 Welcome to Monet Cafe. I'm artist Susan Jenkins and I am happy to bring you this no-mess way to paint with pastels. Would you ever paint with pastels in your kitchen? Well join me in this lesson where I'll be sharing my products and yes I'm just painting with some natural light from my kitchen window and these pastels are the trick and I'll be sharing why they are not as dusty as most pastels and a lot of other information plus a painting tutorial of these beautiful pumpkins. So if you haven't subscribed yet to this channel I hope you will. We have lots of fun and lots of learning. Now my patrons will get a downloadable image of the reference image but I will share it within the tutorial so that you can paint along and if you don't know what a patron is it's a way you can support this channel for just $5 a month and here we go let's get started. Here I am in my Amazon shop where I share a lot of products that I use for my tutorials and in the section called Pastels and Painting Products you will find the pastels that I used for this particular painting. They are called Prismacolor New Pastels. There they are on the second row down. Now I love these pastels even though they don't get the glory that many of the real soft pastels get. The full 96 set is only about $85 and this is comparable to other sites I just checked with like Dick Blick and other retailers. So it's a pretty good price for a full set of pastels but they have other sizes available. You certainly don't have to get all 96 and I'll be talking more about these pastels as I paint. If you go back to the main page of my Amazon shop you'll see where I have pastel papers and more and this has a whole lot of the papers that I use in my videos and this particular black drawing paper it's made by Kansen. I like working on black surfaces and this is not a sanded surface which a lot of pastel artists prefer but I think it works quite well and really well with the Prismacolor New Pastels. I'll be talking more about this surface and drawing on black surfaces in general as I paint. Even though I was painting from life I took a quick snapshot of these pumpkins to be able to share with you guys and to use as a reference. While I stress very strongly to always learn good sketching skills sometimes if you're in a hurry I like to share this little quick transfer method. Basically I take my reference image and put it up to a bright window. I turn it backwards and I outline it. You can tape it up to a window. Now I've outlined the back of this in white. Now why would you think I would do that? Well my paper is black so I've already got a little traced outline on the back of this just getting some of the general pumpkin shape and shadows and I tape it down to keep it secure and then I just use any sort of a flat edge. I happen to have my metal ruler next to me so that was convenient. You can use a credit card or anything that's flat and won't disturb the paper or the surface. And this did happen to be a time for me where I just wanted to paint something. I knew I didn't have a whole lot of time so this method worked out quite well. You see how great that works? It really transfers very nicely. Alright so now it's time to get started with my Prisma Color New Pastels. I believe I use these exclusively for this painting so it's really neat to be able to just grab one set and get to work. Now you can see I've got mine very loosely arranged. I took them out of the individual sections and just put them in general color families. I find that I, the more you paint you'll find this too, that you see color and value very quickly and you can just grab what you need. It doesn't have to be all lined up in a row according to value or color. I decided to get some background in first. I mean that's a lot of black on the surface there and this is actually what's called negative painting. I'm painting the spaces around the main subject matter and I chose it rather than using, you know, that tabletop or actually it's the little buffet in my kitchen with the window light coming in. It has a lot of warmth to it. It's kind of a brown or tan. And because the main pumpkin on the top is warm in color, orangish colors, I decided to jazz it up a bit and use like some turquoise colors and I guess you could call these cool greens or warm blues. And I'm using the lighter one of course. You can see in the reference image that I've popped up there. The lightest part of that table area is the upper left corner and that's because the kitchen window is there. And then as we come down from that area, things gradually darken. Of course the darkest area is of the tabletop. It's going to be the shadow, specifically that front pumpkin. So as you paint, learn to analyze values rather than just colors. Now that leads me to why would I have this image that I'm working from along with working from the live pumpkins sitting there. Why would I have converted that to black and white? Well that's because it helps us to see value better. You can just look at that black and white image and easily see where the darkest darks are and the lightest lights are without color getting in the way. So I'm just sneaking in some of these turquoise colors with the different values all around the pumpkins and getting my general background in. Also I'm not pressing really hard. I'm just giving kind of a, I'd say a medium to light pressure. So those are the three pastels I use for the background and now it's time to tackle these shadows. I like to use often cooler colors in shadows. Often people use browns or blacks in shadows. Now I'm looking across from like the colors of the oranges and the reds and I'm seeing some blues and violets. So I decided to grab some of these more purple and blue colors to work on the shadow area. Here's a real quick clip of me cleaning my pastels. Often if they're a little dirty I just kind of rub them on a paper towel. Now this is the, I think it's the spruce blue. I talk about this particular Prismacolor new pastel a lot in my videos because it's such a great dark. Now you can see it's actually about the same value