 Welcome artistic friends, visitors, and subscribers to Monet Cafe. I'm so glad you're with me today. This lesson is the second part in a beginner series and this one's called a roadmap for painting. In the first video of the beginner series, right before this one, I focused on creating a value study or called a notan, which is an excellent way to begin a painting and to make sure you get composition and values correct. Now in today's video we'll take that a step further as we create what I like to call a roadmap for successful painting. So stay tuned and I'll be sharing all of those nice little painting secrets and tips. Oh first, if you'd like a happy painting t-shirt, just click the link below the description section of this video and use the promo code Artistic before August 15, 2019 to get 10% off. Alright now I'd like to go over a supply list. The surface I'll be using for today's painting is on UART sanded paper and it's 400 grit and I'm using the pads, or 10 sheets in a pack, 9 by 12 sheets and I do cut them smaller. In this case I'm doing an 8 inch by 6 inch painting. But I have other videos where I share alternate methods of creating your own sanded pastel surface so be sure to check out the other videos. Now the product I'll be using for the second part in this beginner series or the roadmap to a successful painting is a product that I'm using as an under painting and I just discovered this neat new technique that uses watercolor pencils. Now you don't have to use watercolor pencils for this particular part of the lesson. You can use alternate mediums and I will be discussing that as the lesson goes along. And I'll be using various types of pastels but I wanted to go ahead and go over some of the ones I recommend as really good for beginners. I happen to have a set of Giro pastels that I recently purchased and I love these pastels because they are not too hard and not too soft. They're really a great product for working as a beginner. Another pastel I recommend for beginners is Mount Vision Pastel. This particular pictures of their landscape set 50 of them. And pastels can get expensive and I think this is a pretty good value. They're a very large pastel and I like the fact that they again are not too hard or too soft. Another beginner set I would recommend is Rembrandt Pastels. Whenever you can as a beginner try to get half sticks. These come in half sticks. You get double the color for the same money. Rembrandt is I would say harder than all of the ones I've mentioned before but it's a really good way to start. They're a little bit more reasonable than some of the other more expensive ones. Now don't get overwhelmed. I know we all want a pastel box that looks like this but you've got to start somewhere right. So just kind of start where you can and gradually build up as you can afford it. Now for this particular painting I'm using a piece of UART 400 grit sanded pastel paper and I have the piece I've cut from the 9 by 12 sheets in that pack and this is an 8 inch by 6 inch piece. I use standard sizes often because you can find frames without having to get custom made frames and your clients sometimes may like that. And here I'm just basically sketching in the composition. You can use really whatever you want. I'm using one of the watercolor pencils that I'll be talking about but keep a light touch with this and in a minute you'll see I actually put up from lesson number one where we talked about simple beginnings. I put the actual value study that we did before or the notan it's called underneath my reference image and that's the point of this. I kind of forgot I just started sketching and then I go ahead and add the little notan. But this part is basically just your simple little sketch in part one of the lesson. We kind of worked out our composition making sure you know we like where we're headed with this and we have a little value roadmap before we even get to this next roadmap that I'll be working on in this painting. And I'm going to try to keep this one real time as much as possible. I know that helps you especially when you're a beginner. And also I am very blessed now that I got a new computer. I got a new MacBook Pro. My other MacBook Pro I had had for a while actually tried to save money buying a used one many years ago and I've been repairing it and making that that sweet old hardworking computer work a long time for me. But it finally bit the dust the other day. It was at an inopportune time. When is it not? When those things happen. But you know I totally believe that blessings can come out of tragic circumstances. That's happened time and time again in my life. And so I've learned as I've gotten older just to hang in there and wait for the Lord's blessing. And now with everything I went through to try to get it restored the wonderful thing is that now my processing speed is faster. I'm able to do real time more. So I'm going to benefit from that and you're going to benefit from that too as viewers and just students trying to learn more about getting better. So as you can see when you see real time you can see I am taking my time. Sometimes I really sketch quickly if I'm just doing a little study. But in this particular case I'm taking my time. I'm creating just really light strokes here and I'm trying to get the things in the image that I remembered that I liked. And that's a really important part about painting process. Sometimes I know as beginners it can be a little overwhelming is to think okay first of all I got to find an image. And I've had times in the past as a beginner artist where I literally spent hours just searching for an image that inspired me or you know made me feel like oh this is the one and often you waste your precious creative time or energy in kind of getting discouraged and bogged