 Welcome to Monet Cafe Studio and this step-by-step tutorial I'm calling Impressionism in Pastel for the absolute beginner. I'll share with you affordable products that makes it easy to get started with soft pastel and I'll break things down for you with simple steps and share with you some of my mark-making secrets. I think you're gonna learn a lot and have a lot of fun. Welcome, artist and new wannabe artist to Monet Cafe Studio. This tutorial is going to be a step-by-step tutorial for the absolute beginner and I'm calling this Impressionism in Soft Pastel. Now I started with the medium of soft pastel many years ago, gosh probably 16, 17 years ago, and I'm so grateful that it's the medium that I decided to start getting back into art with. It is such a user-friendly medium and there's so much about it that's great for beginner artists and I know a lot of people love that Impressionistic style. It's my favorite and in this video I'm going to walk you through my steps and some of my tips and secrets for creating art that is painterly and Impressionistic. Should be a lot of fun. I think you're going to learn a lot. Come on and let's get started. Let me give you the very simple supply list for this pastel painting tutorial. I'll have the reference image and product links in the description. First you'll need a pastel painting surface. You can use either sanded or unsanded pastel paper, although sanded papers do allow for more layers. Also you'll of course need some soft pastels. As I always say, use whatever you have but you can see my recommendations in this video description as well. And some sort of blending tool. Pipe foam insulation that you literally insulate your pipes with works for a great blending tool but you could use packing peanuts or even the side of your hand. I'm going to share the exact products I use for this tutorial but before that I just want to let you know that I have an Amazon shop and in my Amazon shop I have so many helpful lists and videos for beginner pastel artists. One of the ideal list that I have is very helpful. It's called Beginner Basics for Pastel Artists and here I share many budget friendly but still good quality pastel products. And now let me share with you the actual products that I'll be using in this step-by-step tutorial. For this painting I'll be using the 96 set of Paul Rubin soft pastels. Now I was excited to find out they make a 96 set now. They do have other sizes available but what impresses me about this set and why it's great for beginners is the price is really great for the quality of these pastels. Really a good option to get started for beginners. I give a full review of this set analyzing the colors as part of this lesson over on my Patreon page. And my Patreon version of this lesson also will include my color notes and all of the colors I used for this painting. And if you would like to become a patron it's really easy and affordable. It's only five dollars a month which will unlock hundreds of lessons with extra content and you get to become part of my Patreon family. I get to see your work. It's a beautiful community of artists. Before I talk about the surface I'll be using I wanted to mention that other than this 96 Paul Rubin set I only used two other pastels and they were just two other darks. Now let's talk a little bit about pastel painting surfaces. Before I show you the surface that I'll be using for this painting. I had in the supply list for this video that you could use unsanded or sanded pastel papers. This is an example of an unsanded pastel paper. It's called Canson Métant's Pastel. This surface is definitely less expensive than many of the sanded surfaces and if you don't know what I mean by sanded. Yes literally papers have a little bit of a sand texture almost like sandpaper and you are able to get more layering with sanded surfaces but I actually have gotten really good results using unsanded papers and I actually have a video on that very topic if you'd like to check it out. If you're new to using the Canson surface I wanted to point out that each side of the surface has a little bit of a different texture to it. The front side is more textural if you're using it out of the pad that is. It's a bit of a honeycomb pattern and the backside is more smooth. You might be able to see the difference from some of my paintings I've shared here. So that's just a little education on unsanded versus sanded surfaces. Now let me show you the sanded surface that I'll be using for this tutorial. For this tutorial I wanted to use one of the more affordable options to help the beginner pastel artist and I really love the surface that's made by Art Spectrum. It's called Color Fix. This is their rainbow pack and it's just what it says. It has a little bit of all of their colors. If you don't have the budget for the full rainbow pack they do sell individual sheets as well in various colors but the rainbow pack is a neat way to try different colors. Now they have a smaller set called the cool pack and they have a warm pack. So there are lots of options and I will have product links to all of these in the description of this video and the color that I chose I believe it's called sand. It's just a nice creamy type of color. And now let's talk about the reference image I'll be using for this tutorial. I'm on a website now called Unsplash.com. It's one of my favorite places to find copyright free reference images and I make collections within their site. You can go in and title an album and put all kinds of images in it and I love doing this because it makes it just easy to find. When I'm ready to paint I'm like I'm in the mood to paint a field. So this is one of my collections called Fields and as you can see I have a lot of images in here and I have chosen this beautiful field of flowers. Thank you to photographer Gemma Evans and I'm actually going to print this out and we're going to get started with step one. In step one I'll show you how to simplify the reference image and create a composition that is more visually pleasing. While I love the reference image it feels somewhat flat in the field so I'm going to create a path or a trail with some value that pulls the viewer in. It's a simple technique to lead the viewer into the painting and perhaps to a focal area that has some strength to it. I also noticed that the trees I like them but I want to give them more layers or more depth so I'm going to also do that by changing colors and values to really create some depth in this painting and I'm going to sketch right on the reference image to