as the black of the paper but it still has a nice cooler tone rather than just the black paper. So this is interesting though because often we're working on a lighter surface and getting our darks down. So sometimes it can require a little backwards thinking but once you get the hang of it and you do a few of these you start to really figure out how to go about painting on dark surfaces. So you can see that dark I just put in in the darkest areas. Now I'm going into the area of the shadow. If you look at the reference image in the top left there are shadow areas that are the next darkest value. It's that little kind of point area that I'm working on now that's from the upper pumpkin. You can see that part of the shadow is a little bit lighter than what's directly underneath it. And once again these are just cast shadows from my kitchen window light. No other light is on these. And so I'm just working that next value. Now right now it looks quite a bit lighter but if you were to compare because it's on the black surface but if you were to compare what I'm using right now this pastel with what the actual color is in the reference image it's pretty close. And you can tweak these a bit and layer a bit even though this is not a sanded surface with these new pastels and with other pastels actually I find I can get a few layers. And in case you're brand new to pastel painting and you're going what is she talking about sanded and unsanded papers. Pastels unlike other wet mediums have the their layering capability is limited with unsanded papers. They literally get to the point to where you just can't put one on top of the other. It gets kind of slick feeling. So you by using sanded papers literally like sandpaper in the hardware store but they're fine tuned to work great with pastels you can get more layers. I have so many videos talking about the differences between sanded and unsanded surfaces and you can absolutely get nice results on unsanded surfaces as well. That's great news because unsanded surfaces are quite a bit less expensive than the sanded papers. And this channel Monet Cafe has such a wealth of information. I love it when I hear you guys say I'm going on a marathon binge watching Monet Cafe day. And I really love it when you guys comment. So please do. I read everyone and I try to respond if it's a question. So definitely be sure to leave me a comment and hit that thumbs up button. It really does help my standing on the YouTube channel. So here I am just still working and getting my big areas in. I do the same thing on lighter colored papers. I actually I don't like working on white papers at all or really light paper. So I'll usually just either tone the whole paper or do what I call an underpainting getting in the big shapes and values and colors immediately rather loosely before getting into the details. So notice that's exactly what I'm doing here. I'm just working on shapes and big shapes, values and a general color palette. And now with the background and the shadows roughly sketched in it's time to move on to the pumpkin. I'm going to start on the pumpkin on the top the orange pumpkin and I'm going to start working on some of the darker values first even though I'm grabbing a lot of these pumpkin-y colors. And if you notice in the reference image where where's the light and where's the dark. Well we know the sunlight is coming in through that window so our lightest lights are going to be on that top corner top left corner of the pumpkin and they gradually get darker as they come around. You've got a little bit of that light sneaking around the top left corner there. But this side that I'm working on now is mostly the darker areas. And because you know this Prismacolor 96 set is great, sounds like a lot of pastels, but you're still sometimes limited specifically in some of the darks that you have. So I was using a combination of darks and lights and varying my pressure to try to get a value that is close. And because the paper is already black I can get the values to be the color that I want by simply not pressing too hard or just gently getting in some linear marks and keeping the dark of the paper showing through. So even if I don't have dark enough pastels that's not a problem because it's black paper. You can make it work in your favor. Now I'm working on some of those highlight areas. And you probably noticed when I did the transfer of the sketch I didn't sketch in every single thing. I just sketched in with my white charcoal pencil just some of the general grooves of where the pumpkin is. So you know don't overdo your sketch because whether you're doing it from transfer or from you know just scratch because it's going to tighten you up and you're just going to get too detailed and tight. I wanted this to be loose and fun. Alright so I'm going to speed this up just a little bit through this process and but not so much that you can't see what's going on. Also this subject matter fits in nicely with our theme for the month. This video is being made in October of 2021. And the theme for the month in the Monet Cafe Art Group on Facebook and for my patrons on my Patreon page is called The Market. And the reason I called it The Market is I recently went on a trip with my husband. I'm sorry for shaking my my camera and a couple of these shots here. But I recently went on a trip with my husband. Some of my patrons know my patrons on my Patreon page get a little bit more behind the scenes you know kind of like what's going on in my life and all of that stuff. So I recently went on a trip my husband and I have been caring for my terminally ill mother-in-law. She was given two months to live and we rescued her from Mississippi and literally because she was found unresponsive and not in good shape. So we brought her back home to live with us in Florida and that was nine months ago. So that's good news that she has hung in there but it's not good news that she was mentally physically in every way needing good care that we couldn't provide anymore. And we found the most wonderful facility in Mississippi. Man and you guys