down with the whole looking for an image process. So I encourage you to if you're going to do that take a couple hours. I've talked about some of the get your own photos when you can. Okay there is I'm putting up now the little um notan or value study that I did in the previous lesson and that is going to be my guide for creating the rest of this painting. But as I was saying before try to get some reference images at your fingertips. The more quickly you can grab something to paint from the better. And also don't get so fussy about what it is. When you're beginning just paint. Grab something and start painting. We often try too hard to create a masterpiece early on when we just need to practice. All right now I'm going to show you a little bit closer these Arteza artist quality watercolor pencils. Now I am using these products if you've seen some of my other videos. They keep sending me products which is great of them. Some of them I've pulled out I've actually been using them but they actually are in three layers. There's 72 pencils. Well I goofed off with them the other day when they sent me a set. I played with different things on watercolor paper and then I thought hmm let me try these on sanded paper. And oh my goodness I absolutely loved them as for creating an underpainting. And that's what I'd like to say is the roadmap. This is part two that we're talking about. We've created the value study. Sorry for my shaky easel there. And we've got our good bones for the painting. That's what I kind of call the value study. Now we're going to create a roadmap which is an underpainting. I've got a lot of videos that talk about underpainting. I've got a lot of different underpainting techniques but in this particular beginner video I wanted to kind of go over the nuts and bolts of it and help you guys in understanding not just how to do it but more why to do it. Alright so as I'm still sketching here I'll talk a little bit more about the underpainting. Now you do not have to use the watercolor pencils that you're going to see me use. You can use whatever medium will get color down in mass or in in big shapes that works for you. I have multiple videos on under paintings and how to do them. If you have watercolor and they don't even have to be expensive watercolor fortunately this UART paper takes water. Water does not hurt this paper. This is a great paper. So you can use watercolor in place of the watercolor pencils that you'll see me using. You can use pastels. If you don't have any of those things you can take some of your pastels and use some of the colors that I'll recommend just kind of lay them on their side and you're going to create big areas of color and I'll tell you how you can blend those in even without water. You can use water with pastels to blend them in or you can just scrub them and blend them in with other tools. Okay so I'll try to remember to talk about that but now I'm still just getting the sketch in and that value study is helping me with the sketch. I mean I could do the sketch without it there. You see I started it like that but that value study is what's really going to help me once I get to the underpainting process. Okay and even throughout the rest of the painting. So that's why I'm calling this step one is to create the good bones a simple beginning which is the notan or the value study. Step two is to create a roadmap or an underpainting for a successful painting. You don't always have to do an underpainting but you know I think I pretty much always do an underpainting of sorts okay. There's like I said there's so many different ways to do it but I like to cover up that very in this case it's a cream colored paper but you want to get that paper covered and there's multiple reasons for that. One of them is I like to get a color underneath the painting that's going to complement or make the colors that I choose more beautiful for the painting. Now pardon this jumping ahead a bit I had my big old head in the way and you couldn't see what I was doing. Right now all I've done is I got a little bit of a harder pastel in this case it's called a new pastel in you pastel but I'm just getting some darks and where there's trees are it's kind of kind of helped me see where things are before I get to the underpainting part all right. I've just put the trees in so get a darker pastel or something and kind of just get some of your shapes in there to know where you're going. Now I've got another new pastel just a little harder pastel and I'm keeping a very light touch but all I'm really working on here is I've kind of emulating the value study that I did. I'm looking at my value study. I'm also looking at the reference photo and I've got a super soft touch here I don't want to fill up you know the tooth of the paper and I'm keeping it so loose this under part of your painting keeping it loose is very important and I skipped ahead a bit here I apologize I got my big head in the way again I've got to remember to pull my hair back when I do these videos but as you can see I am emulating the notan or the value study and just getting in big shapes filling in pretty much the goal is I'm going to get color everywhere and now I believe in a second I'm going to start using the actual watercolor pencils again I could have used the watercolor pencils for all of this I just happen to have a couple of darker new pastels right near me all right this is a darker I think this color is called amethyst again you can use whatever you have you can totally go back and look at some of my videos where I just do a watercolor under painting but this I found very neat using these watercolor pencils I like to sketch and you may have a little more control over the watercolor pencil at first over where things are then you would over watercolor