 Welcome to Monet Cafe Studio. I'm artist Susan Jenkins. Get ready to embark on an artistic journey to the Caribbean like never before. In this pastel painting tutorial I'll unveil surprising and easy techniques to capture the breathtaking beauty of a Caribbean beach scene. I think you'll be excited to learn these simple steps that will get you started in painting your own tropical oasis. I can almost feel the breeze. Here we go. Let's first talk about the products used in this tutorial. The surface that I'll be working on for this pastel painting is what I love. It's called pastel matte. I guess they call it pastel matte because it's kind of a matte finish and a lot of professional pastel papers are sanded with a texture to it and it makes for a lot of layering. It's a pastel surface that many artists love and even though this doesn't have that gritty sanded surface it still takes so many layers and I'm choosing to work on white. This is the smaller pad. I'm using a larger piece that's from a pad that's it's approximately 16 by 12 and I'm doing a painting that's like a landscape format or a wide format and mine's gonna be 16 by approximately 9 and one of the reasons I like working on white is I can choose my own color for an underpainting and it's really used to accent or to highlight the color that I'm really focusing on for that tutorial and in this case it's teal. So really this is kind of an easy way to do an underpainting. If you have a painting a landscape painting and it has a lot of blues and greens in it which they typically do a great way to pick it under painting is just to go to the opposite say blue and green opposite side of the color wheel and that would be I usually use these golden colors for landscape paintings. But in this case I know that my subject matter is going to be this blue green teal colors in here. Look at this beachy blue green colors. So I'm going to tone it. I really love the combination of teals and oranges and so I'm gonna come over here a little bit. I want these beautiful teals to show up and if I used a blue underpainting or green underpainting I mean you can do it but it's not gonna give that punch to those turquoise colors. So that's my goal. You're gonna see my technique for toning this white pastel matte to make these teals just really sparkle. I also have a set of pastels that will be perfect for this subject matter. It's the Jack Richardson hand-rolled pastels. I love his pastels. They're so soft and they just apply with such vibrant color. This is called the turquoise blues set. I mean oh my goodness look at these. These are gonna be gorgeous for this particular scene. Another set of pastels that I used quite a few of the colors from is the Diane Townsend Landscape A set. I love the screen. Looks like it's color 59. Diane Townsend Pastels are glorious. They're the perfect size too. I also use quite a few of these greens and even some of those rusty colors that are down there for some of the colors of the sand and I really love this landscape set. It has so many vibrant colors. You don't have to have these like I always say. You don't have to have this surface. Use what you have. Goodness knows that's what I always had to do when I was getting started on a budget. I'm still on a budget. So again use what you have but I will have all product links in the description of this video. Alright it's time to paint. I have a lot of options when it comes to doing an underpainting or toning a surface like this. I could simply use pastel. I could get an orange or yellow or golden colored pastel and basically just apply it. I could blend it in with any kind of blending tool. I could wet it. Pastels you can wet. They become like paint when you wet them. But in this case because pastel matte is a water friendly surface I want to get a color down. Like I said I want this painting to have pizzazz. I want it to be very vibrant and I also don't want to take up too much of the layering ability. Every time you add a layer of pastels that's one layer you've used unless you have to use. So I'm going to use a product I use often for an underpainting. It's acrylic ink. Acrylic ink takes up none of the they call it the tooth of the paper. This one doesn't really have a tooth and you have all of your pastel layering ability after doing that. Watercolor does the same thing. Watercolor is not quite as vibrant as some of the acrylic inks I use. So let me show you can even use acrylic paint. You could thin down acrylic paint and use that as well. So I'm going to start with these two acrylic inks. This one's by Daylar Rowney. It's the Indian Yellow. I don't have a whole lot of that left so I might have to add some of this Cadmium Yellow. You can see the difference on the bottom here. The Indian Yellow is a little bit more orange. I think that's why I like to use it often. So I might have to add more of this since that's getting low. The other color is it's by a an acrylic ink company called Amsterdam and the color is Azo Orange. Look at that. Isn't that beautiful? So I am just going to apply this very loosely with a very, I had a video not long ago on why an old brush is great. I like some of the strokes. Now acrylic ink will probably soak right into this paper but I still might get some brush strokes in here. So I'm just going to apply the acrylic ink in two bowls. I want to have enough room to get my brush in and I'll probably use some water to move it around and having some paper towels is always a great idea too. I've marked off with a pencil the area like I said it's a wide format that I'll be painting in. I know you probably can't see that so I just have to make sure I get this acrylic ink in those areas. All right so let me get some of this in my bowls. I always shake it up. They do kind of settle sometimes and here's my Indian Yellow and now I'm going to put some of this beautiful Amsterdam Azo Orange. I love almost every color that has Azo in the name. Quinacridone Nickel Azo Gold is one of my favorite colors. All right