if you're from Mississippi that's one of the most hospitable gracious and loving place with the most loving people there. And so we were very happy to be able to get her in this facility. So on the way back that was a long tangent right on the way back we found some markets like a farmer a couple of farmers markets. One of them was just fantastic. I'll have to pop some of the photos in here but I was like wow this would be the perfect theme for the month of October. You know it's fall pumpkins you know all the neat things that you find in markets like that. And we're I'm opening it up to any kind of a market. It could be a flower shop. It could be a fish market. And I love how our group the Monet Cafe art group has members and artists from all over the world. So a lot of times Americans can be very egocentric you know we see everything as through the eyes of an American. And we need to realize we've got to open up our eyes and experience the beauty of other places. And I just love that about our group that we're literally all over the world. The members or the subscribers here in this Monet Cafe channel here on YouTube are from everywhere. I love it too when I get even kids saying I'm learning from your lessons. So that's so awesome. I really am so happy and so proud of what's happened with Monet Cafe. And if you guys have known me for long on this channel you know I give all glory and honor to the Lord. Many years ago I said Lord I'm really enjoying this art endeavor. And when I started making the free videos on YouTube I just gave it to the Lord. I said Lord do with it what you will. And if it's a way for me to be a gentle witness it's actually a little bit of a ministry some of you guys may know. And while I do sometimes get comments that might not like the way I share that I get more than do. And I also get some wonderful comments from people who we don't have to be of the same faith to be kind to each other. I saw a wonderful quote from Van Gogh today and it says I feel that there's nothing more truly artistic than to love people. Man is that powerful. That's that's how I roll here on Monet Cafe. And I can tell it's the general heart and mindset of so many others that I've come to meet through this wonderful sharing platform. Now I'm getting close to finishing this pumpkin. I'm going to add some nice music for the remaining portion of the orange pumpkin and I'll be back when I get to the one in the front. Before doing too much more to this pumpkin I knew it's probably about time to move on to the second pumpkin so as to keep things consistent and not overwork things. The pumpkin in the foreground obviously had more of a yellow greenish color to it and just like the one above we can see that it has obvious darker values on the front and lower right side. So I'm just choosing some of these new pastels and as I said before I was right I did use only new pastels for this painting. That's pretty pretty neat to know only two products to be able to create pastel paintings. I think that's an excellent way for beginners to start is to play around with some Prismacolor new pastels. They are affordable and you know just some drawing paper. You don't have to do black drawing paper but yeah. And I've got another drawing paper that I love to use with these and just regular soft pastels. It's called the Strathmore gray tones paper. Like I said I don't like working on white and I really love this gray surface. So that's also can be found under the paper and product section of my amazon shop. Now this once again is the spruce blue. It's the darkest of the new pastels and believe it or not this black paper is not as dark as you would think. The spruce blue is a little bit darker. You can see where I added some of that on the orange pumpkin to the right of the stem. The right base there of the stem and a little bit underneath for the shadows of the pumpkins as well. So that's going to get give me my darkest dark and you can see from the reference image I have on the left there and from the black and white photo I'm holding the obvious darkest thing in this is that front stem and especially down towards the base of the pumpkin. But I also see where I'm just going to work in some dark values in some of those groove areas of the pumpkin. So once again I've only sped this up slightly. I do this for multiple reasons. One is because I want to keep my video short enough to upload and it takes a long time and sometimes it's just a little more challenging to upload the larger videos. So also I know that often it can get a little monotonous. I mean real time is awesome but if you can just you know speed it up a bit so you guys don't have to sit there for an hour you know watching something. This probably took me less than an hour and it was just a time I really needed to do some painting and what a cool thing to know that you can just grab two products hang out in your kitchen. I mean as long as you don't have stuff all over your counters and paint. Now the other thing I was mentioning or wanted to mention about this video the point of this video was a no mess way to paint with pastels. Here's what's really cool about new pastels. They don't create a lot of dust. Not only is that good for people who may be a little concerned about the dust and breathing it I've never had a problem with any pastel dust. It's also just less messy. You're not going to get pastel dust all over your fruits and vegetables if they're near you in the kitchen and it also doesn't have a lot of dust that falls off the paper. If I was doing this technique and I have of working on black paper with regular pastels they're much softer. Pastels have soft pastels have a different range of softness. The harder ones are awesome because they're less messy and you can get fine lines often with them but the softer ones are great because they have the most vibrant color. You can often get more layering especially at the end stages of a painting. So they all have their pluses and minuses but the again the neat thing about these pastels is I can continue to paint and not have to lift my paper