Oh, it's cause it's wet. See how that's dry? This is going to dry lighter. Okay, now I might smooth this out a little bit right in here and just blend that a little bit more. So we got some nice stuff happening here. Again, learning how to just angle things and use directional strokes is going to help you a whole lot. Okay, so it looks kind of like a mess but it keeps that looseness. If you know, and that's one of the goals, not the only goal of Monet Cafe but I've been on a learning adventure ever since I've been an artist to get that painterly look and that loose look. Okay, so we got a general idea here. Doesn't look like anything special but we've got our big shapes in here, we've got our values in here and we've got something to work from. We don't start with this stark piece of paper that's saying, what do I do? You get the basics in and then you get going and that's just always the way that I like to start and I think almost all artists that I consider great artists start that way, big to small. I've seen people who can start with little things and work their way all around the paper but that's more photo realism, people who work that way. So anyway, let's let this dry and then we'll come back and do a little bit more work. All right, I turned a light on so it might look a little brighter here and I hope I don't have too much of a shadow here. It's not too bad. And so this is the point we get at when we've finished with the underpainting and we're ready to start taking it easy of course. Don't get too carried away but we're still working big to small and I've already got the basic values in so let's get going with this. I think what I'm gonna do is establish these tree shapes a little bit better and then go from there. All right, so I'm just gonna work a little bit here and maybe interject a few things as I go. Okay, I've found a couple of other pastels that I might want to try to use in the sky. Again, just to give a little warmth to the sky, I see that in the reference photo and again, back to the question someone had is how do I choose my colors or my color palette? What I do is I kind of, it kind of evolves as I go along sometimes. I'll get in my basic values and then I'll kind of see what I like in the photo or in the real life and then I'll enhance that and if I don't like something, I won't. Yes, this color is way better. You see how that's already a lighter value and I'm just gonna get some of that in just to give some interest to the sky. I'm going to again, lighten it up. As I move down lower, I need to cover that up. I had that darker value. It's kind of interesting. I'll work on my sky holes in a minute and again, if you haven't heard yet what sky holes are, they are, instead of you drawing the branches to the trees, you actually carve the tree out by drawing or painting the holes. It's like you're working negatively. You'll see when I add them. All right, I've got one of these that might be, they're about the same value there. Okay, kind of like that, kind of like that. Back at this pinkish color, I think that was, it was a little darker, but I'm gonna add just a hint of that up at the top. And also sky holes, when you add them, it's usually best to add a little tad of a value darker in the sky hole than too light. If I added like a white here, see I got kind of this whitish down towards this horizon line, I mean this tree line, but if I add that there, that's just too stark. I'm just doing it a little bit here, versus adding, I'll just pick a different color, something a little darker in value there. It looks a little better. All right, now notice how already, even if I didn't do anything to this background here, we've already got the values established where you really feel like those are distant fields or mountains or something. And so that is already working in our favor. All right, now I'm squinting my eyes at the reference photo, and I am gonna start working my way down. I do feel like I would love to get some of this delicious blue in here. This is a really nice blue, and I happen to love this particular color. I think this is a unison, but I'm gonna look at it right here. It looks like, yeah, this is gonna push these back a little bit further. I'm gonna keep it a little darker beneath it, because it looks like, whether it's trees or mountains, it's always gonna be a little darker at the bottom. Now with this, it's gonna continue behind the tree, so this would be kind of more of the color that we would use. I'm just giving an example to make the sky holes behind this tree. In other words, it's obvious that whatever's behind the tree, that's the color you would use. Even if you can't see it, you can imagine what is behind there. Like this right here is what's behind this section of the tree. So you're gonna use something more in this, is this the one I used? Oh, no, this one, you know, so that would be kind of the color of the sky hole there. That's a nice color, I like that. I'm gonna tone that down a little bit. Okay, so now let me see. Sometimes I also, too, if I'm using a particular color, I like to go ahead, even though I'm kind of working my way down here, I like to go ahead and introduce it wherever else it might be. Like I see that behind this tree and this paper, it really helps if your paper's flat. My UART paper got a little warped. Don't leave it sitting out, by the way. Try to