 Welcome to Monique Cafe in a series of lessons I'm calling down on the farm. This is in honor of my sweet mama who passed away about a month ago and she was indeed a farm girl. She knew how to grow everything and what an amazing cook. Sorry to make you guys drool here. And I just loved her spirit. One of her favorite things was her chickens and cooking for the people that she loved. She knew how to can and my dad and I are still enjoying many of the fruits of her labor because her pantry and her freezer is still stocked with so many wonderful foods made from her precious hands. So I hope you'll join me in this next series of painting lessons focused around the farm and please subscribe if you haven't. I think you'll enjoy not only the painting lessons but a celebration of life in general. I thought we would begin this series with a beginner lesson of a painting of a precious duck with some very simple supplies. So here we go. Hello and welcome to Monique Cafe. I'm artist Susan Jenkins and I'm happy to share with you that the theme for the month of July 2021 is going to be the farm. Each month I announce a new theme in our art group on Facebook. It's called Monique Cafe Art Group. So I'm excited. It hits my little bandana, the farm. So I've already gotten started with a few farm animals. I'm doing some sketching, having some fun with color. So have some fun with these. Of course you can do a more serious piece too. But I'll be bringing some farm themed lessons to you this month. And also we have members from all over the world in Monique Cafe. So farms in your corner of the world may be a little different. So feel free if you're in our Monique Cafe Art Group to share some images and paintings of your place and your farms where you live. So it should be a lot of fun. So get ready, grab yourself your favorite vintage and let's have some artistic fun. All right, here we go. Here is the duck we'll be painting today. I think I'm going to call her Gracie. I had a duck named Gracie actually one time. And I actually call this pastel sketching, which I like to do on just regular drawing paper. I'll talk about the supplies in just a minute. But first the reference image comes from a site I've been enjoying called unsplash.com. And the photo credit goes to Sandy Miller. For your convenience I've already arranged an album called The Farm in my unsplash.com account. You can find me at Susan Jenkins Artist on there and you can access my album and use any of these images that I thought were really beautiful farm related images. You can find a link to that album in the about section of this video. Now let's talk about the supplies. For the first three paintings in this series I'm using Strathmore toned gray paper. I really do like the fact that I can not only do charcoal sketches on this paper, but I can also do pastel painting. Often we think we have to use sanded papers, but we really can get some decent results on regular drawing paper. I like the neutral color of this rather than white drawing paper. The majority of the pastels I'll be using for this pastel sketch are Prismacolor new pastels. I like them are there a little harder. They go on quite well on this paper. And we don't even really need many colors for this lesson. That's why it's a great beginner lesson. So let's start sketching out Sweet Gracie. I have marked off a five by seven area. I cropped my image to be a five by seven just to keep it consistent with my drawing surface. And I'm using a piece of Willow charcoal. It's really just like sticks of charcoal. And the reason I like this is because it's the same consistency as pastels. So they blend quite nicely. I also like with Willow charcoal that I can erase it off quite easily with a needed eraser. Needed erasers. K-N-E-A-D-E-D. It looks like a piece of gray clay. You'll probably see me using it in a little while. And by the way, this is all real time. It's only like, I don't know, 20 minutes of painting time or less in sketching time. So it should be pretty easy to follow. But again, I like the fact that Willow charcoal, I can brush it off. I can erase it off with a kneaded eraser. I can also blend it with my finger to get different values, which I like to do sometimes. I think I got, I think in a minute or later, I raise the eye up when I'm painting, actually. I had the eye a little too low. That's another neat thing about doing an initial sketch like this. You really want to get your proportions right with an animal or a person because it's going to make such a difference with your painting looking professional versus amateurish. And also too, one of my goals as an artist has been over the past few years, is to of course have accuracy, but also to have gesture. To have my marks be fluid and gestural, meaning full of life rather than rigid. I also think this is good for beginners as a beginner lesson because not only is the palette simple, but the sketch is fairly simple. If you look at the reference image, there's a lot of negative space around the duck. And a tip for drawing, if you have your proportion of your reference image, say it's a 5 by 7, and you have your drawing surface as a 5 by 7, things are going to be equal with regards to your spacing. And it makes it a lot easier to just take a look at that negative space, that black. And keep in mind that you're also