if you're not used to mediums with a brush I I absolutely love this I will definitely use this technique again I don't even think you would have to have very expensive watercolor pencils I do like to try to encourage if you're going to get if you're just practicing and you're brand new just use whatever you know I've thrown away I'd say the majority of my beginner work I think all of it as you grow as an artist you end up getting rid of your work from early on so it's okay if you can't afford the most expensive supplies if your supplies are not acid free it's called or archive archival but as you grow as an artist you want to try to get supplies that are archival that don't have acid in them that they're going to last over time so that if a client buys your painting you want to make sure you know it's going to last I'm not going to have it for a while and it yellow or anything like that so again I'm using these watercolor pencils now and I'm just sketching in I'm focusing on the value which means the lightness or the darkness of the color more than the color but if and the lightness or the darkness is the reason for that that value study that you see at the right beneath okay it's just really where are the lights and darks and the no tan is to create a pleasing composition of the lights and darks I'd say that's one of the most important things about your whole painting is this going to be a pleasing composition to look at I mean it doesn't matter how much detail or or vibrant color you have if you don't have a nice composition to begin with and again don't be too hard on yourself these things get better in time go ahead and plan on throwing away a lot of your paintings and when you have that attitude when you start with and you don't expect yourself to be a master artist right away then you're going to have a lot more fun now um the second part of what I was going to say is I'm focusing more on value than color but if I had to say what color I'm focusing on I'm focusing more on warm colors in this it is really beautiful for your final painting especially if you've got a lot of greens if it's a landscape now I didn't have to use a green here it's just kind of put it in because there's a vibrant green in the background but it's really nice if you can lay down colors that are on the opposite side of the color wheel from green and in this case it would be the warmer colors the oranges the reds and the yellows and it really makes your painting pop when you kind of see through those undertones of reds even pinks you know so I'm going to have most of this with the exception of the screen here um in the warm uh color and even this is a warmer green than a cooler green so that I would say with this second part of the painting after you've got your value study we're getting down an under painting we're focusing on the value the light or dark more than the color but if you would like to I encourage to create a warm under painting all of these colors this one I'm using here is a warm color it's a red now notice this red that I'm using it's darker you know than say the yellow that I put down underneath before up there and the reason is it's in the shadow and it's um in the foreground and if you look at the if you squint I encourage squint a whole lot if you squint your eyes and look at the reference photo you can see that the foreground the part in the front even though it's lighter than what's in the shadow it's a lot darker than that strip of light behind the trees so um that's why I use the red in the foreground now I'm right now I'm putting some of the red in the background because some of those trees are darker in the background so I'm going to let that red dark value be my dark value now I'm getting down it's a little bit lighter it's like an orange color and I'm getting that down that's going to combine kind of nicely with that red but what's neat about this uh rngs and reds and yellows especially in the foreground here is when you look at the ground or the grass we have a tendency in our brain to go oh that's green and we don't think about the fact that there's a whole play of color going on the the grass is on top of the ground there is earth and dirt underneath there and it just creates a nice foundation or um or um almost like the dirt underneath the grass so it really is a nice color to use as an underpainting and again I'm using that orange in the background because there are some darker shadowy values in the trees but it's not as dark as those foreground trees you'll see I darken that up now I'm using that yellow um and I actually could have used that yellow as a whole instead of any of that green but I'm using that yellow it's my lightest value if you squint your eyes and look at the reference photo what's the lightest thing in the photo it's that grass that the sun is shining on in this case you see we don't have any sky typically the sky is the lightest thing there's no sky if you and that's the cool thing about doing that value study beneath is we've already established that you already see behind those trees that's where that strip of grass is now for the fun part I'm using some alcohol this is just alcohol you get at Walgreens I know they have different percentage alcohols this one's 91 percent I haven't really found that it matters all that much now I have to remember not to drink that out of that coffee cup which I don't fortunately but um I'm just going to get a medium size brush I find use the biggest brush that you can because it's going to help create looseness instead of getting so fussy and tight in the painting I keep a paper towel handy and I use that just if I sometimes if I have too much of the alcohol on my brush um there's a lot on it here and it's just starts kind of dripping which is fine let it drip okay