 Welcome to Monet Café! I'm artist Susan Jenkins and I'm excited to bring you a beginner series of lessons using one set of pastels. I recently purchased the Unison 120 half-stick set and I actually did a little product review on it. You might want to go back and check out that video. And in this pastel painting tutorial I will be demonstrating how to create this painting using only this particular Unison set. Now I want to give you some information real quickly that I've found out since the last video. This is the set it is made by Unison. I love Unison pastels. They are soft and buttery but they don't crumble too much. I shared in the last video that you can find them at Jackson's. Dick Blick Art Supply doesn't have the 120 set. Jackson has them for about 255 and I found out from my Australian subscribers that it's very expensive in Australia. So I'll give you another option coming up soon. The set I'll be using can also be found at Dakota Art or Dakota Pastels and I believe there it's $3.22. Keep in mind that some of these are on back order so it might take you a couple of weeks to get them. I did also find the 120 half-stick set at Jerry's Art Arama. Let me scroll through here. It is, well also too, I'm showing a few other different half-stick sets you can get. You can get the 30 set that's $88. You can get the, what was that, $160 for $160? That's $63. I'm sorry, half-sticks for $166. Or you can get the 120 half-stick set for $313. I think that says I have to put my glasses on. So they're all around $300. It does seem that Jackson's has the best price but they are on back order. One of our Australian members has shared with me that even though the unison are so expensive she found that Sennelier soft pastel was available a little bit more affordable in Australia and they have a very nice half-stick set as well. Another alternative might be the Jack Richardson half-stick set. They have a 120 half-stick set and I like Jack Richardson pastels. I do find they're a little bit harder than the Sennelier or the unison. Thank you for bearing with me during those product descriptions. I just felt so bad for our Australian subscribers. I wanted to give an alternative. Alright, what I'll be using here is I'm going to be creating my own pastel surface. I'm using a different product here but you guys can use watercolor paper if you like. I'm using these sheets that I get from Arteza. It's an acrylic pad and I actually really like making my own surfaces with these. The pad has or the each page has two sides. Of course it has two sides but one side is almost like a weave a texture and the back side is smooth. So I'll be using the smooth side but just imagine this as a piece of watercolor paper and I'm using acrylic inks to tone the paper. I want to get a nice golden color for the kind of like a one-color tonal underpainting. All you need is a brush for this. Now I'm going to give you some other alternatives. You don't have to have acrylic ink. I know not everybody has the same things I'll be using. You could also just use a golden colored pastel for this and all you would do would be to basically just rub the pastel over your watercolor paper. Just kind of a light to medium pressure and then you could grab either water or alcohol in a little dish and you will brush it on the pastel just to coat it all and then let your paper dry. So you have another option rather than using the acrylic inks like I'm going to be doing. You also could use watercolor. I show Arteza products a lot because they're so great they give me free products to show in my videos. But again you could pick kind of a golden color and I like using the golden color when I'm doing landscapes. I want to keep this simple. I didn't want to do a complicated underpainting but I don't want to work on the white paper. Let's let's move remove that. Now to create our own surface after we get that golden underpainting I will be using clear gesso. Clear gesso has a little bit of grit to it. Regular gesso does not. So don't use regular gesso. And what the clear gesso does is after we brush it on I'll talk more about it. It gives a nice little grit for your pastels to hold on to. Okay so again I'm going to be taping this down here but I'll talk while I do that. Again you just need some watercolor paper either a gold colored pastel or watercolor that's kind of golden color or whatever you have. And we're going to tone the whole piece of watercolor or whatever surface you decide to work on. Again we're making our own homemade pastel surface so that beginners you you may not have pastel paper. If you're not sure about what sanded papers are they can get very expensive. And this is a more affordable alternative before you go out and spend a whole lot of money on a product that you know what if you don't like it. So this is kind of a neat way for beginner pastel artist to get the results or somewhat the results from using a sanded surface which which really is a great way to work with pastels. Now I'm using black tape here just because I have a blackboard but you may have noticed I put a piece of black tape on the back sides of the paper with a sticky side facing front and then I put another piece of tape just right where the sticky part is and a little bit above it to stick to the board. That way I'm able to paint on the entire surface without sometimes I do like to make a little border around it but you may want to tape your paper down if you're working with watercolor paper. Oops I'm sorry I hit my camera and it's wiggling. Because watercolor paper can warp so if you're familiar with that sometimes it's a good idea to do that. Okay