Welcome artistic friends to Monet Café! I'm so glad you've joined me today for this pastel painting tutorial. This is a painting that is featuring pan pastels once again and regular soft pastels and I think you're going to love the fact that I created this on unsanded paper. And before we get started I'd love to ask that if you've been enjoying this channel and the hundreds of free lessons please like this video, subscribe to this channel, and you can hit that bell icon to be notified of future videos. Also if you'd like to get access to the full version of this tutorial including extra commentary it's over on my Patreon page. My Patreon family is a wonderful place to grow, learn more about pastel painting, and to support Monet Café so I can keep these free lessons coming to hungry artists all over the world. I recently started doing a subscriber spotlight before starting a video. This one is a comment from Leslie Harvey. She says, I absolutely loved this video. Thank you for sharing. There are so many color theory videos out there but I have yet to see one where we are actually shown some of the combinations in action. Thanks for your comment Leslie. I love to hear that my videos are helping. Alright guys don't forget to comment on the videos. Now let's dive right in and talk about the products. I'm using Kansan XL sand grain unsanded paper. It has a bit of a texture to it and it's kind of deceiving because it's called sand grain but it's not sanded. It's just textured. I like the fact that it's available on Amazon and other retailers but it's a pretty reasonable price. It comes in different colors as well gray, white, natural, and in a couple of sizes. Now I am using the gray color and the size of the pad that I have is approximately 8 by 11 and my final painting will be 8 by 10 and each pad has 40 pages. You may have seen previous tutorials where I used this surface to create a pastel painting directly in the book. I protect it by putting a piece of tracing paper on top of it using some artist tape. I love my limb tape dispenser. It just makes things so easy for grabbing my tape in a hurry and it works great. I take this on trips with me and like I said I paint directly with soft pastels on the pages. Now I experimented recently by taking a set of Rembrandt pastels. Rembrandt pastels are great for travel because they're not super dusty and I literally used them in the passenger seat while my husband was driving. I don't think I'd attempt that with pastels that were too awfully soft. This tutorial will once again be featuring pan pastels which I've been focusing on a little bit this month but don't be frustrated if you don't have any because this can be followed along with regular pastels too. Just do a little bit of blending. By the way I have found that the blending tools that you see to the left there work great with regular pastels as well if you want to use them just to blend things and soften things. Here I'm just choosing the colors that I will use for this painting and if you're a patron of mine you will get my color notes. And the neat thing about pan pastels is when I show you the colors I can literally just flip each of the little pans over and you can see the exact color number. You can't do that with stick pastels. It's not like it's listed on the actual pastel stick and my patrons will have all of the color numbers as downloadable files. Now here's some of the blending tools I use. They have large blenders. The one that I love the most though is this one. It's great for blending backgrounds and these are washable by the way. This one has already been washed. It keeps a little bit of the stain on it. They also have some medium-sized blenders in different shapes that I use sometimes. And I was very happy to learn that these applicators that really feel like you're painting with a paintbrush I was able to use to literally paint the flowers. I know that now I could create an entire painting using pan pastels and some of the tools provided. Now these little applicators have covers to them. That one's empty but here's what was inside. They're the little spongy soft covers they're called in the different shapes to fit the different applicators. Now I'm gonna take an old one off and put on a new one to show you how it works. And by the way these are very affordable. So even though you can kind of clean them off as you're working they last for a while. If they start to get kind of worn or just too saturated with color just go ahead and put a new one on. Again these tips or covers are very affordable. Now I just wiggle it on. I find that they kind of want to roll up underneath themselves so kind of just turning it back and forth like this seems to be the trick. And by the way I will flip it over to use the side that's on the top. In other words when the bottom of it gets kind of dirty you can flip the top over and use that side as well. Now I've got my tools ready. I'm just going to use a little mat that you would use for matting a picture or a photo. And I like these because I know this is an 8 by 10 so I don't have to measure and draw it out. I can just real quickly. And the inside dimension is 5 by 7 so that's a fast and easy way to get those dimensions. Alright got my coffee. It's time to paint. The reference image of this sweet little bee and some flowers is from pmp-art.com. I just used a light pencil for the sketch and it's really pretty simple other than getting some accuracy for the bee. My Patreon version of this lesson does have a little bit more on the sketching process. And what the heck am I doing here? Well you know me if you've watched my channel