First question is from Alex Ewan. From your experience, how much muscle could an average genetics beginner put on in a year, assuming they're following a MAPS program? Really good question. Way more than other programs. Great commercial for MAPS. No, no, okay, so if, okay. Good programming. Low end, 40, high end, 60 pounds, somewhere on there. Wow. Jesus. Not true. That's a bold statement. Okay, so let's say you got a good workout program, so it's appropriate for your body. It's geared towards building muscle. You got good sleep, good diet, average genetics. I would say it's probably realistic in terms of lean body mass in the first year for a man to probably gain anywhere between, I don't know, 10 to 15 pounds of lean body mass in the first year. I think about that. All things being equal. I think that's, do you guys, what do you guys think? I think that's sort of, if you're talking about a brand new beginner, I think that's very realistic. I think you could see even higher numbers that. I mean, professional bodybuilders would say that they could add 10 pounds of muscle in a year. That's like amazing. But they're already so big. Right. Yeah. Well, and they've also been training for a long, long time and taking everything already in their son. But when you're new, boy, it kind of, it comes on pretty quick. So, you know. And that's lean muscle. That's not just overall mass, which I think a lot of people get, they lump all that in together in terms of what they've gained. So yeah, we're talking just the lean muscle. Yeah. I would say 10 to 15. 10 is pretty reasonable. 10 to 15 in about a year, the first year with everything being good. For women, it's probably more like, I don't know, 48, probably roughly half. And then each year after that, you'll probably slow down in terms of your gains. Now, here's the thing, okay? All things being equal, boy, is there a wide variance in genetics. So I've, I know people that have gained 30 pounds of lean body mass their first year of training. And these are just genetic freaks. Freaks, yeah. And then I know other people where it's like five, and he got, you know, men, where it's like four pounds of lean body mass in a year in that first year is really, really challenging. So it can really make a big difference. Well, I think the most, the, the, the stuff that I've read is between a half a pound to a pound, like on the good end, right? On the high end, a half a pound to a pound of muscle a week. If everything is dialed in a week, yeah. Oh my God, that would be, that's two pounds a month, two to four pounds a month. That's what you just said. 48 would be primo for 56 weeks, but the reality of that's not. Yeah, maybe initially, right? Yeah, yeah. Right. So, and that's, I mean, again, that's the high end of what someone could potentially anticipate. Well, I think there's also that novel sort of window. If you're a beginner, right? You get those sort of new gains for the first few weeks for the first few months and you can kind of like, you know, get a real good jump start. It's all relative to your actual size already too. So someone who is a 200 pound man could gain 20 pounds and it's not that big of a deal. That's 10% right? Yeah, exactly. A guy who's 120 pounds, a total different story. So I mean, it depends on the size, depends on the genetic. So there is a wide variance here, but you could put on a decent amount of muscle and I know as a young lifter, I know there was at least a year there where I had a good 10 to 15 pound, you know, gain in a year. What was your best year? Probably something like that. Yeah, me too. Probably something 10 to 15 pounds. My best year was. I was on anabolic. Right? So like obviously I've had bigger jumps when I was on steroids, but naturally probably 10 to 15 pounds. Mine was when I was 16 and I'd gained like over the summer I gained about on the scale 14 pounds. I don't know if I'm sure it wasn't all lean body mass, but that was over a summer as a 16 year old. Okay. I got stretch marks in my legs and in my armpits, but it's genetics play a big role. And also when you're a beginner, the muscle gains kind of look like this. It's almost like a bell curve. At first your strength goes up quite quickly, but you don't gain muscle very quickly. And that's from central nervous system adaptation and you're learning the exercises. Yeah. You're learning how to do them properly. So you're not really able to maximize the benefit you get from them. So it starts off from a muscle gain perspective a bit slow and then it ramps up, then it kind of peaks and then it starts to slow down again. So it's like if I got a new client that was otherwise healthy, you know, you know, in an, you know, let's say the age range of 20 to 40 and they're doing everything right. It's usually after the second month that we would start to see the muscle gains really start to come on, you know? Well, don't you think though too, like they hit that inevitable sort of tapering off and plateau because they're not thinking ahead in terms of changing the stimulus up and, and, you know, the programming and addressing that, I think a lot of times that you just feel like you're making all this progress and you stay within that same sort of protocol. Whereas this is something that we really were intentionally drying up with the maps programs. Yeah, I read another article that said that the average man over the course of a long period of time with good training, good diet, what could gain naturally roughly 20 pounds of lean body mass above their, what their body would normally carry. Yeah. So that was the number that I read.  I mean, this would be an awesome commercial for us. I mean, I'd love to have somebody who's like, owns like four or five programs, right? Cause that's what it would take to get all the way through a year and, and changes up the stimulus every three months, right? New program stays tight on their diet and is a new lifter and then reports back, right?  