up and tap it. That was my point about sometimes I've used softer pastels with it laying flat like this and I often sometimes can't see what I'm painting because there's dust that's accumulated and sometimes I have to move the dust out of the way to be able to get another layer or stroke down. So if you've seen some of my videos where I'm working flat I don't have my surface on an easel and I'm using soft pastels I often lift my pad up and tap it somewhere like off to the side on some paper towels or something. Sometimes I'll take it outside, tap it on the back but these new pastels are awesome. You haven't seen me lift it up and tap it one single time so that's pretty cool. So once again I'm just thankful that we can have a relatively no mess way to paint with pastels. Another thing I'd like you to perhaps notice about this tutorial is that I haven't done any blending. Sometimes you'll see me use a little blending product to assist in blending such as a piece of pipe foam insulation I'll use. Sometimes I use a little chamois cloth. You can use a paper towel. You can gently use your fingers sometimes. I don't like over blending by any means but what's neat about these Prismacolor New Pastels is they actually start to blend themselves. So if you just continue to paint you can actually get the pastels to mix together kind of on top of each other and you don't have to worry about getting some sort of a tool to blend things in. So zero blending. I don't think I blended any with my fingers on those shadows so I don't think there was any blending in this at all and again a pretty no mess way to paint. One medium I do often use when I just need to get it out of the studio. Sometimes my husband will be watching a movie and I'm not really into it or something he picked and I don't like or I just don't feel like watching TV or anything. I'll bring watercolor or gouache into the same little island and that's another real kind of a mess free medium. I love watercolor for that fact. I mean I like acrylics and oils too but there's a lot more cleanup with the brushes with watercolor and gouache. You can just rinse your brushes out with water and again work from your kitchen bar or island or whatever. But these new pastels are really great. I have used them for quite a few of my tutorials here. I really need an assistant or something. I'm truly a one-man show. I don't have any assistance with maintaining my YouTube channel, creating the videos, editing the videos, filming myself, maintaining social media, my Patreon page, my Amazon show but too much more to mention. So that being said is why I wish I had more time or an assistant to be able to go through all of my videos here on Monet Café and put them in even more specific playlists. I have done that pretty much when I make any video. I will give it a category and it's a playlist is what it's called where you can go on this channel and find playlists that are about making homemade surfaces or find a playlist that's about painting on unsanded surfaces like this. But I'd like to create a few more like one in particular painting with Prismacolor New Pastels because I have quite a few videos that have that. So but you know you can always do a search in YouTube and just type in Monet Café and a subject matter and a lot of times if I've titled it something similar you can find it. So that's kind of a neat way to find things because I can't even remember how many videos I have on here. I think it's over 400. So praise the Lord you know so I've been plugging along for many years now doing this or over five years I know that and I'm just so grateful for everyone on here all the members and subscribers. God bless you all. All right see I'm rambling again. Some of you guys say you like it when I ramble but I know I get some people who don't as well. So let me be quiet. Add the music back again. And by the way this last portion here is all real time so very little was sped up and even slightly only slightly in this video. So lots of real time content and if you create from this video all I ask if you share it on social media is to tag me. You can find me on Instagram at Susan Jenkins Artist and just tag me and that way I can see what you've painted. I have been loving that lately. Also follow me. I would love that and you can find me on Facebook. My page my personal art page is the art of Susan Jenkins. You can of course find our Facebook group. Monet Cafe Art Group on Facebook has over 14,000 members. I'm talking about artists of every level and while it's primarily a pastel art group we still learn so much. So many things transfer to other mediums so even if you are an oil painter acrylic painter and you're interested in pastels you know just ask to become a member of the Monet Cafe Art Group. You just answer a few questions and join the family. We have artists of every level just amazing people and of course I have my Patreon page with my awesome patrons where they get some extra content. I get to know you guys a little bit more. I get to see your work. I love being able to see your work and give you helpful feedback. So I love my patrons. They're awesome. Anyway all right guys enjoy to the music and I'll be back at the end. I'm finishing up here with just a few of the highlights coming in from my kitchen window. This was a very relaxing thing for me to do. I needed it so much and back to the point of this video. It's so great that you can just grab a couple of products and get to painting and change your environment if you don't want to paint in your studio. So it's a really easy thing to do. So here is the final of my pumpkins in window light. That sounds like a good title actually. Please if you're in the Monet Cafe Art Group I would love for you to participate in the painting challenge this month that's called The Market. It can be a farmer's market, a produce stand, a fish market, a bakery. So I look forward to seeing your work in that album. Please subscribe to this channel if you haven't already. Become a patron if you'd like to support this channel and as always happy and blessed painting.