long. I love to experiment. I had tried a stencil using a stencil with pan pastels years ago when I first got pan pastels and I was doing lots wrong with pan pastels but I really did like the fact that you can, I use just like a stenciling brush here, you can get some pretty neat effects using pan pastels with a stencil. So I thought this was lovely so I thought I'd try to apply it to the background to make it nice and muted. I didn't want it quite so obvious as that first example you just saw. And would I do this again? I don't know maybe but I do end up softening this effect a lot before the painting is finally done. So it just has a very subtle effect. You could do the same thing with just scumbling in some of these different colors in the background with some of the blending tools or using regular stick pastels and just a blending implement to blend them out. But notice it does get a really nice neutral muted soft background. So I did it a little bit all over the whole paper and I could still see my pencil sketch underneath it which was nice. So now I'm using one of the blenders just to kind of soften some of the edges so it doesn't take away too much from the focal point. So this was fun, might be something you want to play with and I will do this technique for future work when it's of a whimsical nature.  And again if you're a patron of mine this is almost real time. I speed it up very slightly but I give commentary through almost the entire painting process. But you still get lots here on Monet Café not to worry. And you can also use the feature on YouTube. There's a little gear icon at the bottom of every video bottom right corner. And if you click that gear icon you can slow down this video or any video. So if you want to follow along you won't have my commentary but you can still slow it down and kind of get a better idea of my strokes, mark making and colors that I'm using. Sorry for that little bit of light that's filtering through my blinds when the sun moves that does go away. So just relax, enjoy this process, enjoy the music and I will be back to give some more information when I start painting the bee and adding some regular soft pastels instead of the pan pastels. All right enjoy I'll be back. Now that I have many of the main flower shapes and it's just about time to focus on the bee. But I wanted to just reiterate a few things that I loved about this these new discoveries. One is working on unsanded paper. It was really great. I loved this Kansan XL paper. Also just the ability to layer the pan pastels and to mix colors.  They are able to be blended and mixed together to create new colors. Now here we go working on the bee. It might be a little hard to see because I'm filming from overhead and my left hand gets in the way a bit. But what I'm doing is using the black pan pastel with one of the small applicators that it looks really like a eye makeup applicator. And I guess you could use those but these pastel blenders from Pan Pastel work so well and they're quite affordable. These small little tools so you might as well get some of those. Now all I'm doing is filling in the areas of the bee that are dark. And you know a bumble bee has those bands of black. So I'm just gently getting in those colors and I'm now adding some of the yellow and orange colors. I realize the bee was a little darker than I first thought. So I used some of that orange and now I'm getting in some of the wings. And the wings were a little bit dark too. But I'm softening it with a little bit of I think it was a taupe or a purply kind of a color. Softening the wings up a bit. I also realized I want my bee to be the focal point. So I start later you'll see I add a little bit of light around the bee. Contrast is a great way to establish a focal point. Now his feet and his antenna are really delicate so you're going to see me later go in with a charcoal pencil to get in kind of the ends of his feet that are very gestural.  Now I'm getting in kind of a little bit of a muted background with some of the cooler greens. I wanted to give a little bit of interest to the background and now I'm going in and working on the bee again. I'm adding a little bit of purple and blue to create a little bit of a highlight on the bee's head and a little bit on his back and then also to some of his wings. Now I'm obviously using stick pastels here you can see and that was another great discovery is that I could get quite a few layers of pan pastel down and still apply stick pastels on an unsanded surface. I mean on a sanded pastel paper that are more expensive you can definitely get lots of layering but what surprised me was just the ability to establish layers with pan pastels and regular pastels like this. I mean I got like I don't know maybe four or five layers on here as I'm layering color on top. If you've watched many of my videos you know with pastel painting and other mediums it's typically best to layer dark values to light. You build up your lights you don't start with your lights so that's why you see me sometimes getting in a darker value first and then layering the light on top like I just did there. I started with the wings dark and then I gradually added some blues and highlights. Now these are some pastels that are absolutely gorgeous and vibrant in color. I just grabbed some because I wanted a little bit more of a bright pink and sometimes with the stick pastel versus a pan pastel you can get a little more a little more punch of color and more texture. So these pastels and the little set to the lower right are Henry Roche I say but I think correctly it's Henri Rocher and they're