give you guys the idea. I just have a it's called a prismacolor new pastel they're just little hard sticks of pastel and I'm just using it to sketch in a concept of a trail pulling the viewer in. Now I'm not going to have a trail in the painting but you'll see when I start painting I'm going to put down some darker values in this area that really will influence the composition and here I'm just showing you some of the trees that are more in the foreground they're going to have darker values and I'm going to exaggerate that a bit as I paint. That one is obviously one of the closest trees to the viewer. There's another little one right there and I'm just using this new pastel stick to show you some of the different levels. Now this band of trees will be a little bit further back and these even further still. I'm making my lines further apart to indicate the values will get lighter as I move back and here let me add a little color. Again just as an example to show you how I'm going to exaggerate the depth of some of these layers of trees by value which is just how dark or light something is and by color. Colors get paler than they tend to cool off a little bit in the distance. Now I'll add that value to the trail so you can see kind of how this dark area is going to pull the viewer into the painting and I will when I start painting be layering other colors on top of it and I also knew that these flowers the that white flower it was way too much in the center so I'm just going to move things over a little bit to the left and lean the flowers in a little bit. So that's our starting point and here we go. I like to show you my setup. I basically just have a plein air easel with the legs folded in sitting on top of my desk here and a lot of people ask me how is your iPad just sticking up on your board it's really just the cover that I flip over the back. Before we move on to step two would you do me a favor would you go ahead and like this video if you like it and subscribe to my channel leave me a comment I love to hear from you. Now we're moving to step number two which is the under painting a very crucial beginning lay a foundation for pastel painting and impressionism. There are sections that are sped up in the video but you can always slow it down by using the gear icon that's on the lower right of any of my videos on YouTube. I'm again using a Prismacolor new pastel it's spelt in you pastel not any W and these are handy little pastel sticks to use but you could use the charcoal pencil whatever and I'm just getting it in a general sketch of a tree line the horizon line and a basic trail and what I'm doing for this under painting is choosing four values you could use three of beautiful magenta and peachy tones and this is going to create me a value study and roadmap for my painting that also has a very beautiful complementary color to a lot of the greens in the landscape. All of these colors are from the Paul Rubens 96 set that I shared with you and this is a beautiful kind of deep magenta color I'm using it to get in the trail and the trees that are a little bit closer in the foreground and that's it and the next value I'll be using is another pink tone or hue and I'm using it to get my distant trees or my second level of trees the final level of trees further away is even a little bit lighter a pinkish light lighter value and I'm just using some of the middle and the lighter values to layer on top of my field and also a little bit of the light pink in the sky now here is the blending tool I mentioned in the supply list this is just a piece of pipe foam insulation that works great sometimes you can even use a chamois cloth or a paper towel depending on the surface that you're using but as you can see I'm blending and I'm wiping off on a paper towel to clean it between color transitions also notice that I did more tall vertical strokes in the foreground to represent some tall grasses and my strokes become more horizontal as I move into the distance here I'm just blending a little bit of that pink into the sky and in between the trees and some of the pastel does come off when you blend like this but that's okay we're really just trying to get a nice easy soft beginning that has really blocked in some of the values and it acts as a roadmap to get started with your painting now I have my basic three or four values to start and now we'll move on to step three which is called blocking in in this step will be blocking in more color and value in big areas or big shapes here I'm using the beautiful dark purple that's in the Paul Rubens set and I am reinforcing some of these darks the trail and the foreground trees are the darkest elements in the painting notice how loose my strokes are I am not pressing hard and it is not a goal of mine to cover up all of that texture that you're seeing you know you're still seeing a bit of the underpainting showing through that's actually what I want I want these colors to vibrate and interact with each other and it gradually comes together the more you layer now that's a blue that is there's only like two or three pastels I use that aren't in the Paul Rubens set I needed something a little bit darker and that's a darker Terry Ludwig blue there is a black a color in the Paul Rubens set you could even use that I just don't often use black I like to make my own darks kind of by mixing darker colors together now let's get a little bit of earth on top of this ground and I love that the artist Karen Margulis a pastel artist she calls it putting down some dirt and really what you're doing think of it like a garden how you would have to have some dirt or ground to plant your seeds into and it works great for painting too so I've gotten my values a little bit lighter as I go into the distance and I start to layer more in horizontal strokes as things recede into the distance if you can keep the concepts of how value and color temperature behave in a landscape you're going to be so ahead of the game with pastel painting values get lighter as they recede they're not as dark in the distance so that's why I got this really pretty neutral purple gray to use for my second band of trees you can see it's a little lighter than the foreground trees now I'm looking for another color that I can use for these distant trees now you might be thinking why are you using blue trees aren't blue but I noticed in the Paul Rubin set the only greens I have are very highly saturated greens it's just not what I want but you'll see the beauty of layering with this example you'll notice as I layer those blue