And then test the end of the year. It'd be really interesting to see what that would be. I'd love to lean muscle, uh, yeah, sort of complicated. Yeah, I think, I think 10 to 15 is, uh, very, very likely. I think it's, you'll see some, I think it's realistic. It's realistic. Yes. That's the reality. Likely is, is hard because how many people, beginners, you know, for a year, okay? Yeah, but we're, we're assuming that we're assuming they are doing a calorie increase, right? We're assuming as they start to build, they slowly continue to increase calories, right? They're, well, they're following maps, right? They're following maps all the way through for an entire year, adequate recovery, yeah, they're, well, which it's built into the programming, right? So they're following maps perfectly for a whole entire year. They are eating accordingly, meaning that as they gain muscle, they're continuing to scale the chloric intake up from where it was before, and they do that consistently for an entire year. I think 10 to 15 is more than realistic. I think you should expect that, uh, for if you're doing all things, right? I would love to see, yeah, somebody squeeze that even further, like, see how far you go. Oh, I had someone, I had some, I mean, I got DM'd. I got DM'd all the time. I had a guy who gained 20, you know, and he's probably up a little bit better on the genetic standpoint. He was young, he was in his 20s, but he gained 20 pounds of, I think almost all lean body mass, his body fat percentage in fact stayed the same. I think he only gained a couple pounds of body fat with that. So I've, I've seen it, um, from some of our people, you know, it's funny is the longevity effects, uh, that they're measuring from muscle or really coming from the strength. So it's the strength increases that they've connected to longevity, not necessarily muscle, but strength is a great way to correlate to muscle. So just a side note. Hey, if you enjoyed that clip, you can find the full episode here, or you can find other clips over here and be sure to subscribe.


a little bit of knowledge can be dangerous. So what happens is lay people, they learn a few things, a few points, right, here and there are a few arguments, maybe from watching some YouTube videos or something, they think that they can now, substantively, like academically argue for a certain theological position. But by doing so, they actually cause more confusion, more animosity, and ultimately more division. So if they keep doing that, we have to question, why are you doing this? Is it for nuts or is it for hot?


Welcome to Monet Café. I'm artist Susan Jenkins, and I'm happy to bring you this pastel painting tutorial of these lovely yellow flowers. And I'm going to share with you how to rescue a painting on unsanded paper. So have you ever been here where you're just getting too much texture on an unsanded surface? Well, I'm going to show you how you can get results of more color and layering by a simple little technique. The surface I'll be working on is Rembrandt pastel paper. It's the light colors pad. And this is an unsanded paper, meaning it doesn't have the little sand or the little grit on it that helps you to get more layering. But it's got kind of a bumpy texture to it on both sides, I noticed. But it is affordable and a lot less than some of the expensive sanded surfaces. So I got this pad as part of a set that came from Dick Blick. I got it on a Cyber Monday sale. And the set was these neat little micro sets of pastels made by Rembrandt in little color families. I'm going to show you some awesome fun things you can do with these. I'm going to be featuring these in the next few videos. Now, these two are also very affordable. And I don't know if this set is going to be the special set with the free pad of paper is going to be available for long. But they do sell the individual micro sets on Dick Blick and on Amazon. So not to worry, you can still buy them. I think they're like $8 each. So that's what's in store. And right now I'd really appreciate it. If you would like this video, subscribe to this channel and also hit the little bell icon. That means you'll get notified of my future videos. Also, if you would like to become a patron of mine, there is extra content when you become a patron and you help to support this channel for only $5 a month. My patrons are awesome. So here we go. Here's my pad of Rembrandt pastel paper. And I chose the paper color that was kind of gray. You can see my little micro sets behind me along with my reference image. That is from unsplash.com. I will provide the reference image link in the description of this video. Now I was examining this paper and there are some pastel papers. I think it's the Canson Métince unsanded paper that has one side is a little more bumpy and one side is a little more smooth. This one seemed to have texture on both sides. So I just picked a side and started painting. Here I'm just using a long piece of vine charcoal. Another similar charcoal to this is Willow charcoal. It's kind of the same thing. One's a little darker, I believe, than the other. But the reason I like these long sticks is it helps to keep the gesture and the energy in your strokes rather than cinching up real tightly on a pencil. It almost always makes your work feel a little bit tight and not as organic. And the theme this month in our Monet Cafe art group and for my patrons on my Patreon page is Loosen Up. We want to loosen up in 2022 and have work that is fresh and free. So we're already having fun in the group and I wanted to keep this one very loose and painterly as well. I lean towards that anyway but I'm trying to get even more loose and have a lot of movement and energy in these next few pieces I'll be sharing. Now all I did was get a few flower heads in, a general idea of some of the tree shapes in the background, and a little bit of an angle to the motion of how the flowers are cascading into the distance. And this pastel I'm using right now is not one from the microsets. I don't use these exclusively for this painting, I'm just kind of introducing them. And I'm going to share some of the reasoning why sometimes you have to go with a softer pastel with certain papers. But that pastel that I just used was the Eggplant color by Terry Ludwig. It's really a nice soft pastel. They're normally large and rectangular, but I'd use that color so much I've worn it down a little bit. What I'm doing now, when you're working on an unsanded surface, you can use a little blending tool that is actually just a little piece of chamois or chamois. It's like I think it's a French word. But this is a great little blending tool. It doesn't work as great on sanded surfaces such as UART or Fisher 400 grit paper and Sennelier pastel card is a little too gritty for this. But it does work great on unsanded papers. It also works pretty good on pastel matte if you're familiar with that pastel surface. And I'm reinforcing it now. It's kind of the same