now time for the fun. I love this part. The acrylic ink I'm using is made by Dayla Rowney. I'm using a color called Indian yellow and fluorescent pink. I could have just used the Indian yellow. I mean it's a nice gorgeous golden color but I found from another painting I did that just a little drop of that fluorescent pink really makes it an interesting golden yellow color. So you don't have to do this. And of course again if you don't have acrylic inks just use what you have. There are lots of possibilities and alternatives to this process. Now see how that color turned out? That little bit of pink in it makes it really neat looking. So I'm just applying this on the back of my piece of paper that's in the acrylic pad but I could do the same thing with watercolor paper and I have many many times. I found out that I actually, I'm so darn conservative with things because I've had to be in my life that sometimes I just don't give myself enough or I'm trying to be so careful and not wasteful. So I wish I had put a few more drops in my little container and I actually do end up doing that to cover it. Now it doesn't, I could have worked with it like this. It doesn't matter. I'm covering it up with pastel anyway and I'll talk a little bit more as I paint about why. Why do we put this color down? Why didn't I just put the clear gesso down and start painting? So I'll talk about that a little bit more later. Now it's dry and it's nice and smooth and if I were to put pastels down now or start painting I could paint a little bit but pastels need some grit to hang on to and that's where this product comes in. As I was saying regular gesso does not have the grit and also regular gesso is not clear. So whatever underpainting you put down it's not going to show through. You're going to paint white right over it. So the clear gesso is multi-purpose and I'm going to basically just put on a thin coat. I've heard some people put on two coats. I just did one for this particular example and also it's going to make it sanded like I said. It gives you a little sanded surface but some people find it's a little too bumpy. So I didn't do this in this video but when it's dry once you apply the clear gesso and it's dry if you want it to be a little bit more smooth and less textural I happen to like texture you can get a piece of fine sandpaper and just sand it down lightly and you'll get a little bit more of that smooth surface in case you don't like the real textured look. You just saw the image there on my iPad of the reference photo I'll be using which is from pmp-art.com. It's a great resource for finding reference material. If you don't have a lot of photography yourself or if you'd like to find something you know different from what you can find in your own backyard it's a neat way to work. Now what I'll be doing right now is I have my little piece of paper here. I'm going to do a quick little value study and talk about it with you guys. I've sped this up just to save time but it actually kind of helps speeding it up so I can kind of show you very quickly how we're just looking at big shapes. I've got of course that big shape of the front tree there. I've got kind of like a little dark path I'm creating to draw interest into it. I know I'm going to have some flowers and so I'm just kind of quickly sketching in the general composition. Again big shapes it often helps to shrink your reference photo down because you can identify the big shapes better. Now I've just got a charcoal pencil here and I'm just laying it on its side. I have actually carved out my pencil where my lead is a little bit longer and I'm getting in the darker values. Now those trees in the background because they're far away they're not going to be as dark in value so I didn't press down quite as hard. I know my grasses are a little bit darker than the sky so but I didn't want to get them too dark. So now I'm just using my finger to blend and notice there's basically going to be four different values. The darkest dark is the tree in the path. The next darkest dark would be the background trees. I actually darken them up a little more than that. The grasses would be the next value and the sky will be the last lightest value. So now same thing I'm going to sketch it in here and I do recommend that you do a little initial sketch. It really does help you feel more comfortable when you go to sketch it in again. So again one big tree there kind of up at the top right corner then we've got our little trees in the background. They don't have to be too specific because they're far away. A little path we're going to darken that up and some flowers. I end up kind of covering up my flowers but I know I can add them to the top. Usually it's a good idea to leave space for your flowers if they're going to be really big. Mine are kind of small so it kind of didn't matter if I covered them up. Alright now I've got my nice gritty surface because of the clear gesso and I'm ready to begin. I want to kind of show you guys some of the pastels that I'm choosing now. The nice thing about this set is it has some really good darks. Notice I chose three darks. They're kind of a burgundy, a dark blue, and a dark purple. I know I'm going to need some greens. I've got kind of a darker green and then two other medium greens. There's my blues and don't worry if that seemed fast. I'm going to talk about a little more here. Here's regular speed and now you can see those three darks that I have and getting your darks established is a good idea with pastel painting because we typically can work dark to light. It's the opposite of watercolor. Watercolor you want to