 Welcome to Monet Cafe. I'm artist Susan Jenkins bringing you another beginner lesson painting winter landscapes. Now this is part two you might want to check out part one and I'll be featuring Derwent Ink Tense blocks but you don't have to have those for this lesson. If you would take a moment to like, subscribe, and hit that bell icon to get notified of future videos it really does help my channel and I would appreciate it. And if you haven't become a patron of mine on my Patreon page for only $5 a month you can support this channel and get extra goodies. In lesson one we created two paintings and in this lesson we'll also be creating two paintings. We're learning a lot about color in these lessons and I even use green to create an under painting for a snow scene. I'll also be creating a second painting in this tutorial it's the one of those trees with the little Christmas lights in them and I'll also share at the end of this video how to remove the watercolor paper from a watercolor block like I've used here. It's kind of cool. Now this is me jabbering on from lesson one but I want to encourage you to check that one out because I'm not going to include all of the products to get started in this lesson. So I'll put a little link in the top corner here you can access it. I'll also put a link in the description of this video so you can check out lesson one. Now I have flipped over my watercolor block again lesson one describes this surface that I'm working on and notice you can see my previous paintings a little bit down at the bottom of the screen there and I've taped a piece of tracing paper on top pastels have a tendency to fall you know gravity just lets them fall right down and I didn't want those little pieces to get on to my previous paintings and this is just a quick little sketch that I did actually with one of the Derwent blocks and I'm just getting my big shapes in and this lovely reference image is from unsplash.com great site for copyright free reference images I'll be sure to share the link in the description of this video now I'm going to hold up my stick here and show you how I'm using it in my last video I decided to actually take the footage of my hands as I chose the colors but in this one I decided just to put the reference image up alright so this is a kind of a nice blue green and as I was painting I decided you know what let's just go for it and do more of a green underpainting just so we can see how an underpainting affects a subject matter that you wouldn't think to use green because as I stressed in the first video a very common question I get is if you're gonna do an underpainting how do you know what color to do it one of my recommendations is to choose a color that's not super dominant in your scene pick something that's kind of subtle and those little bits of color will be peeking through your final piece and in this reference image I obviously didn't see any green but I did see some cool colors like this kind of a teal blue just a hint and so I thought you know what it'll be a neat example to show that you don't have to get so worried about what color you paint your underpainting I often say sometimes it has to do with your mood and again a rule of thumb pick a color that's gonna make your painting sing by not choosing a color that's everywhere in the reference image already or in your scene if you're doing plein air painting also another way to think about it is think about what is the most dominant color in your painting in a lot of landscape paintings other than winter scenes it's usually a lot of blues and greens the skies and the grasses and then get your color wheel and look for the color opposite of those colors that's why we typically have a lot of warm under paintings for landscape scenes again because those are the colors that are opposite on the color wheel from your greens and your blues another thing you may notice is that while I'm choosing a green here for these shadows I'm just recreating a similar value that means the lightness or the darkness of something as what I see in the shadows on the ground now I'm kind of getting those ruts in that little road there I went just a little bit of a different green there I think I think it's a little bit darker blue green kind of a color so I'm just really recreating values here with the family of greens and cool greens mostly I get to some really warm greens in a minute and so it was kind of an experiment on my part to see what the effects would be in in using a green underpainting all right there's my vibrant more yellowy green very warm green and I'm going to be using that for the sky and for the snow that is not in the shadow and by the way I am gonna darken up these trees I don't really have my values correct right now because the trees are the darkest thing in the scene obviously mostly vertical things are typically darker elements in your painting and I added more of this warm green kind of as a wash over some of the other elements to give it some cohesiveness and moodiness and the cool thing about these intense blocks and acrylic ink in general is it doesn't behave the same as water color you can really paint over another color without it affecting the color underneath now I'm using the ink tense block right now in the way that I had used it previously I'd never really used it by just applying the water to the stick like I've been doing and like I did in lesson number one of the series and this is the way I usually would do it I'm using it now just to kind of reestablish the color and sketch in where some of these ruts are but this method works as well it you can really just kind of color on it like a coloring book and then wet it with your brush the difference that I found is you create more texture by doing it this method by kind of scribbling or laying your color down first and then adding the water if you paint on the I mean I'm sorry paint on the stick the actual stick and then apply it onto your surface it's more like paint it's just very very smooth you don't get all that texture so you actually will get to see a little bit of the difference here when I go to add water to this and again I am making these elements darker you can see in