but if you think it's going to drip too much and it's going to just lighten up all the dark values you just laid down you just blot it on your paper towel a little bit now first I'm focusing on the darks I want to get sometimes I do the value study or the underpainting and I don't put any of the darks in until after I get the reds oranges and yellows down and that's actually kind of a good idea too because if you're not used to doing this that way you don't get your your darks and your lights all blending together you know if you're not used to using the brush so um you can do the darks after if you would like as well all right so I'm just getting the trees all in here and um again I'm just using the alcohol by the way you don't have to use alcohol you can use water water would work the same way it just doesn't dry quite as quickly as the alcohol and I don't know I I kind of find the alcohol it behaves a little differently with the alcohol than the the water I think so anyway that might just be me okay so getting in those dark trees now one thing that is important and I'm going to end up darkening those trees again this again is a roadmap think of this this is not the final painting this is just getting down that guide and that nice warm under color um to to have a guide to have a roadmap for your painting now you see I'm kind of working those background trees you see how those reds and oranges are kind of blending together and then I've got some of those purpley colors kind of in there and um I'm not getting all fussy with it I'm focusing on the value and notice I'm making my strokes kind of just go up and down I feel like those trees are kind of doing that later I'm going to add pastels on top of that now again this is uh or I should stress that keep in mind things that are further away like these trees they get lighter in value again squint your eyes look at that reference photo those foreground trees especially that mass of something that's over to the right are the darkest thing those background trees they're the same kind of trees and if you walked up close to them they'd be dark too like the ones in the foreground but when things are in the distance the atmosphere gets in the way that's why mountains in the distance look purple or blue they're not purple or blue it's all the sky and all the atmosphere that's in between you and that so they lighten in value they get lighter and they cool off okay now I've got a warm under color I'm a warm warm under painting here so they're not cool yet but I'm going to cool things off with the pastels that I lay on top of it but now you see that um mass that I did right behind the tree that is the darkest thing in the painting whatever it is a bush or something and when I paint I try to forget what things are and I just look at the shapes um it really helps uh get you out of the tendency to get detail too quickly just consider yourself I'm painting a mass or a shape now I know I've got a pretty decent shadow going on under those trees and I'm also notice I'm painting directionally I feel like those shadows are sweeping across from right to left so and even the ground that's why I'm making my strokes in a directional path and that gives your painting a sense of movement and um I don't know it's just kind of fun for me to try to follow the way the land is flowing and it's okay if this is a little bit messy I notice I'm some spots aren't even totally painted in and that adds to that real painterly look that impressionistic look which I know a lot of people in our group really like that's how I lean I appreciate and love very realistic paintings but I don't know I'm just drawn to the ones that are just loose and almost feel like a dream um now I'm just getting in see I had some of that little uh magenta purple back there it's probably no it's actually a little another little section of bushes that are lighter because they're further away um so fine-tuning this a little bit you may have noticed I left a little strip of white in between behind the trees and in between the the really bright yellowy green grasses and it's because when I was closer up at the reference photo I could tell there was some sort of I know there's some sort of road there because it's my road it's a little gravel road on a property that we actually were living on for a while after the flooding of our home and it's a pretty tiny house so we're living in a different house now but um but anyway so okay getting this finished up and now this is what I was saying the point of this lesson is the roadmap to the painting step one was a simple beginning the notan or the value study it's called part two was getting a roadmap and it's basically just the under part of your painting now I wanted to show you this real quickly this is where I just experimented with the watercolor pencils and I got real sketchy and loose with it I was just having fun and I wish I had stayed that sketchy and loose with this one but I wanted to point that out because that's what I encourage is to just keep your strokes really loose fun and free also in that little example I just showed if you remember seeing it it didn't have the darks in it yet which is really kind of a neat way to begin as well there's so many different ways and possibilities that we can do this all right now is where I will begin the painting the under painting part or the roadmap to start the rest of the painting is done I'm showing that little cigar cutter it's an excellent little way to cut your pastels um especially the round ones if they fit in that those those are my giro pastels and I I like I like them in smaller sizes than the long sticks so I was cutting it so now is we've got our roadmap done okay that was the point of this second beginner series video but I want to go ahead and