trees with some other colors they'll get more neutral and will actually give the illusion of distant trees now you can see I'm playing around with some of the colors in the Paul Rubin set I got a few reds that were a little bit more intense in color and now it's time to work on this sky I grabbed a turquoise color that was a little too dark and so I found a pretty blue that's in the set that's kind of a middle to lighter value blue and I'm just kind of scumbling that just means little rapid marks that are kind of sketchy in between some of the tree shapes and at this point I'm not worrying about getting anything perfect now here's where I was saying you can actually sometimes use even your hand or your fingers to blend I play guitar so sanded surfaces don't bother my calloused fingers and I wanted to create a little more softness to this painting sometimes things pastels behave differently on different surfaces and I noticed on this color fix that the Paul Rubins were still leaving me a lot of the underpainting or the surface showing through but at the same time I don't want to over blend I do like the beautiful warm tones kind of glowing and I am wiping my finger off in between changing colors where I'm blending but definitely use a blending tool if you have tender fingers but can you see how that just softened things up we are now in final step number four this is where the magic happens it's where we add color and detail and the painting really comes to life I'm adding just a little more dark to these trees since I softened it a bit this is that blue that was not one of the Paul Rubins and a magenta one of the only other pastels not in the set and in this stage yes we're finally gonna add some green and some grasses and some flowers and I know if you've never painted with pastels or followed my videos you've probably been thinking what is this mess or where's the green but it really does start to make sense as it all comes together now this is a kind of a teal green that was in the Paul Rubins set and as I stated before the greens were very limited so I'm actually creating some of my own colors by this layering process and here's where I was mentioning I layer a little bit of this kind of teal green over that blue that I put down before and it really did neutralize it and give an illusion of distant trees so notice how vibrant this green is in my hand at least but as you can probably see when I apply it to the surface it's losing its vibrancy it's a little more neutralized because I'm layering it over those warm colors now I went with another one of the pretty little neutral greens that's a little lighter in value I'm using vertical strokes here but a little shorter why would you think that it's because I'm moving further into the distance now I've gotten a lighter value green my strokes are becoming more horizontal and that's because things in a landscape flatten out in the distance you don't see individual grasses you see more of a flat field I'm going back to that first green that I used I'm still keeping a very light touch which is very important in pastel painting we're not trying to press hard and cover up the whole underpainting color or surface and I think if you've hung in there with me this far you'll see it's almost like magic that things start to come together at this point now I've got one of the pretty little lighter blues I don't want to paint clouds per se I'm just giving a suggestion of clouds and I'm keeping them kind of moving and just little bands through the sky and also to the little bit of pink that I put down originally is still kind of peeking through that sky that I found a pretty little lavender that I thought would work really well since I have those pink undertones and so I used it was a little bit lighter in value and often there's a little bit of a lighter value down towards the tree line now you might be thinking why are you using this blue in between those two tree shapes it's a little too dark right now but typically in between thick areas like trees where there's a little bit of light coming through you don't want to go with your lightest value it's gonna look very artificial so I got down a little bit of a darker blue and I'm gradually or I did gradually add a little bit of that middle value blue on top and and it starts to really look believable now here's that same kind of artificial looking green but I'm layering very gently over these trees to give this pretty green color that's created because of the mixture of the green with some of the undercolors and same thing here and I'm also in my mind imagining the light is coming from the upper left that's another important point where's the sun in this and now I know that there's gonna be some cooler tones that was such a pretty little kind of neutral greenish teal color that worked great for some of the grasses and distant trees now I'm putting a little bit of this lighter green just on the right side of the trees a little bit more of this lavender in the sky notice my marks are just little gentle soft scumbling marks and I'm working the whole painting I'm not getting over carried away in any one area and a little bit more of this light value kind of carving it down in between the tree line and often when painting trees we create the tree as more of a shape or almost a blob and we carve into the negative spaces of the tree to bring the tree to life and give it form and shape I added just a touch of yellow in the sky and yes now it's finally time to add some flowers notice this taupe neutral color that I just used to put that flower down see how it showed up so nicely in the sky but when I put the same taupe color onto the landscape it doesn't even show up so I knew I needed to switch to a lighter value and that's just something you want to keep in mind when you're painting if you're putting a white flower in a light sky it needs to be a little darker and if you're putting a white flower on a middle or darker value it can be a little lighter that's why that one flower that is in our mind a white flower up in the sky because the sky is so light I had to go just a tad darker for it to show up while our brains tell us when we look at a reference image like the one we're working from our brain says these are white flowers however the color of these white flowers changes based on where they are in nature in real life but in our paintings especially notice me adding a little bit of white right here to that first flight do you see how that white didn't even really show up because the sky is so light behind it