color, but I think it's the same one. It looks almost black here, but it's really a dark, dark purple. And don't get frustrated if you're a beginner artist and you start working on one of these unsanded surfaces. That's one of the points of this video is I got so frustrated because I didn't know really any difference between sanded or unsanded paper and I bought from a little craft store like a Michaels or a Jo-Ann's, a pad of what's called pastel paper. And it is a pastel paper, but it doesn't give you the layering ability or the brilliance and color as many of the more expensive sanded surfaces. So that's why I'm stressing in this video that I'm going to give you an easy little way that you can create a more desirable surface that's going to give you more layering and more color and take away that really bumpy texture look. You can see it right here, right? Now, why would I be putting this kind of orange color down for flowers that I know are going to be yellow? Well, with pastel painting, we typically put down a darker value first before we lay our lighter value on top, otherwise it has nothing to contrast. It would look very flat and the color would not show up the same. So I often go with a value that just means the lightness or darkness of a color that's darker than the final color. Now, these are the little pink flowers that are in it. Now, these are the Rembrandt microsets I've been using. The first one, the orange one was from the set. Well, let me just go ahead and put a picture in here of the color names of each set. The orange one was from the Burnt Sienna set and the one I was using for the pink flowers is from the Rose Violet set. Now, if you go to find these individually, they have more than just these eight sets. So this little image will help you to know which ones I'm using even though I use other pastels in this painting. I do have a lesson coming within a week or so where I use only these colors except for maybe a few darks with some paintings. And if you're a patron of mine in your Patreon post of this video, you will be getting that image as a downloadable image and an image I took with all of the actual individual color numbers. And this is where I had the afterthought to actually hold up the colors. And now I'm going to this color that's in the teal family. And I would say this is the darkest dark of all eight sets. Now, let me talk a little bit about why darks are important. Now, you can do a painting. It's called a high key painting where you don't have a lot of dark values.  But they make a great base, as I was saying before, to layer your other values on top of. You can see in those distant trees back there, it is mostly dark. I mean, it looks almost black, but there are some highlights on it, some more lush greens, deeper greens, and then some lighter greens highlighting on the trees that are kind of to the upper left. And now I'm getting some of that dark in in the foreground. If you squint your eyes and look at the reference image, there's a lot of dark in that foreground, especially the lower right. Now I'm grabbing one of the lighter greens, like I mentioned about some of the greens that you're seeing in those trees. They're usually more on the top branches and usually more on one side than another based on your light source. And now I'm scumbling some of this in. And I'm already knowing at this point that I thought, I'm not really sure how much layering I'm going to get on this unsanded surface. I wasn't loving the texture, even though sometimes I like texture. It was a little bit too consistent and a little bit too, I don't know, uniform and just bump, bump, bump, bump everywhere. Now in my upcoming videos, I actually take, I think it's about five or six different surfaces. Three of them were unsanded surfaces and three of them were sanded surfaces. You guys are going to love this video, lots of great info in it. But of the unsanded surfaces, I used some drawing paper that I've really had great results, totally unsanded, great results with pastels, but it's not as bumpy as this. And I used some black Canson paper and got great results on that as well. So I would say I'm not a fan of this bumpy side of some of the papers. I do have a little duckling tutorial here on Monet Café, where I believe I used the Canson Métants pastel paper. It's very similar to this, but it has one side that's a little bit more smooth than this is. And I probably need to flip one of these pages over and just see if it does behave differently from just a visual inspection. It looked similar on both sides. So I don't want to be unfair to Rembrandt pastel paper. But as I said in this video, I've got a little technique you'll see soon on what you can do to get not only more layering, but more vibrancy of color. Now why is layering important? You're watching me do it right now. That's how I put down the orange. Then I put down a little bit of a, it was more of a burnt sienna. Then I put down an orange and then I put down a yellow. And layering allows for the colors to interact with each other. And an unsanded surface, when it doesn't allow for much layering, the pastel literally will just fall off as you go to add another color on top. Whereas the sanded surfaces literally like hardware store sandpaper, professional sanded papers are better quality. They're archival means they're not going to yellow over time. But it's the same concept. It's a sanded surface. The sandiness allows for the pastels to adhere and multiple layers can be added to the tops. So that is just the beautiful benefit of sanded surfaces. And I'm having a hard time with it already, I can tell with this painting. I'm getting some layering. I could tell with the flowers, but I've kind of reached my max at about three or four layers. And what happens when you start adding multiple layers of pastels on a surface that doesn't receive it well, it becomes muddied looking. The color doesn't look as fresh or like I said, it'll just kind of fall off. Sometimes it will become kind of slick and you literally can't even add another layer to it. Now you can obviously tell that I have sped this up because I wanted to kind of get through this portion showing how the texture can be a little frustrating. Now you can use my technique here.  