so let's look at this. Oh my goodness. Look at that. That's gonna look so good with the teals. This gorgeous reference image is one that I created once again using AI technology the program Adobe Firefly. Now if you're a patron of mine you will have access to this to paint from. That's all. Don't use it for commercial purposes but here on the Monet Cafe channel I'll have my actual painting showing as a reference. All right so now I'm going to do like I typically do. I'm gonna get a little bit of water in my brush and I'm just gonna kind of pull it up. You see how it lightens it up right there and I'm gonna start with kind of some of the lighter parts. I see I said I was gonna do a solid color but it looks like I'll probably end up doing kind of a little bit of a value study. I keep getting a little water dabbing it up in a little bit. I see that I've got these trees. They're darker and you might be thinking why is she using such a big brush and I like using a big brush. I think it really keeps things loose and keep in mind too that this is an underpainting. It's supposed to be nice and loose and free and I'm not worried if all these things are in the perfect spot. It's just gonna give it kind of a neat beginning. I'm getting it a little I'm still with the Indian yellow. I'm getting a little bit more concentrated and I'll probably come back and add some of those oranges. The orange is a little darker so I'll probably add that to some of those areas and this beach kind of comes down here. We've got a little bit of a shadow, a little more water. It doesn't move around great if you don't have water in your brush. I'm looking at how this beach kind of comes up into the trees here and then kind of goes back like that. Now the water I'm gonna keep it kind of light. It gets darker in the background. That's what happens when you don't have enough water in your brush and again this dries permanently and pretty quickly so you want to make sure you get on it and don't dilly-dally too long. I'm gonna take it down a little bit because sometimes I like to make the painting a little bit larger than then my set parameters on it. So there we go. I'll blend some of this into. And now the sky is almost always one of the lighter elements. Now my waters got some pretty areas that are like foam coming up so those will be lighter. My clouds will be lighter so what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna get even more water on my brush and get really thin down here and just give an idea of like where some of these clouds are coming up in right here and if at this point you're thinking golly that is such a mess. What is she doing? But hang in there. So it will come around. Alright I think I'm going to I got a tree line here. It gets a little darker back in there so I'm going to use the orange for some of those areas. So that that definitely looks loose right? That's one of the goals. I'm gonna get some of this up in here too. And now I'm speeding this up. I'm using some of the Azo Orange and you can see I'm just dabbing with my large brush in areas where there are darker values. You can see the reference image down in the lower right and if you squint your eyes just look where you see things that are darker and that's where I'm applying this orange color. Now the paper is still a little bit wet so it's kind of soaking into the paper. So the next stage I'm going to do is actually blow dry my surface and get a little bit more saturation to these colors. Now my surface is dry and one more time I'm just going to apply a little bit more of this Azo Orange and these warm colors are totally going to set the stage to make these turquoise and blue colors just jump off the page. You'll probably notice I didn't even start with any sort of a sketch. I feel that if you want an impressionistic painting you really can just do a bit of this blocking in of values and it helps create that foundation that is loose and free with a lot of energy and you can see I'm even adding some of the darker values into the sky. There is some darkness in between some of those clouds. I could totally get started with my pastel painting at this point but I thought you know what I'm going to add another value darker. This acrylic ink is called Antelope Brown. It's dark but it actually has more of a green appearance to it and I thought it'd be a nice start to go ahead and get some of my darker values in. I'm doing the same technique of controlling the saturation by how much water I add and I'd like to reinforce once again one of the great benefits of using the acrylic inks for under paintings is it does not take up any of the ability of being able to layer. In other words you're starting with a fresh start when you add pastels. I'd like to remind you again if you don't have acrylic inks if you're working on a water-friendly surface you can use watercolor. It doesn't have quite the vibrancy but you could also use pastels. Pastels are water soluble. You can layer some golden and orange pastels and use a brush with water very much like I'm doing here. Alright now it's time to start with these beautiful pastels. This is one of those absolutely beautiful greens from the Diane Townsend Landscape A set and I found I actually used quite a few of the pastels from that set for this painting and I'm really falling in love with this set. And the reference image you're seeing is my actual painting. If you're a patron of mine on my Patreon page you will have access to the actual reference that I created using AI technology. It's really cool. Alright so this is also going to be sped up quite a bit more than the Patreon version of this. I'll tell you in a little bit how to become a patron. It's real easy but I want to talk a little bit more about this process. What I'm doing here is just getting in my middle values rather than getting in my darkest darks right now. I'm just using that green. It's kind of a nice middle value for the shrubbery that's under the palm trees, the palm trees, and I'm even