preserve the light and gradually carefully add your darks. But with pastels because you can layer because we put down this clear gesso we have the ability to lighten things up and the darkness gives depth to things. Now I am speeding this up but not so much that you can't see. I have to keep my video file size down to be able to upload it so you guys can actually see the video. I'm using the darker blue dark. That's one thing I do love about this unison set is they have some decent darks in it and some sets really don't have that. It just depends on the set. I've just gotten the darkest darks in the trail in the tree. Now I'm going to intensify the dark and give it a little more interest by adding the other dark, the more of the burgundy dark to it. It really just makes those colors kind of vibrate against each other and in nature we have a lot of colors playing together. They're not always just one color next to another color. They're often commingled together. So now I've gotten a little bit more of those darks established. I'm going to go and get a value for the background trees. I'm actually going to darken them up. They're a little bit too green right now. But I was really thinking of the value. Things don't stay warm in the distance. They cool off like mountains in the distance. They look blue. So I'm going to cool those off in a minute. But right now I want to down at the bases of the trees is usually where you get more shadows. So I'm giving more of the depth and value down at the bases of the trees. Now I know that again they're going to be a little cooler. So I'm getting that darker blue. I don't want to lighten it up too quickly. And I'm just layering. I call this scumbling. I'm just kind of, I'm not drawing. I'm just adding, turning the pastel on its side. And now I'm adding a little bit more coolness to the trees that are gradually getting further away. And now this is a little chamois cloth. And I've recently found that I like using this. I wasn't sure if I could use it on the homemade surface with the clear gesso. But lo and behold, I found out I could. There's some surfaces this technique doesn't work with such as UART paper. It's a little bit too sanded. But it does work well on this homemade surface. Also works well on pastel matte. So it really just kind of blends in what you've done, softens it a bit, gives it a little bit more, softens the edges a little bit more of an impressionistic feel. I've got my trees in the back. They're kind of all too much in a row. They look too equidistant apart. So I'll fiddle without a minute, but you might want to keep that in mind. Give some variety to your trees. Give some differences in the spaces and the spacing so they don't look so set man made, you know. All right, now I'm reestablishing the dark in this tree just to bring it forward. It definitely is the darkest thing in this painting. So same thing with the trail. Just gradually decreasing the intensity as it goes back. But now I've got my basics down. Now let's go work on the next color and value. Now, what did we have left? We have those grasses and the sky. So why am I not grabbing green, right? Well, I'm getting some warmth to put those grasses down on. That ground is still too light to start applying the grasses. I need to give it some medium value color. And using a orange or a reddish color really gives your grasses something to contrast with complementary color. If you look at a color wheel, the opposite of whatever color you're looking at is the color's complement. And for greens on the color wheel, the opposite color is red or orange, something that's a little more warm. So by putting down the red as the middle value, it gives the green something to contrast with and create more interest because of it, because of it being its complement on the color wheel. So now my greens are going to appear a little more vibrant. I am working with it. My underpainting and my clear gesso actually ended up being very textural. That's why I recommend it. If you'd like to knock down the texture a little bit, you can get a fine piece of sandpaper and just sand it off a bit. So I was kind of working with a lot of texture here. But anyway, so I got my darkest green down a little bit more in the foreground grasses and a little bit in that tree. And the reason I got my darker greens in the foreground grasses is because value is darker, the closer something is to us. And then it decreases to a lighter value in the distance. Now also in the reference photo, the sun happened to be shining to where that backfield just was a lot lighter. The sun was shining on it. And it was pretty green. I know it's further away. So I decided to go ahead and get a green that was kind of light to go really liven up those background grasses back there. Even though typically things cool off in the distance, I really liked kind of how that sun was shining and making it look so bright and vibrant. Alright, so really that's been pretty quick so far. And we're starting to see things take shape. Notice too, I haven't focused at all on drawing anything. I am just creating shapes. I am turning my pastel over on its side, if you can't see because of my hand. Most of what I've done is the pastel on the side. And I, you learn to kind of finagle the pastel sometimes to lift up the back end of it if you don't need the whole width of the pastel. But really, I'm just making shapes. And now I've got to, I know I've got to do the sky, but I kind of want to get in a cooler, like a back, maybe level of trees or things back behind there. And they're going to be a little lighter in value and a little cooler in color. So