So you can go ahead and get in your basic painting or you can do an under painting of just a beautiful color. I'll show you all this in my next video where I do it on all these different surfaces. I do multiple different techniques. You'll learn a whole lot and you'll find what works for you. All right, so I got my basic idea in and I'm not happy at this point. I'm not getting the results I want. So what is this can I'm holding up here? This is Blair Fixative. It's called Low Odor Fixative and I would never do what I'm doing right now with the end of a painting because you can see it visibly darkens the image. Fixatives are used to kind of set the pastel so they don't blend as much or they don't fall off the paper.  I learned this technique years ago. I saw Karen Margulis doing this technique and I was like, wow, that really does help. A lot of times you want to darken the foreground anyway. You can get it just a little bit of a value darker and you need to add a little bit more layers to your foreground grasses so you can just spray it at the bottom during your working process of your painting. But I almost never spray it all over like I did here. So why did I do that? I wanted to see if the little bit of texture, the fixative adds would be enough for me to get a decent amount of more layers on this. And while I found I could get some on it, you're still seeing that texture, right? You still see all the bumps. So I was like, oh boy, now what am I going to do? And I continued to work on it a little bit and you'll see in a minute how I was able to get some more layering, especially you see where I added the dark in the foreground grasses there. I'm able to come back in just a minute. I'll jump forward so you can see it and add some of the lighter grasses on top. So the fixative did allow for a few additional layers and it's starting to lose a little bit of that bumpiness or the texture of the pattern. Basically a pattern is what you're seeing showing through. So I thought, all right, I have a new strategy. I'm going back to my little chamois cloth and I am going to blend again to get some of that texture removed or the pattern removed or softened, I should say. And you can see that's already doing it. And so that was my next strategy before I tried my final technique that worked quite well. Oh, and I did go back and add some more darks to that tree line in the back. I felt like it needed more contrast and I thought, well, why not? I'm going to go ahead and put this down because of my idea that you're going to see me do in just a minute. All right, here we go with my technique that worked the best. I know I talk about this product a lot. It really is one of the most affordable and easy and efficient ways to turn an unsanded surface into a surface that has some grit. Now, because I already had pastel on this, it will kind of run and bleed a little bit with the color, but I am not that worried about it. I'm being a little bit careful, but I like the idea that I'm going to get a really soft, impressionistic underpainting to be able to add my layers to. Now, that's why I said originally, if you're going to use this technique, just block in your big shapes and your big values before you add the clear gesso. And again, this stuff is not that expensive. Let me pop over here to my Amazon store where I can show you some of these products. I have my Amazon shop link in every video. And if you scroll down, you'll see these little sections, like little folders I have. And one's called do-it-yourself pastel surfaces. In that section, I have a lot of products I like to use for making my own pastel surface. I have a video on eight different ways where you can make your own pastel surface. But this clear gesso is in that grouping. And once again, it's clear gesso, not white gesso, because it has the grit in it. And here you can see I'm clicking on some of the different sizes. They do have a four ounce size, but it's not very cost effective. It's the most per ounce. The best sizes look like it's going to be the eight ounce. That's $1.80 an ounce. The 32 ounce is your best bang for your buck. But the 16 ounce also isn't too bad. It's $1.66 an ounce. So it does last you a long time. You don't have to get that big of a bottle. But anyway, it's good stuff. I also want to come back to my Amazon shop just to show you a little bit more about the pastel papers. I'm going to click this section here. Pastel papers and more. And the papers that I had used previously, I'd never used the Rembrandt before, like I'm using in this video. But it was these Canson Métons. It's called, it's a French word. I used to butcher these words. I think I called it Métientes. I thought it was Spanish. But these are papers that are similar to the Rembrandt papers. Now I will let you know that if you apply clear gesso to these, they'll work equally as well as the Rembrandt paper. But they will curl. The paper is a little thin. So when you get finished with a painting, if you apply the clear gesso to this surface or the Rembrandt, then make sure at the end you put it between some tracing paper, put it in a large book or underneath something heavy to keep it flattened out. And it usually will kind of keep it shape. But I also have another trick I do, a technique I do where I can mount the painting after it's completed to a board. I have that video. And by the way, if you ever want to find anything on this channel, go to YouTube, type in Monet Café at the top and then something close. Monet Café mounting. And you'll find my mounting video. Monet Café, make your own pastel surface. And I have playlist as well. So you can usually find all that kind of stuff. So just keep that in mind. It does curl a bit after applying this. So at the end, flatten it out by putting it in between some books or something heavy. So let's start painting again. And so what do I think is going to happen at this point? I didn't know. Half my life with art is experimentation. I really love experimenting and trying new products and seeing what works and what doesn't work. But I'm really hoping it's going to give me more layering, more brilliant color. And also to give me that final effect of what I think is a beautiful pastel painting without that patterned look. Of the texture there. And I believe it or not, I'm adding more dark. And I just wanted to get it down to have a little bit of dark just in the areas that are the darkest in the reference image. I use my little chamois cloth again. And I have high hopes that I'm going to be able to get some layering down that looks more like a pastel painting application. And I wasn't even sure. It looked a little bit like a muddy mess at