the most expensive pastels in the world. I just have this teeny little set one of my patrons wanted to see if they were worth the price so she volunteered to pay half for this little set just because she was curious and wanted me to make a video and I gave her a painting in return so we made a nice little trade there and yes they are absolutely fantastic but I can't afford a big set of these I don't know if you guys can but I really do love some of these colors and now I'm sharpening my charcoal pencil I believe this is a dark Derwent charcoal pencil and that's the Mobius and Rupert yeah that was a dark brass pencil sharpener it sharpens pencils pastel pencils so well so again little gestural marks little thin marks for the antenna and because that's how they are they're just so delicate and the same with the little feet I reserved the urge to create all of the feet because I knew the ends taper out and they're just super super delicate and gestural. Here is the final where I've zoomed in and you can see a little more closely how beautiful and soft the pan pastels were on this unsanded surface and how just a touch of the regular pastels really adds that little punch needed for a dramatic focal point I hope you learned lots during this lesson I will have the original available in my Etsy shop for sale as well as prints and products in my Fine Art America shop. Thank you so much for joining me in today's lesson I hope it blessed you and it would bless me if you would consider subscribing to my channel liking this video and if you would like extra content or just to support Monet Cafe consider becoming a patron of mine on my Patreon page. All right artist until next time God bless and happy painting.


Good morning You find people of the internet the finest the best everybody knows it believe me You are the best people on the internet. I Truly believe that I actually have a really good audience that watches me every day And thank you for all your comments down below as well always appreciate reading those I do not always respond to them But I go through them. I read them. I'm down there Just got a lot going on every day and don't always have the time to respond to them all but when I do have the time I try to get down there and respond to as many as I can so thank you for being involved And thank you for sharing the videos if you like them Hey chances are your friends and family might like them to share it out on your Facebook Twitter, whatever you like I don't like Twitter at all. I think Twitter is a garbage platform, but if you're on Twitter and you like it Go for it. I do have a Twitter account links to all my social media down below in the description of every Video, uh, I don't spend a lot of time on Twitter. I'll let you know that now What a garbage place that that platform is But enough about that Facebook isn't always the best either. I really think that social media is tearing our society apart and our ability to communicate with each other face-to-face because Even I am very reluctant to talk to people on the phone already Because I can just message them on social media or text them Very rarely do I call and sometimes I'm like when people call me. I'm like, why are you calling me? You could have just texted me and then later on I think to myself. Oh, no, I'm falling for the trap as well I'm falling for the same thing Social media is reducing our ability to communicate with each other And Twitter is just a garbage place. Have I told you that already? Where people who don't make any sense go to hang out and discuss Matters that don't make sense within their own little bubbles and echo chambers And then they believe the whole world is like that because everybody on Twitter thinks like them So the whole world must think like them. No, that's just the people on Twitter. That's not representative of the world I Got a beef with them All right, let's get moving there. Let's get out of here. Let's stop talking with this stuff makes me angry. I Want to be happy Social media isn't bad all bad I mean social media has gotten me in touch with you find people as well, right? And that's the only way you and I can really connect So social media is not all bad. Twitter is not all bad. I like Facebook a little bit better And it's not all bad either. It's just Don't let it control your life, you know still call people Even if you're like me and really don't feel like talking on the phone I am not a phone person at all. I have friends who like to talk on the phone for hours and hours about nothing And I can't understand that I Don't like talking on the phone about nothing for hours I mean I call somebody for a purpose and a reason and When I call them I go through the regular pleasantries like hey, how's it going? How's your day? How's this? How's that? That's good All right, here's the point All right, I said my point. I got my answer. We'll talk to you later. Take care. Click hang up That's me on the phone Maybe I do need to learn to be a little bit more social with people this I Can be very antisocial myself. I can I can easily easily spend weeks and months Just me like before I was married Just me and be totally fine Just talk to the people I have to or even talk to my family every now and then here and there Few people here for the most part just hanging out with myself I'd go home hang out with myself come into the truck work by myself and deliver my freight by myself Go back home by myself hang out again by myself And I'm happy doing that. I'm totally happy But it's always good to have friends and it's always good to socialize even if you don't feel like it That's my morning