creating the negative space as you are the positive space. I'm often comparing where things fall on the reference image, like where the white of the duck on the left side meets the black background. And sometimes I'll even make a little mark on the side of my paper and it helps me to get my proportions right with my sketch. So getting this little sketch in is obviously going to be step one for this pastel sketch before we add the color. Also I wanted to be sure that I got the character of this duck. I think one thing I really liked about this reference image, first of all, it was simple. It was a great start to this as a beginner lesson. But also I've owned ducks myself, raised them from babies, and I just love my ducks. Oh, I miss them so much. But I happen to love how my ducks, they turn their head to look at you. Because their eyes are on the sides of their heads, they literally cock their head sideways to look at you. And this one kind of had that little angle to her head. And so I wanted to capture that. And so I was trying to make sure I got that. And I didn't quite have it at this point of the sketch, but I do correct some things. And again, that's one of the neat things about this Willow Charcoal. You can see now too how I'm just using my finger. I'm getting in a value study of sorts. Now that could be step number two of this. You're not only getting in a sketch, a linear sketch with lines. You can use your charcoal, or you could even use a little gray pastel or whatever to kind of get in your lights, your darks, and your middle values. I often talk in more complicated paintings about getting in your values. Your value is huge in the accuracy, believability, and beauty of your painting. So as I'm working on the sketch, occasionally I'm just using my finger to blend. I also wanted to make sure I got the bill of the duck angled correctly as well. I find that I don't do that much of a sketch because over the years with pastel painting, I have leaned more towards blocking things in with pastel, with color and value, more than getting in a super detailed sketch. So at this point, all you want to do is get in the generalities. We're not going in there and drawing feathers or anything. Oh, this is where I changed the position of the eye. I just could see as I stepped back and looked at the reference image, that was one of those little things that it didn't look quite like this duck or like my ducks that I remember with the eye in the position that it was. That's a really important thing with animals and with people. It's getting, especially if you want accuracy to look like a particular person. You know, even animals have individuality. Ducks can look different. Dogs can look different even within the same species. All right, it's time to add some of this pastel, just a little new pastel on its side. And once again, you saw probably in the caption, I break these generally for working in any of my pastels. I usually break them if it's a bigger piece. But these new pastels, it's a pretty long piece and I needed a little travel set. As you heard at the beginning of the video, since my mama passed, I'm staying with my dad for a season for healing for both of us. And it's been really good for us to be together and it's been a beautiful time with him. So I needed to bring my little travel set of new pastels. So it's just teeny little pieces. I broke up all 96. There's a that's the most that new pastels makes is a 96 piece set. And they're not as expensive as some other pastels, but they don't have some of the same benefits as other pastels, like the real softies, as far as having the super brilliant color and being able to lay down a final pastel colors at the end. But they have their benefits in their own right. I love my set of new pastels. They're a little bit harder and sometimes that's why they go on a little bit better sometimes on drawing paper. But I'm really on this Stratmore paper. I'm finding that my regular pastels apply pretty well to the surface. It's not a really slick surface. It's got a little bit of a little bit of texture to it, not like grittiness or like bumpiness. But again, I find the pastels apply pretty nicely. Now I'm just using a little gray pastel as I've been talking here to kind of get in some of the value. He does have, she does have a little bit of a shadow behind her head. Now I'm using, it's almost like a minty blue-green. The top of the head, when I squint my eyes and look at the reference image, I wanted to go ahead and add my lightest values first. That's why I added that white. I knew that was the whitest, lightest value of the whole duck, like the sun is coming kind of from the top right. But that's why I chose to use that minty green on the left side, our left, not the duck's left, on that side because I know the duck's feathers on his head are still the same color white as they are on the top. But it's a little bit in shadow, not a lot right there. And so if you use some cooler, lighter values, that is going to make the brain realize that side of the duck's head is still white, but it's a little bit on the cooler side where shadows usually are. And so I'm doing the same thing around other areas that aren't quite as white as the top of his head there. And that's going to start carving in those values and making this shape, this animal, this