I'm just kind of scumbling in as if there was another like row of trees back there before I get my sky color in. And that distant row of trees could be mountains, okay? So it's really so impressionistic that you don't have to specify exactly what it is. And usually that's the way things work in the distance anyway. Now I'm just carving in with alternating between some of the cooler, lighter value blues and the sky. And when you do this negative painting, it's called, you're carving in what's called sky holes. Instead of drawing the branches of the trees, you paint negatively using the sky to carve out the trees instead. So it's kind of a neat and fun way to work. And you know, if this all feels very strange to you, it did to me at first when I first started doing this. Okay, now you can see I'm adding a little bit of lighter values, kind of establishing that tree as being a little bit of an evergreen tree. I am kind of using, this pastel doesn't have a point, but I'm lifting it up more on the rounded edge at the front just to have made those little scumbling kind of tree marks. I appreciate the feedback you guys have given me about how you like me laying my surface flat so you can actually see my pastels. It's easier for you to see everything. I apologize that often my left-handed technique, sometimes my hand is in the way where you can't really see the marks I'm making. This is, so I apologize. So I'm doing the best I can with the filming. I had someone give a feedback to one of my videos and said, you know, you've really some great instruction in this video, but you need to tell your cameraman that they need to change their angle sometimes. And I tried to sweetly write back, I'm a one-man show. I'm the cameraman, woman slash artist, everything, editor, videographer. So you know, you just do the best you can. So anyway, I'll try to get better though. Now notice how I'm adding that middle value cooler blue kind of a little bit around the trail and in some of those foreground grasses just kind of gently laying it down within some of the areas where there might be some depth to the grasses. And that cooler color really does represent kind of shadowy areas to the grasses. And I feel like they're kind of shadowy shadowy to the lower left. Now, oh, also here's the purple that I pulled out too. Purple makes a beautiful shadow color. This is a nice kind of darker, not super dark purple, but that's within the unison set that I really like. I'm just gently adding some purple again within the path just kind of here and there where there might be a little more depth to the grasses. I want to be real careful back there. Maybe just some of those trees that are closer. I think I end up lightening that up even a little just a little bit back in there. Because if I get it too dark back there, it's going to pull those trees too close. And again, I think I even lightened it up a little bit more later. But I wanted to kind of reestablish that a little bit. Now, real quickly, can you see how the golden color of the paper really makes this look beautiful? Can you also see hints of that more of an orangey kind of red that I put down? You see how color is starting to become more magical when we play with it and learn some of these rules. Now, I'm going to work on the flowers now. I want to mention this set has some gorgeous reds. These reds that I'm going to be working with right now would be considered cooler reds. They don't have as much warmth in them as some of the other reds that were in that row that you saw. If you want a little bit more of a detail on this particular set, see the video that I posted. I think it's just before this one where I do a review and kind of talk about the different colors and values in this particular set. Now, the flowers will work similar to some of the other concepts where I'm actually going to put down a darker value of red before I turn on the light, so to speak, and I'm just putting flowers in kind of randomly but not too randomly. Let me explain what I mean. Often, when we just kind of aren't thinking and we start just dotting flowers here and there, we have a tendency to put them in a prescribed pattern, kind of like I started with those trees in the background, and we want to vary it up a bit. I call it forced randomness, and sometimes you want, like I know in the background where that main tree is, there were some further away, and of course we know they're going to get smaller in the distance, but there were some that were kind of peeking up taller than the rest, so you want to develop some variety and a harmony, but not a pattern, if that makes sense. Patterns become monotonous and boring, and I mean we don't want it all crazy, willy-nilly everywhere, but when you can follow the basic rules and then give it some spice and variety, then that makes your painting much more interesting. Now, this is the red that is just gorgeous, and even though with my homemade surface, sometimes you think, well, you probably won't get as much layering as one of the store-bought or art supply store-bought sanded papers like UART and Sennelier and so many other sanded pastel paper choices, but actually I am still getting pretty good layering here, and I kind of want my flowers a little soft anyway. I wanted to mention too that I know I don't have the reference photo showing the whole time here while I'm painting. I showed a little clip of it at the beginning, and I'm trying to abide by the PMP rules. When I show an image from the pmp-art.com site, I usually try to show it small and, you know, encourage you guys to go check it out, but if you'd like to find this