Sometimes in the morning my brain works a little bit differently and I start thinking a little bit more deeply about life Let's just get on the road this is I'm getting too deep here So from whitewoods to scatch one here. We have four and a half hours back to our yard approximately then Couple hours after that we'll be home And I did want to stop at the gym yet today I wonder if I can go tomorrow. What's tomorrow Saturday? No tomorrow. I won't have any time because we'll be doing our donation run tomorrow They got to go today She's giving her look at this Almost as fast as I can Pretty much identical speeds Looks like a whole Train of cars. I can't tell if there's anything in there or not if they're in or if they're empty train cars But they usually put cars like automobile cars and trucks in these trailers Inside this guy for about a half hour already trains out in Canada are pretty long. I've heard Apparently people from Europe have never seen such long trains before It's common for a train to be Well, I don't want to say for sure. I'm gonna say like a half mile to a mile long. I Don't know much about trains so How about those of you who do know how long our trains are here in Canada the average train or the longest ones Let everybody know down below in the comments section All I know is that they're really long and waiting for them at an intersection sometimes take a while This is the fastest way to move stuff across the country because I'm just pulling one load behind me.  That's Inconvenient when I use higher me. I'll bring it right to you personalized shipment, you know what I mean Still not really catching up with this guy. We're slowly gaining on him I'm coming up to a small town here. I got to go around the north side of the town And he's gonna go right through past the south side of the town Guess we'll see where we're at. We're on the other side Got past the section of automobile train cars now We're at a little further up the train where they got all these containers Who knows where these containers have been they it's sort of like dollar bills. You never quite know Where they've been I want to know But here they are passing through the prairies On their way east This train will go into Winnipeg and probably you drop off some train car drop off the trailers Pick up some other ones and continue east. Maybe I don't know No idea. Maybe it's going all the way to Toronto. Maybe it's going all the way to the East Coast in Nova Scotia I don't think I'll go all the way to Nova Scotia That'd be a long way for a train to go if these containers are going overseas towards the east What they'll do is they'll bring them to Either Thunder Bay and take them across the Great Lakes through the canals up to St. Lawrence Or they'll take it to Toronto area maybe Quebec City and It'll be put on a ship from there and brought up St. Lawrence and out into the Atlantic from there I think Don't quote me on that, but I mean that's What I would assume would be the easiest route when we got ourselves a Grain bin, I don't know the bottom of a grain bin. Would that be a grain hopper? That's what the bottom of grain bin is I'll be in front of us here. That's a wide load. That'd be fun to pull Okay, I think they're signaling me to come past if they don't want me to pass this Follow vehicle will block me He's not telling me to stop not signaling me not to pass so I'm gonna give her He's on the radio with that truck in front of him with the wide load So that truck knows I'm coming. He can see me with his mirror though I'm gonna try to squeak past you here, buddy. Oh, yeah, he's moving over for me. There we go I'm gonna get on to the shoulder here a little bit give him a little bit extra room Give him a wave Thanks, but that's why they have paved shoulders or one of the reasons another reason why you shouldn't park on the paved shoulder, all right Imagine if there was a car parked on the shoulder on either side there And it was around a bend and neither of us saw it until we were around the corner And we were already side by side And then there was someone parked on the side of the road there, you know checking the map Or checking their phone on a phone call, you know, if you want to pull off the highway That's cool. You should pull off the highway to use your phone or check the map I Would just say pull completely off the road all together like find another road to get off the actual I don't just park on the shoulder I think in the u.s. And in Canada on an actual freeway like this isn't a freeway. It's just a highway. It's the trans canada But it is actually illegal to park for no reason on the shoulder It's dangerous You could die So Coming up ahead here. There's like a little road little sideward turning off as a truck waiting there for the train You can just pull off onto one of those roads or even into the median here there's a Road that goes right through the through the trans canada here Just get your vehicle completely off the road and the shoulder And you don't have to worry about getting struck by traffic. I think right where that truck is there That'd be good You guys get what I mean though, right? It bothers me when I see people just parked for no reason on the shoulder of the highway I'm always scared. They're gonna get just smucked Oh, we made it here in Winnipeg just west of the city But one last fuel up let's see if their def pumps work today. It seems to be a little bit warmer today It's about minus 13 See if any of their pumps actually work It's all blocked off I think this first one over here is open There we go. We'll see if the def pumps are still frozen probably I'd