the reference image that the trees are the obvious dark thing in the the actual image so that's why I decided to darken them up you want to get your values right with an underpainting or get them in general you know kind of blocked in and that's why I like to just say big shapes and values if you get that in you don't even have to have the color right per se if you get your roadmap with your values and your big shapes and I also think when I paint or sketch I try to forget about what I'm painting that might sound weird but sometimes our brains tell us what something looks like and it may not look that way in the actual image that you're looking at so really just try to focus on the shapes and the large shapes and their relationships with other shapes in your your actual image as you're sketching or as you're painting and blocking things in and in a minute I'm gonna grab an even bolder brighter green because I wanted to over exaggerate this just to see what would happen when I go to add some of the cooler colors for snow and by the way my Christmas present to myself is this new microphone that I'm using I'm still figuring out the correct distance where to put my mouth with it but it's a really great microphone my son is actually my oldest son is a professional musician and he's been in the recording industry for a long time and he's the one who recommended this particular mic it's it's similar to the ones he uses so I'm excited about it but you guys let me know if you can tell that there's a sound difference I love it when you give me feedback like that okay you see this just lion me kind of yellowy grassy green and you wouldn't really think you could do a snow painting on top of this right and my sky is almost a yellow green and so this was a very fun experiment and it was a lot of fun as well and here you can see a little better view of how I described putting the tracing paper over the bottom paintings to protect them I decided for the actual pastel application to just grab my box of cooler blues and purples and but first I've got to do something you know to get these two at here so I can get a few more layers and if you watched video number one you probably know the product that I need to add to this this is once again just watercolor paper with my ink tense blocks but I need to add this texture this grit which I'm going to do with this clear liquid gesso now this is not white gesso like you often prep canvases with if you used that you totally cover up your underpainting it's clear and for some reason the clear gesso has little bits of grit or little bits of sand in it and when it dries it allows for you to get more pastel layering and it dries even more clear than you're seeing right here but anyway so as I mentioned before you didn't have to have these Durwent ink tense blocks to do your underpainting you could use watercolor you could use acrylic ink if you have any you can use pastels similar to the way you just saw me do the darker sections of this you can lay your pastels down even though it's on watercolor paper and then just get a brush with water paint pastels become paint when you add water or alcohol and so that's neat you have all these different options and now we're gonna let this dry or get a blow dryer if you're impatient like me and add the pastels and I am gonna speed this up ever so slightly just because I have two paintings to put in this one video and I'm trying to keep things at less than 30 minutes around 30 minutes for each video I think it's just more practical for viewing and it's easier on the upload speed when I have to upload these videos so I got in my darker value of some purple for the trees I used some of that pretty blue now I've got another purple that I'm kind of blending in some of the darker value trees and that's the beauty about the layering of pastels often people say you can't mix colors with pastels well you can't like you do traditional wet mediums but by layering and not pressing so hard you allow the colors to interact with each other and often that's how you get that impressionistic feel that so many people aspire to now you see I'm sneaking some of that other blue or I did to the back trees or some trees behind that gives the feeling that they're pushed back I'm adding a little bit of kind of turquoise color to the sky and I'm gradually getting a little bit lighter as it comes down closer to the horizon and now I'm sneaking in some of this blue a turquoisey blue and now more of a periwinkle type of blue and I like to incorporate it in other areas of the painting so that it feels connected and harmonious and I'm really covering up the green but letting it peek through at the same time and even though a lot of my green like the shadows and everything are gone I used that as my guide as to where my road was and where some of my shadows are going to be and so now I'm getting the ruts of the road just a little bit darker I end up having to kind of correct my road it wasn't zigzagging correctly you'll see me do that more towards the end and so it's just this process of layering and I also was trying to get those background trees to look further away so I softened them a little bit and here you can see me closer sneaking in some of this lighter value to carve in some of the tree shapes and that's how we often do in various mediums is we paint negatively we carve the trees by painting the sky in between it and it creates a much more painterly and loose impressionistic feel so I'm playing with color here like I said I've just got my palette of blues and purples and some I leaned a little bit more towards some of the teal colors and now I'm just layering some of it over the road I don't want to get to my lightest lights sometimes I just use my finger to kind of soften an edge I don't want to get lightest lights until towards the end now is where I'm sneaking in some of the lighter areas where the sun is shining across this snow the path and I'm considering these beginner tutorials because the subject matter is fairly simplified the products are very affordable if you can get some watercolor paper and like I said you could use watercolor for the under painting clear gesso is not all that expensive