this point. But I thought I am not going to give up. I'm going to keep trying. And my goal sometimes in sharing these things is to help you guys to not make mistakes and not get frustrated because my story, I tell it often about how Monet Café started, I almost quit pastel painting. I got so frustrated. I started working on unsanded papers with some very poor quality pastels that I got at a little art supply store. I think it was a brand. I'm not cutting down this brand. But it was Reeves, R-E-E-V-E-S. And it was just a lot of binder and not a lot of pigment. So you didn't get a lot of color and also not a lot of layering. So it was quite frustrated. And I had a hard time getting information. This was back before YouTube or if they had YouTube, I didn't know about it. And so I just muddled my way through. I'm a very determined soul. So I was like, I'm not going to quit. I really wanted pastels to work for me because they are so user-friendly and family-friendly. If you've got little ones at home, you don't have to mix up a lot of paint with chemicals and things. And I always say your pastels will wait patiently for you until you return. Often I had to try to start some kind of painting. I waited until my kids were a little bigger. But I would get pulled away, taking one to football practice, one to guitar lessons, and making dinner and everything. And I can't even imagine if I was trying to do oil painting. Now watercolor painting is a little easier because you don't have to worry about your brushes drying with the oil paint or acrylic paint in it. But pastels are really just such a great medium. Plus I love holding the color in my hand. I just think it's so cool. So that's one of the reasons I like to share these things. Even if it's a phase that I'm like, oh man, I'm frustrated or whatever. It's to help you guys from making mistakes and to help you realize that even if you do make some of these, I'll call them, have a challenge, not really making a mistake, you can find a fix. And I have to say my patrons are really great at this. I love how everyone shares their pastel painting explorations and experiments. And we all learn from each other. I just learned something from one of my patrons, one of my long-time patrons, Andrea. She's so sweet and so helpful. From her the other day of something I'm going to try. So it's really neat to learn and grow together. That's one of the whole concepts of Monet Café. And thank you, Lord, that it's become more than I ever thought. And God bless everyone. And it's not just my patrons that I communicate with. I love it when you guys leave me comments. I love to try to get to all your comments. And sometimes I can't, but I'm trying real hard. And here I just held up some of the greens from the micro set with a few other greens that I tried. This is that kind of that lighter green in the micro set. And these are all just a little bit too light right now. I may add some of these towards the end, but I like working my values kind of from dark to light. Now, this is a nice, I believe this was a perhaps a Sennelier pastel. They're softer, have more color. But notice I am indeed getting more layering down. And I think you'll start to notice as I apply more layers the colors are more vibrant. Especially when I get to the flowers. And I noticed I actually didn't have a lot of pastel application even before adding the clear gesso to that middle ground area. So I was still seeing quite a bit of the pattern underneath that. So I did go back and resort to my blending tool just to soften the grasses. And I don't often blend as much as I have in this particular painting. Actually, I hardly ever do. I usually just only blend an initial layer. But this was to get rid of the pattern. So that was my strategy for working on this paper. Now another reason I wanted to share this is a lot of us may have some of this paper laying around that you may have tried an initial painting on it and gotten frustrated with it. So this is a workaround. Now you can already start to see that it's starting to lose that consistent pattern throughout. And you know, looking back at this video, I've been creating so many paintings lately. Sometimes I lose track of what I've used. And so I'm literally remembering as I'm watching the video replay. But I really did use primarily the microsets. This one is another green that I'm using. It's a softer pastel. Rembrandts are actually known for being kind of a medium medium. I would say they're not super hard and they're not super soft. But medium and harder pastels have their advantages. New pastels. I use those a lot. Prismacolor new pastels, they're harder and they have their advantages just like Rembrandts. But sometimes you can't get the really vibrant color because they have a little bit more binder to color ratio. So but you can see here I'm using another one of the microsets, one of the Rembrandts and I do at the very end, add some sceneliers for the pink flowers and also like you saw me use the dark. But mostly it's been the Rembrandt microsets. So I'm going to be talking the next few videos about some budget friendly pastels you can get which are Rembrandts and just a few other pastels that will really make a difference for you. Because I know a lot of you guys are probably like I was when I started. I was you know really when I started it was kind of right about the time I became a single mom and I didn't really have a lot of time to paint and I certainly didn't have a lot of money. But painting was like I always say to you guys it was therapeutic for me. I just needed something to escape to if I could just sneak in a moment here or there. And so it was frustrating not knowing what to buy and not being able to afford things. So that's why I want to be able to help you guys. You can get so frustrated not having the budget to buy the things you need. So I hope my lessons can help others not give up like I almost did. Now pretty much the time I've been talking here my painting I've been kind of reestablishing things and you're about to see pretty soon how it's going to come to life with the lighter values. This is once again one of the Rembrandt pastels from the micro sets and pretty soon these are this is kind of like a golden color from that yellowy set. And what I'm doing is I'm reducing the size of the flower heads as they go into the distance. Also as things go into the distance they change how far apart they are. They start to become more horizontal