particular reference photo, you can go to pmp-art.com, and the person who shared this, her name is Tam Tam, T-A-M and she has some lovely reference photos. Now I will provide the image to my patrons. I'll have it attached to the video link that I share on my Patreon page. If you're not familiar with Patreon, it's just neat. I was so thankful somebody requested that I start a Patreon page. It's a way that you guys basically can donate to this channel. That's really the main concept. It's just to support all kinds of artists and people who have started Patreon pages for various reasons, but I wanted to, like many other artists have, want to give a little something extra to my patrons. So it's become something really neat. We have contests. I have extra special content. I've arranged it all like school because I like to teach. So we have each week, we have homework assignments, we have PE, patron education on Friday, and we have story reading time. So lots of fun, but often they get a little bit more content, but I always want to give Monet Café continue to give free content because I know there are people who would never get art lessons. I talk to people online all the time that are just so grateful because they live in a country. One person lives in a remote village in the Philippines. You literally can't even find his village on Google Maps. And he's a patron. God bless him. Maxwell. Hi, if you're watching this. So Monet Café is really my heart and I started it to give and to offer and it's giving so much back to me. So thank you patrons and thank you Monet Café subscribers. I am just really, really blessed to have this channel. Now you may have noticed I started adding some little lighter value flowers. You notice how they're just delicate and small and you don't want them to be too noticeable, but they just add a little bit of character to the to the painting and draw the eye back. There's also a lot of contrast. You notice the base of that large tree, how dark it is now. Now my hands covering it up. But you see how those little lighter flowers, they're noticeable because they are so light against the darkness. That's one of the lessons we had in the Patreon page recently is just how to establish a focal point. Actually, I think I shared that here on Monet Café as well, just these techniques to create focal points and successful and effective ways, I should say, to do that. Now I'm adding, I'm just kind of intermingling some indications of grasses. I actually kind of wish I had not added so much after this point just kept it a little bit more to a minimum because I was really liking that impressionistic feel. But at this point, you notice I've had a lot of real time in this. I'm really hoping this will help some beginners. And this painting at this point could be done. Okay, but I'm going to go ahead and speed up the rest of this. I hope you've learned something here. Please let me know what you think of this. Let me know again, too, if you still like this overhead technique of my camera. I know sometimes now you can see a little better how I'm holding the pastel. But I always say you guys are Monet Café. You have, you're the reason why this channel is what it is, because you give me such great content and suggestions. And I love it. That's that's how I know what to do. You know, I have my own unique ways of doing things, but sometimes you guys will give me a recommendation like that is a good idea. I should do that. So but let me know what you think. Sometimes I will still stand at my easel and work, but I do like being able to lay my pastels out this way. I got these values back here. They're a little bit too light. I soften them up, I think by the end, because they're just they're making the focal point immediately go to there. Okay, it's too noticeable. So I do tone that down before the painting's done. Alright, now I'm really going to speed it up. I'll add some music. Stay tuned to the end. It does help when you watch to the end. It helps my YouTube ranking and if you complete the video and also I've talked a lot about the Patreon link and I'm trying not to over advertise that so I didn't even put a little thing saying how to become a patron, but there's always a clickable link at the end of this video if you'd like to become a patron and also too don't forget about the Monet Cafe Art Group on Facebook. It is a great resource for being able to learn from other artists. There's over 10,000 artists on there. All so sweet. All levels. You can have some super advanced artists giving you suggestions and advice. It's a wonderful community. All free. Just go to Facebook and search for Monet Cafe Art Group and ask to be a member. You have to answer a couple questions. Anyway, all right. Enjoy this. Let me know if you like this beginner series. I am going to have more. I already have a painting complete. Another beginner painting using just this set of pastels. Again, keep in mind, I used only this set of pastels, but in a minute you'll see where I did use a few new pastels. They look more like long sticks and they're a little bit harder. I used them just for some of the grasses and the stems of the flowers. See how I added some of that blue in the background there? Kind of really pushed that sky back there. Okay, I'm really going to play the music now, but it's almost over. Okay, it's almost done. So, watch to the end and I'll be back. Artist, I enjoyed this little painting. Let me know what you think about this little beginner series. I will have another video coming soon. Please comment, like this video, subscribe, become a patron if you like, and as always, happy painting.