getting in that darker area of land in the distance. So this is really, I'm using it for where my darks are, but now I'm going to come in and establish where the darkest darks are. And it's at the base of these bushes or beach shrubs. And notice, oh in this one, that was a pretty brown, the bottom darkest color from the Dian Townsend set. And this is a gorgeous green from that set. She had some really nice darks in that set as well. As I always say, use what you have. You don't have to go out and buy these sets. But I'm using this green to get in some of the areas where I see the palm trees have deep, darker values, usually in the centers of them. I'll add my highlights later. And my first goal when applying pastels is what I call the blocking end stage. I'm literally just trying to get my value. I always say value first. It's most important, more important than color. That just means the lightness or darkness scale. I'm trying to get my value and color in pretty much over the entire painting. And if you're brand new at pastel painting or any medium where you like an impressionistic style, you may be right now going, oh my gosh, this looks like a mess. But that is actually the way it should begin. If you're leaning more towards that painterly style. So I'm sneaking in a little bit of this pretty turquoise color. That was one of the turquoise. Here's another lighter one from the Jack Richardson turquoise blues. And I'm just doing a little scumbling technique. Notice that things look kind of scratchy. I'm not trying to take a pastel and press super hard to cover the surface. It's okay if those spaces show through. You'll notice at the end, the pastels start to blend themselves when you get enough layers. Now I'm using a nice little lavender. You see I got in some deeper blues and a little bit of purple to give an idea of some maybe storm clouds underneath those clouds. And I'm just, you know, scumbling things in right now. This is a gorgeous little periwinkle kind of bluish purple, which is perfect for the shadows. Now this is a green or turquoise from the Jack Richardson set. It would be considered a cool green. It's not a warm green with a lot of yellow in it. And that's what these tropical waters and even shadows like these often have are either cooler greens or purples and even blues in the shadows. So like I said, the value is what's most important. And the actual darkness of this pastel was really great for me to lay in some of that value for the shadows. And I like to layer colors on top of each other. I think it adds more color interest and fun to a painting. You'll often notice that I use a pastel in my hand, and I'll move somewhere else in the painting with the same color. The reasoning for that is, first of all, it's efficient. I don't have to put it down and pick it up again. I just go ahead and use it where else I see it might work. And second of all, it creates what's called color echoing or color harmony in the painting when you use it throughout. Oh, I added a little more of that purple back there in the shadow that was so pretty. And now I'm just going to use that same purple to kind of soften some of the edges of those shadows. And if this is just going too fast for you to even comprehend, there is a gear icon at the bottom of the YouTube video, bottom right corner where you can adjust the speed, you can choose to slow this down. I always say, make sure you turn the volume down because my voice will sound really strange. But I recommend watching it at the faster speed and listening to my commentary. And then if you decide to slow it down, you can go back and paint along with me. Alright, so I'm developing some of these clouds. I'm still working on the blocking in stage. And I'm laying the pastel on its side to get in some of these larger strokes. I'm still not pressing very hard. There's an expression that says a light touch is the right touch. You want to keep things real soft. That was super hard for me to do when I first started painting. Now I added a little bit of that light waves breaking on the shore. Now this is a pretty peachy color. I'm trying to keep my sand. I've already got this nice gold and under painting underneath. But I'm going to be keeping it darker up on the shore or on the the sand, the beach, the higher left side, and it'll gradually catch some light as I move down lower closer to the water. So these are these light blues. And the one that I'm using right now to is still from that Diane Townsend set. And I'm using this to kind of sketch in where things are. Notice that I did not do an original sketch in this, the under painting even I just started painting. Often you can get things in just by proportions, putting things shapes and colors in where you see them and they serve as like these color notes and an element to get your painting sketched in accurately. And this is a really pretty color from the Diane Townsend set. It was just a pretty like pinkish red color. I thought I'd pop it in there. Alright, so now I'm going to start getting some of this pretty shadow in the water. It wasn't quite as dark as that first turquoise color. And now I'm going to glaze in some of this pretty teal turquoise water. Now keep in mind when we paint water, water is flat. Water will do what's called finding its own level. You pour water in a glass, it's going to find its own level. You pour water in any container, it will level out. And that's how we paint it. You don't want water that feels like it's going uphill or downhill. I mean, unless it's a waterfall. So now I'm sneaking in some of these pretty turquoise colors in the sky. And as a general rule of thumb with the sky, colors in a sky get cooler up towards the heavens and darker. Think of going up to space. It's going to get cooler and darker. And it gets warmer as you get down to the horizon. I wanted to slow this back down to real time here to show you this pretty little green. It is a cool green but not quite as cool as the turquoise. Can you see it's a it's got a