duck, look three-dimensional. Now I've gotten a little bit of a darker value. This is kind of a blue, almost like a teal blue in a way. And I saw that there's some shadows around the eye, behind the eye, down in the little crevices around that beak where the beak meets the feathers, also kind of where I'm working down underneath that side of the head, down where the head meets the neck. And also too, you know, you could probably see I was blending. Oh, there's the kneaded eraser I was talking about. I also like that you can squeeze it and bend it and make a little point if you need to get in to erase something. Mine was really dirty. It doesn't look like that out of the package. Like I said, it looks like just a little square gray piece of clay, but it works really great. Now I'm getting in some little marks around the eye that I'll develop further as I go. The shape of this eye is what's going to give this duck the personality. It almost seemed sweet, almost like it was almost winking up from the bottom of the eye a little bit. You know how when you smile, even with people in portraits, there's usually, you can give a little personality and expression to an eye. If you raise that bottom eyelid a little bit and you can do that just with color and value. It doesn't have to be a drawing or a line or anything like that. So you'll see me develop that eye a little further as I work. Now I am going to apologize once again not in my studio. I didn't have my camera in the exact spot. So when I get a little that I needed for good lesson for you guys to see. So occasionally because these old eyes are getting older even with my reader glasses. Occasionally I get my head a little bit closer to see better and it's going to get a little bit blurry. So I still think you can see good enough to recreate this. Now look at that blue, same blue that I used on the eye to the back of the eye. I think it's the same. It's pretty much the same color. It might be a, now this one's a little bluer, not quite as teal, but I'm just getting in that shadow area. There is a shadow under his head and under his beak that's being cast from the sunlight and the beak underneath it. And so I'm just using this pastel to just kind of block in a little bit of those shadows. Remember to to use directional strokes like I'm doing. Notice how I kind of curved that area rather than doing some kind of vertical lines. It gives the impression that there is form to this duck. Same here what I'm doing here, giving a little bit of direction. I'd like to share here a little bit too about the difference between unsanded paper. If you've been researching pastel painting at all, you've probably learned, I did not learn this early on, that there are sanded papers, literally kind of like sandpaper that are really great to work on if you're a pastel artist. It allows for a lot of layering and, but I'm finding too that it has its advantages, but its disadvantages. I find that often when we have a sanded paper, which are very expensive by the way, or I shouldn't say very expensive, but more expensive than drawing paper, that sometimes because we have layering ability, we also have the ability to kind of cover up our mistakes or maybe be a little more haphazard with our painting or sketching. And with unsanded paper, an advantage for me anyway, is that I find that I'm more purposeful with my markmaking and with my layering, my color choices and my value choices. I tend to get it or try to get it right the first time rather than being a little bit lazy or haphazard knowing that, oh, I can correct that later because I've got plenty of layering ability. So because there's not much layering ability, you want to get strokes that are very purposeful and I think it will cause you to do that. And I think you end up with a pastel sketch or pastel painting that is more accurate and more gestural and fresh with color. That's another personal artistic goal of mine is to have purposeful strokes and also to have fresh color. What happens? The more layers that you add as you just keep adding and adding layers to a nice pastel paper, you lose that freshness of color and your painting becomes flat. Your colors become muted and grayed and they lose that vibrancy that's inherent to pastels. So I think that is an advantage of unsanded paper is you will most likely try to become a bit more purposeful and careful perhaps. Now I've been working on the ducks bill here and you can see that I've added some little maybe sort of like gestural lines with a darker kind of rusty color in the areas where the values are darker and I added a little bit of an orangey color, not that yellow that I just used there, kind of like that orangey color in other areas where there is going to be a bit more shadow, not quite as much shadow as that darker rusty orange, but mostly once again consider the light source which is most likely up above and to the right so the our left side of the bill is going to be a little bit darker than the top of the bill where the sunlight is hitting. So I used a little bit of that medium orange value there. Now we don't have to just use rusty colors and orange colors even though our brain tells us a ducks bill is orange or yellow. We know that some light and shadows are happening here so I went ahead and got that blue and added that to the shadow side