rather than so spacious in the foreground. Also I like to try I wish I'd have done a little more in this painting to vary the direction of the heads. You don't want the flower heads all facing the same direction. I'm also I didn't love how I guess these are kind of like dandelions. I didn't love how I had the lines so precise and so I'm softening those a little bit and now I'm coming back in just a bit is this it not yet I'm going to come back with the even lighter yellow. Yes see that now I want to reserve this not have it on every flower and we can control our focal point by various little strategies one is color of course your most vibrant color our eyes are going to go to. One is contrast the different lightness or darkness of things and if you have something really dark next to something really light our eyes going to go to it as in that dark base I have to that that's my main focal flower I just did there. Your eyes going to go to that because that's the lightest area next to the darkest area. Also these Rembrandt Pastels because they're round and they're a little harder they are excellent for making flower stems you basically just kind of roll it you learn a little rolling strategy and it's also good to make your stems a little curvy or have a little jag here or there and not all in the same direction and when they get into the distant flowers you're not going to see them all that much they're going to become very very faint so don't over do it with the distance flowers and you really only need a few now this part was fun to me I like coming in and adding little chunky colors of texture and they don't have to be all exactly grass shaped but it makes it really fun now this is a Terry Ludwig Pastel and it's just a nice kind of muted warm color green color and it's a little lighter so it's going to pop a little bit but see how that little change of shape really made it more interesting and grasses don't have to be or they actually shouldn't be all just these skinny little grass shapes going up your painting is going to get really boring so vary the shapes of your grasses roll some this way and that way and also keep in mind that you don't need it everywhere our brains are amazing how they will interpret things without a lot of information so put your most information and that doesn't even have to be a lot in your areas of focal point and everything else should just be like supporting characters in a play they don't steal the show they support the main character and so I'm using in this micro the screen from the micro set again just to get in a little bit more in the distance not too much and a little spice here there of some value changes and this was a lot of fun now I hope you can see the difference with what has happened since I have applied the clear gesso now it did look like a mess at first because it kind of muddied when I applied it that's why I say if you're going to use if you got some of this paper laying around you got frustrated with it the first time you used it and you really don't have the money to go buy something else get you some clear gesso and just know that you can apply clear gesso just to the paper by itself if you want but I always like to do a type of underpainting even if you just put down you know your basic values or one complimentary color and like I said in my next video coming up you're going to see me do all these different little strategies on these little paintings using these micro sets on different surfaces you're going to learn a lot in that video this is a Sennelier pastel I believe it is from the 120 half stick set it's called the Paris collection I love to recommend this set if you if you're beginner beginner it's like you always or I've always said with kids they say they want a horse you don't go buy them a thorough bread you get them kind of like a pony at first and you know so don't go out if you're just starting or you don't have the budget to do this and buy some of the really expensive one unless you're rich and then go for it but um but you know you can you can play around with some of these sets that are more affordable micro sets are great and then you can just get a few of colors that pop like I said I'll be talking about this more in the next video and a few darks and you can actually really accomplish a lot you've seen this painting mostly the micro set with micro sets plural eight of them I used why didn't use all eight I used the greens um the yellows the sienas and some of those teal colors I used in the distant trees because it had a dark um and then you know like I said just a few really vibrant popping colors maybe a few more greens and some good darks Terry Ludwig has some great darks so um I'm sprinkling a little bit of this color even though um I didn't see it I felt like there was just pink sticking on top there and nothing to bring it together so I just kind of gently layered some of that paint down in the grasses to give it a little bit of color harmony um and I'm trying to make these flowers to where they're also to kind of happy popping up but they don't all have to be the same and oh my goodness I once again have talked almost this entire time um now I am making a few little very light grasses I think this was one of those other softer pastels but as I said I used mostly the pastels from the micro set now here's a little bit of a close up it's fun and happy I did so many winter scenes during the month of December these spring flowers were really refreshing now let's go back and compare the years before just using the pastel paper with no gesso on it and look at the difference so I hope you learned something from this and I hope I have given you a reason to use some of these papers you may have thought hmm I can't use this and now you can and if you've hung out with me for this long I really hope you'll click the like button and like this video I can't tell you how much that really does help these videos to get shared with others I will be putting this original painting in my Etsy shop along with lots more I really need to get busy and upload so God bless you all I pray you learn something and happy painting


We're thinking of you and our hearts are heavy and we we just wish there's something we could do Yes, I sure do Beverly we're thanking of you my dear and we we know how helpless we are in a situation like this But we we love you and wish there's something we do and our hearts go out to you. I know that there and it's It's very tragic bird will call you we'll talk to you as soon as she gets away from this reception and we'll We'll be thanking of you Come on