to make your own pastel surface because some of the pastel papers that are sanded are a little pricey and with the pastels you could really just get you just a few different values and recreate this painting you may not have all the colors that I have but that's okay I had to work a long time with a very limited palette and sometimes I think having too many colors can confuse you and you forget that it really is all about value so this has been fun I really liked this stage right here where it was very impressionistic and I added a few more items for focal point with the tree that you'll see pretty soon but I wanted to say I am just so grateful that so many of you have become patrons in the month of December I ran a promotion it's still going it's December right now that for people who become a patron on my patreon page in December have an opportunity to win two original paintings of mine it's two from this month two wintery paintings they just looked really good together so I decided to award someone both of those paintings and it'll be a random drawing now it does have to be us only because of shipping so if you still become a patron and you're a patron on January 1st you have a chance to win those two paintings and also everyone all of my patrons on January 1st will receive my digital calendar I created a 2022 digital art calendar with many of my original paintings and it's a lot of fun so it is a digital calendar I mean you can print it out or do whatever you want to do with it so here's where I'm adding a little bit more of that focal point with some of the darker purple and again I kind of liked it at this stage but I did end up adding a little bit more pinks in the foreground I was just having fun and that's what I encourage you guys to do so many times we get too serious and we we think more about the end result than we do about the joy in the journey and that's what I like to share here on Monet Café I'm very thankful for the success that Monet Café has had but you know I think it's more about the sharing of the experience of art I mean I'm not I'm not that great of a pastel artist I'm I'm good you know but I love to teach and I love to share and I love the people we have such a great family here on the channel in the Facebook group and my patrons a little bit more intimate group there so I am just grateful for Monet Café and in 2021 I had a goal to reach 600 patrons and I was pretty far from that goal many of you know I lost my mom this year my husband lost his mom this year and so I decided that I wanted to do a promotion and I have reached the 600 patrons now but I'd still love for you to come along into the family all right here's the final a little pizzazzi and fun with the pink and I really enjoyed this process and now let's move on to painting number two which is actually painting number four in the series and I loved these trees that had lights strung across them but I didn't really like their composition so I reconfigured it that's why you see my my paper sitting up there it's not sticking to the other pastel painting just so you know it's just kind of sitting up there but um there's really I'll share the link to the reference image also from unsplash.com in the description of this video but it's so different or in composition that you might want to just follow me as I paint if you're a patron of mine the little sketch that I did I will be providing that for you so you can use that as a guide for your composition all right now same process with this one I decided again just to paint on to with water on to the Derwent Inktense blocks and just apply the paint directly rather than scratching or coloring with the block on to the watercolor paper I really loved the dark kind of color of the sky in the reference image so I decided to use the first color I put down was a purple and now you can see I'm adding the blue which is kind of like an ultra marine blue and one of my goals with this winter landscape series for beginners was to show the various ways you can approach this now with this one I am not going to really do like a value study or painting with the intense blocks to represent every item or even the big shapes I'm radiating some color another option is literally just to paint one color over everything so here I decided to go from purples and blues down to a little bit more magentas and just creating an underpainting of color not necessarily shapes of things if you notice or when you saw the reference photo things do go kind of from dark in the upper part down to light as you get down to the snow and the road in the foreground so I'm just again playing with color I thought these purples and magentas would be neat and and they indeed were I thought it'd be a nice complement also to some of the golden colors you know the the tree and the lights looked very warm and so I thought the blues and magentas and purples would be a neat complement to that and so you know this is really all about fun color exploration and as long as you follow general rules to painting you have your artistic license that you can break out and have some fun and that's when art starts getting fun is when we are able to go hey I want to make this my my interpretation you see how pretty that orange looks that I just put up there even just next to those colors so ooh I love the combination of magenta and gold I think it just makes the prettiest color I often use acrylic inks the ones that are liquid in the bottle I use fluorescent pink and indian yellow often and just let them mix onto my surface that in itself makes a gorgeous underpainting even if you just lay those colors down I often don't like to mix colors just like really mix them up to make a new one color I like to let them play on the surface as you see them dripping and running here and I'm just speeding this up just a little bit so you can watch how these colors just play and blend into each other and it it just inspires you when you play with color in this way so I had a lot of fun even with just this underpainting and after you've watched all four of these paintings you'll see there are various ways you can approach an underpainting once again hopefully answering a question that I