little more warmth to it. It's not quite a yellowy green like a grass green. I don't even remember what this pastel was originally that I have in my hand. Maybe a Sennelier. It's very soft. But I obviously have treasured it. I've kept it even to a little teeny teeny sliver of it. I've got to find another green like that. But the reason that I had the kind of that more green, more warmth down in that lower right corner is because colors typically are warmer in the foreground and cool off in the distance. So you really could see a little bit of that hint of that pretty greenish turquoisey color more in the foreground than the distance. So as you can see, this is coming along. But you know, if you haven't seen any of my videos, you still might be thinking, well, this really just looks like a mess. But I encourage you keep watching because it really does come together. So these loose strokes again are just keeping that painterly feel. Now I've gone for a little bit of a lighter. It's almost a yellowy golden color. And I'm carving it into the shadows. And this is where I was saying that the lightest elements, the sunlight's kind of coming closer to the water and it gets more shadowy as it goes uphill to the left side. Now this is a really nice light, pretty yellow. And I'm using it to really make it look like the sun is warming up that sand as it filters through some of the shadows getting near the shore. And by the way, this entire painting took me about an hour and a half, maybe a little longer. And I have a Patreon version of this tutorial that is not sped up like this. It's it's much slower. And I have full commentary the entire time. I'm going to talk a lot here too. But if you want a little more content and you want to join my Patreon family, I'm going to share how you can do that in a second. But it's just a beautiful connection and community of artists who are striving and learning together. My patrons are some of the most beautiful people. And the thing I love is I get to see your work. And you have these sharing platforms where you can share. Everybody kind of learns and grows together. Oh that turquoise that I held up, that was from a Sennelier set of pastels. That one is too. That's a little lighter. And it's a set that I recommend. If you're getting a little serious about soft pastel painting, it's one of the best values for a pastel of that quality. I don't recommend buying these cheap brands of pastels. You're going to get so frustrated. That's what I did when I first started. I almost gave up pastel painting. I am totally self-taught, you know, from I didn't even have YouTube when I first started, but I gradually started watching YouTube videos myself. But that's why I recommend getting brands that are at least quality. So that Sennelier set is called the Paris Collection. It's 120 half sticks. They're perfect size and they have some of the most gorgeous colors. So that's where those teal colors were from. I'm reestablishing some of the darks. Sometimes as your painting develops you realize oh that area needs to be a little darker. And the neat thing is you can adjust things because this paper has such layering capability. Adding some more darks to those palm trees there. Oh that was me dancing. I listened to praise and worship music. It wasn't quite that fast on my Patreon version. But I love listening to worship music and sometimes I just gotta dance. I love it. Praise and the Lord is so awesome. Before we go on let me ask if you would just like this video if you like it and please subscribe. Also comment. I love to hear from you. And if you'd like to know more about being a patron on my Patreon page it's really easy. It's five dollars a month. You can cancel it anytime. You get hundreds of lessons and you get to join my beautiful community of artists. And like I said I get to see your work. It's really a lot of fun. So come join the family. And now I'm working on these palm trees. I'm adding some of the highlights. My green is a little bit lighter and at this point I am not worried about making individual fronds or those little whatever you call them. They're not leaves. They're the little spiky things. They still look kind of like a blob, right? But I'm going to show you my technique that I think is the best and easiest way to paint palm fronds. I have a video here on the Monet Café channel that really goes into this. By the way you can find almost any of my videos. If you just go to YouTube type in Monet Café palm tree. It'll probably pop up if you want to see more about that in a slower version. So now I'm getting even lighter. I'm getting some more light that is hitting on these. Also palm trees have some of their fronds are older. So they're they're dying or they're browner. So I like to add in browns and rusty colors as well. And like I said I'm going to carve into these fronds. So they look more individual with a technique that is called sky holes. And what that means is rather than painting individual leaves and branches and things of trees we paint kind of the mass of the tree and then we carve in the sky negatively into the tree or in this case a palm tree. And so here I'm doing a little bit of it just sneaking some of the clouds and what's going to be behind there. The colors are going to be the clouds and the sky color. All right this is me doing it with one of the pretty teal colors. You try to use a color that would make sense. It's a color that is behind the tree. And as you can see I'm just negatively carving into the spaces. And I think it makes such a neat painterly effect. And also this is going to give focal impact to these palms. One of the reasons is because the strokes are a little bit different than the rest of the painting. So it causes the viewer to notice that area because it's different than the rest of the painting. Now I'm getting in some of these trunks. I'm keeping them very gestural and broken and thin. And now I'm adding a little bit of a lighter. It's kind of a just a topy color. Notice that