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Okay, I'm back here again with James and noisy Sarasota again. I apologize for any background noise We have going on or any dogs that might run by And in the last video we were talking about Great for this truck to pass by We were wait we were talking about C programming which is something I've dabbled in wish I knew more about and you're way more experienced and more knowledgeable than I am compared to me Okay, which isn't saying much And we were talking about pointers and I asked you about how how does it know What block of memory is free for its right to for pointers? And you gave a quick overview of it, but really that's something that the programmer That the the fine details you don't have to worry about because that's pretty much taken care of by the operating system I so yeah, yes, yes, and so like for Unix operating system You know a fun thing to do is so a couple fun experiments and see You know one thing is that you're gonna call that your standard libraries all the time and you know standard libs standard. I oh and You can find those header files You probably find the source files online. I don't think the source files are on your operating system Because I think they're already compiled as as lib files, which you can't read it's binary But the header files exist so you can find those header files They're they're in your in your lip. I think with Debbie and there are Source I could be wrong about this like you can download if you download the development like I think it doesn't Yeah, yeah, I mean, yeah, I mean you get this. Oh, I mean, I don't know for each operating system Yeah, but all I'm saying is you get the header files and the header files is supposed to have all the all the interesting public information about that that extra functionality that you're gonna call and So you can you can actually look at that and that's going to call another library file Which which is probably not anything you would ever call yourself It's probably very system dependent and you can look at that and it's going to call another one and another one And you can kind of go down the rabbit hole and see how something that's that's the standard C libraries Start calling more and more operating specific library files but Another neat thing to do too is Every time you compile a C File which by the way, what's your favorite compiler? I just use GCC. I don't know if I have a favorite I just use yeah, yeah, yeah, I didn't know if there were favorites on that one But yeah, I mean there are different ones and I know I know there are different like you can use G plus plus right. Yeah, you can pile C and it's not the same compiler, right? No, no, no, yeah, and then there are things that are compile specific Each compiler does things a little bit different and I've come across that. Yeah Yeah, so so So it could matter but but for the most part you shouldn't have to worry about that But when you compile the first thing that happens to the the first thing the compiler does is it runs something called the the Pre-processor, okay, so what that does is you know every time you you run Include or anytime you type include this library what actually happens is that the pre-processor actually grabs that file and Injects it and so before anything gets compiled it converts it basically into one giant file So it's a fun experiment the next time you write something to see if you want to see like every single line of code necessary for that to run I believe it's CPP is the command on on Linux operating system just run CPP on on your main file and And maybe pipe it to less, you know And just start going through all the stuff they got called all that dependency chain You know just you know obviously look for it to too long You'll give yourself a headache, but just to see where all that stuff comes from and it's very interesting it's an interesting experiment and I actually knew somebody who They they were writing a program where they had to have all these configuration files and They were writing a C program that would take those configuration files And actually the first thing it would do is it would just take all these configuration files That included each other and it would run CPP on them and convert it to one file that he could start to parse I mean, you know, it's just an interesting way to do it instead of having to find all the files Just one file would start including all right. So now am I correct? I believe I'm correct in saying this With compiler you're taking your C code. It's compiling it and Then it basically turns it into assembly correct, and then it assembles it am I I feel like I've read that yeah, I think you're right, okay And we're getting in that territory where I feel comfortable Saying that is true among friends, but I don't know if I'm willing to publish it live for the web I'm pretty sure I read it Everything has to be assembled eventually so you can pile or the compiles into an assembly and then it assembles it Because the assembly language is like is is the computer specific? Yes Hardware different operating system it all has to be written different and then and then that computer can then Always take the assembly and convert it to the binary for that for that correct setup from my understanding yeah, because I recently I think I mentioned the last video I was talking with a C programmer in my IRC channel and I was talking he was Telling me that you know in my videos I say that when you're programming for the most part if you're programming properly It shouldn't matter what operating system you're on or what hardware you're running on whether it's an arm processor Or an x86 processor Use compile and I mean and I feel that's true for C Because everything I've tried to do I've been able to do that. I've cross compiled for Windows I've crossed compiled for arm processors on my desktop Maybe once you get more advanced than I am but that's how I feel everything I've tried to accomplish And I don't know what I'm doing So I feel like someone who does and he was like it's not as easy as you may think it is not easy Horribly difficult and see but I mean that's that's ideal Ideally you should if you're gonna write something like a C library. That's an important C library That's not that's not operate your operating system