get all the time as to if there's some real hard and fast rule to under paintings and a lot of it is just creativity and knowing a little bit about color theory and I had some awesome pandora music going on during this process too I've been listening to Zach Williams lately oh I just love his music now you can see once again I am applying the clear gesso to my underpainting once it has dried and I don't think I've mentioned I like using this foam brush a wide foam brush for one I can get it on a little faster because it's wide and it also makes a pretty smooth application now there are times when I'll use just a flat brush and I'll brush it multi-directional because I want to get some of that energy and those strokes and have the texture showing through but sometimes I just want it to be rather smooth and I apply not always two coats but and I don't usually let the first one dry just kind of do one coat kind of going down and then I'll put a little bit more going across and usually that's all I need and the colors might blend a little bit when you add this clear gesso but it really doesn't matter there you can see my sketch down there to the bottom left and how I've covered up the other paintings and for this painting I did decide to use my other camera above me you can't believe all the gadgets I have to try to get this footage and I'm just using a prismacolor new pastel right now they're just these little harder sticks of pastel to get my general sketch in and as you saw I'm working from my reconfigured composition that I sketched out and I'm just kind of getting the little road in and giving myself a general guideline from which to paint from oh and by the way let me talk about this set of pastels I'm using this is the unison 120 half stick set I always say half sticks are a good way to go when you can afford it you know once you figure out you want to try this pastel thing more seriously this is a really great set to get half sticks you get more pastel color for your money and unisons are great in color they're vibrant and they have a nice design to their layout as far as color families and values go another great half stick set is the senelier 120 also 120 half sticks it's the paris collection it's currently on sale on amazon I have a link to my amazon shop and to this particular product in the description of this video oh I just grabbed that you could see I went to that set because it has such gorgeous vibrant colors now you can see here that I am sort of recreating a little bit of the colors that I had in my under painting but not not totally I'm using the rules of color and value again or really value more than anything right now I'm getting creative with color and now I'm going to do what I said I was going to do in the last video which is add some music for just the rest of this pastel portion don't go anywhere because I'm going to show you the final all four paintings and also I am going to show you how I remove these from this watercolor block it's an arches made by arches watercolor paper and it's on a block it's literally glued on the edges it keeps it more flat as you're working and you'll see me take that off which is kind of cool really so yeah in the last video I said I was going to add music and I just kept talking and talking and talking and talking and you guys were so sweet I apologized for it because I've had a few people say you talk a lot and you guys were so nice with your comments so thank you for that I like to think that we're like a family I feel like I'm really talking to you you know I really feel you and I read so many of your comments that we truly feel closer than we are isn't that amazing how we can feel a closeness with someone we've never met and often never seen even in a photo to me that's evidence of the Holy Spirit so anyway all right I'll get more complaints for that but many of you love that about me too all right guys here's the music I will really be quiet now enjoy and I'll be back now that was fun I can't tell you how much I really enjoyed these four little paintings and I think it's because I was just having fun and not getting too serious there's where I removed the tracing paper from the bottom one now here's where I'm going to show you there's a little break now I've got all this tape around the edges and I think this is a fun part when you take the tape off but I had to remove the tape from the edges so that I could use my butter knife once I tried using an exacto blade for this it does not work you need a dull edge and you just slide it into the little break there's a little section that doesn't have any of the glue bound around the edges and you just slide it around and then you can take the upper page off and the rest of the pages are all still glued together pretty cool right now the next part is one of my favorite parts if I use tape to make borders for a painting it is always so satisfying to take the tape off and have those nice clean edges and I just laid them on a piece of black foam core board for you to see a little bit more of all of the four paintings from this tutorial they really look better close up sometimes the lighting in the studio doesn't let you see them accurately and I hope you guys learned a lot again go back and watch part one I do have a lot more about the products at the beginning of that video and I am so grateful if you're not a subscriber I hope you'll subscribe if you're not a patron and you'd like to be now is a great time to do that because I am still having my December promotion now the number up top isn't correct because I have hit 600 patrons thank you so much to everyone who became a patron in the month of December and if you become a patron before the end of December and you're still a patron on January 1st you'll have the opportunity to perhaps win the drawing for those two paintings those winter paintings on the upper right there and everyone will receive a digital calendar with my original art on January 1st so god bless you all December's been a great month for me it felt good just to be working so much again after so many things have happened this past year and I know a lot of you understand that so god bless you and as always happy painting