lay it flat and set it in between stuff. But it creates a little bit of that glow that I'm seeing back here to give that moody feel. Again, you get to a point where you kind of use your imagination. As long as you use some rules that are consistent with good art, you don't wanna get too crazy. But here's something interesting here. Now I know this has a little bit darker underneath it, but notice how this blue back here, they don't look the same value with where they are. It's based on that illusion of what's happening with the color around it. I'll have to do another video one time to show you how color and value is greatly affected by what color is around it. So that's a whole nother lesson. Okay, so now I'm looking back in here and seeing what I might want to get in there. Again, this is far away. So the value, this is gonna be too light, but I just wanna check it. Yeah, that's too light. I might, let's see this one again. I like this is kind of what I had, but I'm almost, when I look at the reference photo, I'm almost seeing like some lavender going across the middle part of the field there. This right here comes in front of the tree and purples always make a great shadow, but I'm almost seeing like maybe this color lavender. Now this is a big old chunky pastel, but I'm gonna try to, I'm just lightly touching now and just giving a little bit of, oh, sometimes I get carried away, a little bit of that lighter field color, almost like the grasses are kind of rolling and I might have to darken that up a little bit. Occasionally, I try not to do it too often. I'll soften a little with my finger right now. I'm just barely touching it just to get those lines away. Okay, and I might do more to that distant field there, but we're getting the idea. Now I know around this side, because the sun's over here, we're gonna get some cooler, darker blue values in there. So let me see what I can find here. Sometimes I'll see the color in my mind and I can't find it in front of me. I love this color blue too. This might have been the color that I was looking for for here. Yeah, that's nice too, I like that. So we got that, but I do want to use, let me find something here. Now notice I started with a limited palette and I do that a lot and then I will gradually add more as I go, but I try to stay within the, that's the blue I was looking for right there. I try to stay within the same general color palette idea I had to begin with, but you may need to sometimes get a few more colors than when you start. Now, this is, look at that just gorgeous blue for a shadow, that is so nice. I feel like that would look nice in here too, because you got that darker dark for the shadow, but you need some other lighter values, cooler values in here. See how that just did that? That is just, you don't even need to do a whole lot more than that. That's just so nice. All right, now I know we've got over here, there's like where this is coming around, I see in the reference photo, there's like a row of grasses here and I have such a light touch right now. I'm just barely doing anything. You just want to hint at it. Our brain will put it together. Okay, so we got it all kind of meandering and rolling. I tend to pick reference photos and images and prefer things that have a lot of depth and perspective. It's just what I love. It's the kind of paintings I love that I'm drawn to. And so that's why I tend to work that way. All right, I'm squinting again and I'm looking now. Again, I don't want to get too tedious yet. We're still in the middle stages right now. And we're getting, I like to work on the whole painting rather than just a little part of the painting. Now don't get me wrong, I used to work on just a little part of the painting. I could wear out something. And then I'm like, why did I do that? I totally overworked that. So not gonna do that anymore. All right, now I'm seeing there's some middle grasses in here that have a little bit of a depth and shadow to it. Oh, that's a little too light. I think I want to get darker, darker. I think it might be this here. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, so I'm adding a little bit more of this particular. It's like a gray blue. It's enhancing that moody feel that we have going on. Let's see, a little bit of that. Let's see where else is it dark. And a lot of times just check it. Just put a little mark down and check it. Won't be the end of the world if it's not the right value. Okay, so now let's see here. All right, I'm gonna be quiet a little bit. I think I've given enough instruction for a while and you can just watch me work. Okay, I took a step back and tried to soak all this in and I noticed my sky holes are a little inappropriately placed here. I've got a little too busy down here, I think, so I'm gonna rectify that. But that's why you wanna walk away sometimes. And it's still at a very workable phase right now. So I'm going to finish this up. And as always, I'll share this at the finished painting at the end of the video and at the beginning of the video so you can see how it turned out. So I hope you learned something. Please subscribe and please find Monet Café on Facebook and ask to join our group. I'll be more than happy to have you as one of our artists so we can just all learn together. Thanks so much, guys, and always happy painting and I'm so glad we can do this together. Bye.