go through this painting um and give you as much information as I can because I know you guys have hungry artistic minds so what I'm doing now is I'm reinforcing those darks even though I kind of put them in where they were um it from the value study um notice they weren't really dark until when I start putting this down and you say wow okay they weren't that dark when you did the under painting so I'm just reinforcing the darkest darks in this and uh getting things re-established so to speak and again this under painting is my roadmap because I put it in I don't have to focus on so much on where does this tree go where does that tree go what value is it because I've already got if you notice in the under painting I know what my darkest darks are they're those foreground trees I know what my next darks are those are those shadows in the foreground and the foreground I know what my next value is I would say the third in darkness that would be the background trees I know what my lighter values are that would be those bright grasses in the back and my lightest value would be that road okay so I've really got four values going on here gosh my poor easel I'm always hitting it I gotta get away to be more stable all right so now again I've got my roadmap I already know there's a beautiful um warm light value green going on back there and I'm getting that in a lot of times I like to get my darkest dark in and my lightest light and then I know okay this is where the rest of my values need to fall in between those two I've had a tendency sometimes to get a value too light or too dark too quickly so if you get that in right away it kind of helps you work from the far extremes down to the middle values and I'm keeping a light touch here I'm laying it on its side I see a little bit of that green is kind of peeking through if you look at the reference photo just a little bit of it is going behind that tree oh and also feel free to use this reference image if you like I have been creating little clickable um URLs in my description section I'll try to remember to put this particular reference photo in it so that you can click it and use this actual reference photo to paint from if you'd like to just go along with this video and I realize we all have different supplies so just do the best you can I was pointing out there my next darkest value is I'm using my little cutter is are those background trees okay um and I'm using notice I've got my warmer underpainting back there it's kind of a purple magenta and some oranges back there and now I'm going to cool them off I'm going to layer on top of them with this cooler medium value this is not a real dark value it's kind of a medium value pastel and I'm constantly kind of measuring and looking if I have a mistake or something um and I think it probably helps you guys when I do have real time because you can see I do get purposeful at times and sometimes if I speed up the videos it looks like I'm always she's just so good she just never has to measure do anything oh yeah I do but now notice how when I add this really pretty blue on top of those magenta colors do you see how that color is kind of exciting and vibrating and if you squint your eyes as I'm doing this they they start to look like background trees okay you're not getting in a lot of detail that's another thing that happens when things recede in the distance they get lighter in value they get cooler in color and they get less detailed okay foreground is going to get darker in value bolder in color and more detail but while I have that blue often I will um try to maximize the pastel while I have it in my hand I know that those shadows under the trees are going to be cooler in temperature things in the shadows are almost always cooler always cooler really and cooler means blues purples um just that side of the color wheel and so I'm just laying down on top of that that uh ground that I've created with the warmer colors I'm laying down some of those cooler blues and some of that a little bit of a darker value if you squint your eyes and look at the reference photo again if you look at the shadow especially the left side of the shadow under those trees the left side um is not as dark as the right side of the shadow but if you look at the left side of that shadow squint your eyes and look at the background trees they're almost the same value okay so that's why I used that same blue um now I'm just getting in a little bit more I'm establishing um the um actual drawing or where things are a little bit more precisely with my strokes now and uh you see now how adding that green doesn't that that painting already looks more exciting than if I hadn't put that underpainting down what if I had just used all greens and blues and this um that magenta and orange and red and yellow just makes things more exciting now what I'm doing here I'm using the little edge of the pastel there on the circular part to create if you can't see the reference photo real close here but there's little um sections in the it's almost like that road goes way back into a forest kind of meandering around and light is hitting um in between trees in the background there so I'm just getting a little bit of that in not super precisely yet but just to remind me that it's there okay now I'm starting notice my strokes um I'm going from a transition of horizontal strokes well I'm quitting now but to vertical horizontal stroke are usually the strokes you use in the backgrounds as things recede we don't see grasses growing straight up and down as much when they're far away we see it more when they are close up now I know that little area that's peeking through back there where the sun was hitting it's not quite as bright in the green as those that other light light green I use now I'm just kind