it really shows up over the dark bushes. In other words the dark areas don't show up over the dark bushes because there's the same value. So that little highlight on those trunks really helped. Now I've got a little bit of a warmer green. Notice how I'm just scumbling it over to suggest leaves. That's one of my favorite words in teaching is to suggest things. We're not painting every little leaf on something or palm frond or every every element to the shadow. We're just suggesting things and bringing more detail mainly in the areas of focal interest. And those areas for me in this painting were of course the palm trees. Also you'll see me soon. Finally get down to the water and the foreground. That to me was a nice focal element as well. And that just leads the viewer in from the water up to those trees and then back around to those clouds. And now you will start noticing that my strokes that I'm using in the sky are going to start blending the pastels. I didn't need to use a blending tool or blend with my finger in this case because what naturally starts to happen, for example, notice the top right corner of the blue sky there. See it's still very see-through and scratchy looking. As I start to add some of these colors here, it's gradually all going to blend together and soften. Like you can see it doing right here. And even though I want to soften it a bit, I don't want every part of my painting to lose that that pretty glow underneath. So much of it will still peek through even when I'm finished painting. But the sky, I didn't want it to gain so much attention that it detracted or distracted from other elements in the painting. But again, you'll notice that sky gradually start to soften as the pastels blend themselves together. Now at this point I'm going to add some Caribbean music for you to enjoy. Again, you can slow this down at any time. If you want the full lesson, you become a patron at patreon.com slash susan jinkins. And I want you to know though, stay tuned to the end. Oh see now I'm adding some warmth to these clouds. I can't quit teaching, can I? Real quickly, the reason I'm adding warmth to the clouds is the lower left side had so much warmth from that sand that I didn't want the painting to feel disjointed. So I added a little bit of warm yellow and a little bit of that pink color. And it really pulled things together. So enjoy the music but stay tuned because at the end I'm going to show you my technique for painting that water, that thin little part of the water on the beach that comes up the shore and you can kind of see through the water to the sand with a little bit of that foam. So I'm going to share that technique with you soon. Enjoy the music and I'll be back. Now I've zoomed in to this lower right area that I've kind of purposely left to the end because I really believe this is a great focal element to not that I want so much detail there but that water does have this directional pull to bring the viewer into the painting. Now why am I using colors that feel a little warmer like a warmer green? Well like I said colors are typically warmer in the foreground and have you ever noticed a lot of beach water has some of that subtle little bit of green to it and you're going to see more of that at water that is closer to you, in water that's closer to you. So I'm using a combination of some of those greens that were a little lighter and a little darker and now this is a cooler turquoise color that I'm incorporating in there as well. Now my strokes are really gentle right now and I don't want to cover up all of that under painting and the reason is why I want this water to feel like it's lapping over the sand. Now I'm getting in a few more of these waves that are kind of jumping around and spraying and this is my little technique this is what it's going to what's going to make this wave feel like it's on the surface is those little marks of foam that have those really interesting organic kind of marks and design to it and so that immediately makes that feel like it's on top of the sand and yet some of that sand color is peeking through making it feel very transparent. So my suggestion with painting those little thin elements of water is to paint what's underneath first let your sand show through don't cover it all up and then give some of those little breaks in the water and those little lines of foam that's really going to make it feel transparent and see through you see how that came together right there I always think that's so fun and also wet sand you can tell those little areas of wet sand are just a little bit darker than the dry sand so that's what happens you wet something and it gets a little bit darker so you can kind of see those areas on the sand where the water is already been up and then come down like right here I'm making it like a little thin very thin wave and putting a little dark just a little edge underneath some of those little foamy areas gives it that little three dimensional feel that is like magical just by adding a little shadow really helps so here is the final and you know what is amazing I had a frame that fit this painting perfectly I have a lot of old frames that I've sold the paintings without the frames look at it it's even beachy looking right like driftwood so I enjoyed painting this so much I felt like I was at the beach so I hope you did too and I might be putting this original in my Etsy shop I don't know I kind of like it I love those shadows and that water but if I do you can check it out there but I might make prints of this as well I think some people let me know if you would be interested in a print I can add it to my fine art America site they do a great job they even make canvas prints you can just hang it on your wall and let's end with this encouraging word Psalm 89 9 says you rule over the surging sea when its waves mount up you still them so if there are storms in your life look up and find your strength and hope in the Lord all right everyone God bless and happy painting