like to fuel that up too if I can but I might have to go to petrol pass for that There's no sign saying that there's no def but it may just not work Drop my trailer off Gotta take this truck to the shop on Monday. So gotta keep it close by I remember when I went to Ontario to pick up that wide load And I didn't have the right permits and they told me not to assume A little ticked off and I was like, what do you mean? Don't assume. Don't assume. I have the permits Uh, that was my friend in the office there. I went and talked to him today. We're joking around about it Yo, what's the mistake of my boy? I should have Should have known I should have asked, you know, I make a mistake once usually I always promise to try to do my best. I will always do my best job And everything I do I will do it to my best ability But I can promise you one thing I promise you I'll make some mistakes But at the same time after I make a mistake once I'll learn from it and I won't do it again So this last time I went into Ontario I almost Got into a snag without a permit for the load and I might have had to wait there or You know backtrack find a different lesser paying mode, but we were able to make it happen Next time I go there though, we talked about it today. Next time I go, I'll know And I won't make that mistake again Everything worked out this this time, but you know, it could have been that everybody lost out because I assumed And they assumed Everybody assumed I guess that's my little lesson for you guys today Do your best and everything you do whatever kind of work it is that you do your absolute best job, but Also realize that you're gonna make mistakes I make mistakes all the time. I shouldn't say all the time. I make mistakes More often than I'd like one mistake is one more mistake than I'd like to make But when you do make a mistake make sure you learn from it even for you kids in school You know, I made tons of mistakes when I was young I Tons of mistakes I've told you before I had a heavy foot. I played way too many need for speed xbox games And I got my license and Then I got a few speeding tickets back then Those are all off my off my record now and uh, they were more than what 15 years ago now But I haven't gotten one since then Because I learned my lesson I made a mistake I paid for it And I didn't do it again That's the biggest thing you can take away from anything in life Don't get down on yourself because you do screw up Take yourself back up do better next time I'm taking this truck right to the gym. We're going we're arriving to the gym in style. I'm bob tailings I have no trailer behind me but I'm gonna swing by there before going home. Otherwise I got to go all the way home Get all comfy and then go all the way back into town go to the gym just to go all the way back home again I won't be in there long probably just an hour or so I should still be home before supper Probably just before supper Just in time for the good stuff, right? I'm hungry I don't know about you guys, but when I leave the gym, I'm starving every time I just realized something About 3 30 right now and I think the gym is probably about to get very busy as everyone goes there after work Hopefully I get in there before they all do I don't mind if there's people in there. It's just if all the machines are being used then I'll just go another time when it's not as busy. We'll see we'll see what happens Hopefully they'll have parking there for me. Oh, yeah, my spot's still open there. Okay, good I should be able to fit in there. Actually, I could probably even park in the back there One second here Whoa Yeah, I'm gonna go park over here that I'm out of the way for everybody beautiful I'm gonna turn around and back right in here where I'm facing not too much space in here yet Looks like someone drove right over this hill here. It must have been the tractor This is the gym here in front of me. You see it's two stories tall No other stunt fitness that I've been to around the country yet or the us have been this nice and this big Actually, well the one that I was at in Edmonton. I mean, yeah Edmonton there wasn't too bad It wasn't quite as nice, but there was two levels there There we go Aren't they'll be out of the way? No one's got to worry about the big truck taking up all the space The girl dancing in the cold she's got her headphones on she's just going Little Caesar's advertising As you notice the people are watching and she goes crazy here Britt always starts dancing with her in her car when she's here Everybody go buy pizza little Caesars. They actually got pretty good pizza And they dance for you too. So you have to buy it Seeing other people having fun like that just makes me smile Time to go home. No, I had a good workout. I'm pretty tired now and I'm hungry I wonder what we're gonna have for supper. Maybe I can make Britt something Chevy did you miss me? diesel everybody missed you And everybody not me You didn't miss me at all. No, I didn't miss him because I got to keep him. I missed you though Everybody missed me except my wife She was fine I missed you So check this out Oh, look at it in the light. It's even better.  Just this once though. Yes, because I was a good boy. That's right All right my food her food TV Well, we're not going to watch the umbrella academy though. We're going to watch a movie movie Yeah Something about king kong or a gazira gazira No Kong skull island. I think came out cool Also, they have strangers Let's do something slightly less gory as there's a skull in the background He looks angry. Let's do it. I'm scared Chevy, what are you doing? He's hungry. I got hungry