but the white shows up on the foreground quite nicely now I'm adding a little bit of this magenta color now this color is not in the Paul Rubin set it's another Terry Ludwig pastel it's a US based pastel company that has wonderful pastels and that is the second pastel I used that is not in this set but as you can see even though some of the colors in this Paul Rubin set weren't the colors I would have initially gone for it you can make them work by layering and putting color and value on top of each other and as you can tell my my style is very impressionistic and soft and painting in these stages that I've demonstrated in this video will give you that more painterly or impressionistic feel to your art added a few distant bands of lighter green to the field to make it feel even further away and now I'm using some of these really neutral brownish tones in the grasses the nice thing about rounded pastels like these Paul Rubins is you can kind of roll the pastel a little bit to get some sketchy marks so I'm just giving some little scumbling grass shapes to this and keeping it very loose you can still see the influence of that darker value trail that I put down originally can you see how that if you squint your eyes you get like this draw into the painting because of that value difference and I'm using now a little bit of a rusty color and it's time to finally start adding some of those yellow flowers remember the Paul Rubin set has a whole row of yellows I thought it was a little overkill but there are some beautiful yellows in the set so I'm using that deeper mustardy color yellow for some of the flowers and then I'll use some of the lighter yellows sprinkled throughout the painting and notice my shapes that I'm making are not I'm not trying to draw a botanically correct flower this is impressionism and I want my flowers to be super suggestive even though you can add just a little texture here and there and I find that with my paintings it really is the last few minutes depending on the painting but typically like the last 15 10 15 minutes of a painting is when it really starts coming to life and it really does have to do with those initial efforts to get in that underpainting of a complementary color and or other colors you can use they don't have to be complementary colors but something that will give some color drama or excitement and then just gradually layering in colors that are going to create this illusion of depth and a three-dimensional feel I've removed the reference image that I had inserted in the footage here because I wanted to zoom in a little bit to show you some of my mark making I want you to notice that when I am painting flowers that are closer they're going to be larger of course and they're going to gradually get smaller as they recede into the distance and they're also going to flatten out more almost becoming like a blanket of yellow laying across the grasses as flowers are very far away and also I'd like you to keep in mind that not all of these flowers are just sitting on top I've created this painting similar to the reference image but really from a vantage point of like getting down low in the grass have you ever done that with your camera we've got some tall grass and flowers and you're on this low vantage point so some of these flowers are more buried in some of the grasses they're not going to be as light in value they're going to be a little more in shadow they're not going to be as detailed and you kind of want them to be a little bit more second fiddle or a supporting actor as I like to say they're not the star of the show the main focal point flowers are going to be the ones that are going to have the most detail most value contrast and and color actually so I'm trying to keep these other yellow flowers just a little bit more subdued and now I'm even adding this pretty little neutral purple purple ish gray color as as a stem of course it worked really nicely there but also to kind of bury some of those foreground flowers now I am making marks that are really punctuated I am pressing hard to really give some focal interest to some of these lighter flowers and that why it actually did show up a little bit more in the sky you know how sometimes I said light values won't show up against a light value of a sky but this was a really nice light color in the Paul Rubin set and so I'm again just kind of sprinkling and adding some flowers that I feel will enhance the composition and I actually liked it when I didn't have so many flowers the reference image has a lot of flowers but I was sort of playing around with this Paul Rubin set and experimenting with all of these different yellows that it has which is nice so a little bit of a interest on a few that are buried but not too many this painting is really coming along I do notice something missing though I need to establish my stems a little bit better these pastels that are long and skinny are the same ones I used to sketch with they're called prismacolor new pastels in you pastel and they are just a great little handy tool for things like stems or linear work and they they really do have a nice thinness about them and they're great for grasses too and I don't want to overwork the grasses but just a few and this is a stage where I know I'm pretty much done but I like to analyze things and see what else might give a little bit of punch to this painting and I could see there were some little dark elements in the reference image so I decided to grab this dark purple that is in the Paul Rubin set isn't that a nice dark purple and I put a little bit of this lighter purple just kind of on the tops of some of those dark elements that I put in there do you see how that just added a richness a depth and a color contrast to things I'm still playing with some of these colors pardon me the painting could really be done at this time but I thought this was such a really nice cool light green in the distance and here is the final I'm just going to zoom in can you still see the influence of that warm under painting underneath it gives the feeling of a glow to the painting if you're new to art or pastel painting I hope and pray that this tutorial gave you a good foundation and you learned a lot I have hundreds of lessons here on YouTube but if you would like a little more you might consider becoming a patron on my Patreon page it's only five dollars a month and what I love is it's a beautiful community of artists learning and growing together and I get to see your work so it's a lot of fun all right everyone god bless and happy painting