of glazing that over I know there is some green there I mean I can see there is green but that green is so much more interesting and exciting now as I'm just taking the side of the pastel and just kind of glazing it over keep your strokes really really soft and gentle at this point so that you know you can correct things if you need to later rather than really pressing down real hard with that pastel so I'm putting just before this I put a little bit more of that blue down beside those trees I could see the earth was kind of growing up around them and there was a little bit more shadowy there and I noticed too it's a little bit just darker in general around the basis of the trees typically that's the way it is I see that the shadow now correcting a little bit goes out a little further up on the left side of the trees and then I had originally drawn it in again I really apologize for my easel shaking so much now back to where I was talking about vertical strokes now I'm starting to work my pastels a little more vertically because I know grasses kind of grow in that direction I'm still keeping a super super light touch just in case I want to kind of change direction with some of the things I want to do but can you see now if you squint your eyes can you see already the painting is starting to take shape and really at this point in the video I don't know what am I 30 minutes into the video that's that's the only time it has taken me now I did create the value steady all right but the under painting and to this point was only 30 minutes okay so that's not a long time to kind of get the the direction of your painting and already start to see it take shape I happen to love as I said before really impressionistic things and sometimes I look back at my videos I'm like man I could have just done a little bit more on this painting and left it but I don't know that might be a little too rough for some people's taste the trees do need some some branches and leaves on them because there are some of those up at the top but but I really like the the play of color that's happening here and so again that's the the main point of this part of the video was to help you understand that you're creating a base to work from and once you get that down your painting just has a much better direction to go and it actually makes your painting easier when you do these steps rather than just jump right in and start painting on a blank piece of paper now I love this particular purpley blue color what is that like a it's not quite it's more purple than a periwinkle blue but see how cool that is man that really pushed those trees back squint your eyes you just see them they look like they're far away now while I have this one in my hand I'm going to see if there's anywhere else I could use that particular value and I think yes some of those little shadowy areas that are cooler it's just going to have a nice little harmony now that's another reason too I wanted to mention that I keep a certain pastel if I've used it in one place I see if there's somewhere else I can use it because it creates a harmony in your painting I even do that with the sky you know skies are typically blue grasses green trees leaves are green but often even in clouds and in the sky I try to carry some of the colors in the land up into the sky because it makes your painting just blend better and feel better it feels more cohesive and rather than having a separation between the land and the sky I hope that makes sense now I'm using this lighter pastel just to get in the road here and an indication of kind of that lighter road and that's going to be the lightest thing in the painting okay so I'm going to keep this real time but I'm going to add some music and let you guys just watch the process and if you decide to join along with me just click the link in this video to see the reference photo print it out and hopefully learn a whole lot from this beginner series I am excited to see some of your comments that you are excited about me really focusing on beginner lessons I always say my heart is for the beginner because I had such a struggle early on I couldn't not only couldn't afford to go to workshops or anything outside of the home I didn't have the time so I love being able to give this to you guys and help you guys out and I really really hope you're benefiting from it so be sure to comment like the video those things do help me I share often that my heart is to try to keep these lessons free as long as I can I mean maybe in the future I'll have a patreon account where I give more advanced lessons but I always want to try to have good beginner lessons on here and it does help me out if you guys like share comment it does send my what happens is it sends my rating up in youtube to where when people look for pastel lessons mine comes up you know and I I hope they're of value so I hope that happens so I appreciate your help with that and all right guys enjoy the rest of this video and I will come back and talk to you guys in a minute I'm wrapping it up at this point I do a little bit more on it to finish it up but I wanted to just say I really hope these are helping I do have more on the way the next video is actually going to be a bit of this same technique but as I mentioned about in the middle of the video how I wish I had not added the dark at the beginning and just did the under painting with the watercolor pencils well that's what I'm going to do on the next video and I think you'll see it really does give a a neat impressionistic sketchy colorful effect and so join me for the next beginner series episode a little bit more of the roadmap to painting and I'm so excited you've joined me here in Monet cafe I pray your artistic life is blessed and beautiful thanks so much guys happy painting