of the bill because that once again that's always saying in my videos if you want to know what colors to use in a shadow think about what happens to you when you're in the shadow of a tree you cool off right it's cooler the temperatures are cooler so we can often use those blues or those purples in shadow areas no matter what the subject matter is you know within reason. So just still developing this ducks beak as far as the values go right now and if you notice not right now but when you see my head in the frame notice how many times I turn my head to look at my reference image. It's my iPad that's down below me and I am doing this a lot because of the subject matter. This is a form that requires accuracy like I said animals and people. I had one of my patrons in my patreon group by the way my patreon group is patreon.com slash Susan Jenkins it's a group where or a means where you can support this channel for five dollars a month and get some extra content. It's really cool we have a lot of perks in the patreon group and we have a lot of fun. I get to see what you guys paint too which is really neat for me. So one of my patrons said that she noticed that when I was painting a landscape that often I'm not looking back at the image that much and she actually already figured it out herself because that's how she paints is because sometimes we just use the reference image of a landscape for inspiration and then we can kind of interpret it a little bit ourselves as we kind of get the generalities down. But with a person or an animal we definitely need that accuracy so it is good to keep looking back at your reference image. Now you've watched me get a little layering in. Once again I'm just using value and color. I've probably used less than 10 pastels at this point and it's already starting to get that feeling of being three dimensional. So I didn't get in my darkest dark values first. Notice I had originally put down kind of that medium to dark blue in the shadowy areas and now I'm going back. This is kind of a blueish, I'm sorry, purplish dark, kind of a purplish neutral dark that I am now developing my darker shadowy areas which is definitely going to make this form have that three dimensional feel. But you can see that I am able to get some layering on top of each other. A lot of people too think that with soft pastels or these are, they're still considered soft pastels even though they're a little harder, but that you can't mix colors. Well you can't mix them in the traditional way like oils, acrylics, and watercolor, but you actually can get color mixing that happens via an illusion of layering colors. If you layer your colors rather gently, then one color is going to kind of influence the other as you kind of see through them. Now that doesn't happen as much when you have really hard strokes, but if you do kind of a light touch, light to medium touch, and you layer some colors, they do influence each other and you can actually get some new colors by combining two colors. It's also neat sometimes too, you can make your own neutrals by layering colors that are compliments of each other. And that's another video, I actually have a video on that by the way. Alright, you see how I'm even developing the beak more. I'm putting some of the darker rusty colors in areas that are either in shadow more or they're just in an area that's a little tighter in towards the face and they're a little darker. So it's starting to get a little form to that beak as well. Another important thing, not just the eye, but it's the position of that nostril and I play around with that a little bit too. I know that I still have a little bit of flexibility here to change some things, but I'm still not doing any really hard strokes yet because I want that flexibility of layering and still kind of correcting things. So little Gracie is starting to take shape here and I'm really almost done here, but I do want to zoom in here and show you about the eye. This is what I was talking about when I said you can make some, just some little marks of value and positioning to give the impression that the eye is almost smiling and now I'm using my dark pastel. I think this is, I think this actually might be a black even though I don't work with black very often. It had a little sharp corner to it and I was able to kind of reshape this eye. Once again, the shape of the eye getting it accurate is very important to capture that personality and now I'm really almost done. I think I'm going to go and just work on that nostril a little bit more and let it remain rather sketchy. Once again, hence pastel sketching. I'm not going to fill that background in with black or anything and I recommend you do a lot of these. Have some fun, get some drawing paper and play. You know, often we just get too serious and we forget to enjoy the journey. I've already got some other paintings completed for more on the farm theme and this one actually, yes, was even done on the gray drawing paper, the same type of paper believe it or not and if you recreate from any of my videos I would love it if you would tag me at all of those links that you see here at my end screen and if you're a patron of mine I know I'm going to get to see what you create in our Patreon groups. Alright guys, happy painting. I can't wait to bring you more fun farm content.