specific You should write it in a way that it can function on any right well my argument to that is there's Basic parts of the program and you can completely disagree with sure yeah That that's just see like calculating numbers adding things together creating variables. Oh, that's gonna be the same regardless the parts that become Not compatible from operating system to operating system is when you're really trying to interact with that operating system itself Which I know you're always really running on top of it So you're always interacting with it, but for example the example that guy gave in the IRC channel was Write a program that tells me how many characters why the terminal screen is Okay, and I Did yeah, and I sent you my second version of the code the first one was horrible The second one was horrible I was waiting for you to give me a little better way of doing it And yeah, I pretty much had to write code for both of them But then put them in in one program and then when I can compile and you wrote that code Well, I just didn't like the places you put things sure I was just gonna move things around but the way you wrote It's perfect So it was like five lines of code for how it's done in windows and five lines of code how it's done in Linux And then the compiler when I'm compiling it goes. Oh, he's compiling for Linux, right use this function he's compiling for windows use this function and so yeah, it's extra code but Lots of times you have libraries that do that sort of thing and there might be a library that Well, I mean that's the point and this kind of goes back to something else. We were talking about Everything you write should do one thing really well, right? So if if your objective is to write something that can determine the width of the terminal screen You can make a library file that that can be compiled for any operating system Because you wrote it flexible enough so that it can be caught the compiled for each Unfortunately the way C works is once you compile that is compiled for that operating system, right? But you write the source, right so that the way it compiles it is for the particular operating system You're compiling for right and then you can you can actually compile it as a library and from then on No matter what you write that you want to find the width of the terminal you now have this One library you can call that has been compiled in different ways so that the function with the same interface The same function call will return you the thing right that you want and so again my argument was to him And I think he was surprised how fast I did that it took me a little I really had no clue I was doing I googled how to do it one way and how to do it the other and you're so smart Chris well well I He I well he was trying to stump me is what I do and my kind of point is I don't know what I'm doing And I was still able to accomplish it and it may not have been the best way But now I have yeah that I put it in a header file which may have not I don't know if that's the best way to do it I've never never created a file for that and but now any time I need to do that I can just use that file I already wrote and it just spits out a number but back to my original argument is Yeah, you're saying oh a different operating system It goes a different way of getting different with that's because you're interacting with a different program You're interacting with the windows terminal or the Linux shell and it's like you're asking that program So it's not that an operating system really think it's just that you're communicating with a different program And so that's more of an aspect. I think in that particular case, but the simpler argument I have with that is with the Very simple you want to write a program that changes your window your desktop background Well, you have your Linux desktop background and you might have different desktops Although I think a lot of them have kind of merged in the way they do them or you have your it's like Yeah, you're gonna have to write different because you're interacting with a probe a different program You're not just writing one plus one equals two But again you do one thing well, right? And so if you write something that changes your desktop and maybe you can you can start by writing something Well, it only works if I'm running KDE But then you say, okay Well, I know how to check what desktop is somebody because I know there's this place check And now I'm gonna write it so that it checks those two places and and or three places or whatever it is And then when you got all the you know when you have all the Linux versions even when we move on the windows and Matt and so in theory Yeah, you could eventually write one program I don't know why you'd need to write a program that changes the desktop But in our theoretical idea you can write one program that does one thing really well is yeah Most of it is basically you write in a lot of lines of code that just basically makes decisions Based on which is what libraries do and absolutely so anyway again. I thank you for joining me today I thank you guys for watching. Please visit films by Chris comm That's Chris with the K There should be a link in the description of this video if you're watching it on YouTube and as always I hope that you have a great day not much I can do I know it looks like a garden, but it's a noisy Okay, this is an introduction to films by Chris comm I'm Chris. That's Chris the K That's me right there my daughter ember and my wife Jennifer We pretty much live in the swamps of Florida I'm a firefighter by day as well as by night. We work long hours, but that's not why you're here You're here about the videos. I put up on YouTube These videos are mainly about computers and Programming which means most of my videos look something like this And if that's what you're interested in great if not, that's all right I do videos on other topics too such as video editing special effects photo editing 3d design and music creation If you are one of my viewers and you enjoy my videos my patreon page is a place we can go to help support my videos So I asked that you take the time to go to my patreon page and look at different levels of rewards You can receive for different levels of backing there should be a link in the description of this video if you were watching it Otherwise you can visit patreon.com forward slash Metal X 1000 and I thank you for your time and your support Have a great day