Thanks, Marisa. So look, I always really enjoy these types of presentations, but today I am extra enthusiastic because Nikki and I have the privilege of sharing some really special news, and what that is is that IBM Technology Support Services and Fujitsu Software Business Unit have joined together in a partnership. And as of this morning, we've just launched an exciting new offering, IBM Support for Fujitsu Enterprise Postgres. This is a big milestone between our organizations. It's something we've been working on for quite some time now and we're really thrilled to be able to bring this new offering to market. Now, the presentation that we're going to give today, we are going to talk a little bit about the offering, but more specifically, we want to help everyone understand and get a better feel for, you know, the product Fujitsu Enterprise Postgres and the value that it brings to our clients and how it can really help them with some of their strategic initiatives that they're going, either they're working on today. So before we jump into the content, Nikki, did you want to make a statement about the partnership? Oh, yes, Camilla. Thank you very much. Well, on behalf of Fujitsu Software Business Unit and my team and I, we're delighted to be part of this partnership. This is the culmination of a journey of discovery around technical excellence. There's a lot of synergy between our organizations. We're both global powerhouses. We both focus on open source and we both have a passion for Postgres. So we're delighted to be working with you and the team, Camilla. Great. Thanks, Nikki. And look, I love what you said there, that we both have a passion for Postgres. I think we actually both have a passion for open source and that's part of why we make such a great team and a great partnership. Now, that's actually a great intro into kind of our opening, which is where we wanted just to spend a couple of minutes talking about, you know, IBM and Fujitsu heritage when it comes to our participation in open source. One of the reasons that we're actually really thrilled to be able to use this platform to make this announcement is both companies have been longtime members of the Linux Foundation. In fact, we were both founding members of the Linux Foundation. So it's a very special moment for us to be able to actually make this announcement on today's webinar. Now, just from an IBM perspective, hopefully everyone on the call here is aware of IBM's participation in open source and all that we do and the promotion around that. But I did want to share a couple things around specifically IBM technology support services and multivendor software, which is the area of IBM that I represent. So a lot of people don't realize that technology support services has actually been providing support solutions for open technology in excess of 22 years now, really long time. And what's really cool about this is actually a lot of individuals that are within our delivery organization, they have actually been a part of this open source journey with technology support services for a lot of those two decades. And what that means is that we bring, you know, a skill level, a depth and expertise that really is unmatched. From a services standpoint, our offerings and our services are available to clients globally. And that's one of the reasons that we're going to talk about a little bit later as to why this partnership means a lot because it gives us the ability to now bring Fujitsu Enterprise Postgres globally across 130 countries around the world. With that, Nikki, I'll turn it over to you. And can you tell us a little bit more about Fujitsu's heritage when it comes to open source and actually more particular with Postgres? Fantastic. Yes, Camilla, I agree. Again, there is that shared passion and alignment around open source. And I think that's very important to work with organizations that are caring about the community and actively participating in the community. And both of our organizations have this heritage. Fujitsu has been a founding member of the Linux Foundation. Been working in open source technology since the year 2000 in starting off in Japan, software business unit, data management team has over 30 years experience in database technology and over 19 years with Postgres and Postgres development. And we continue to work closely with the community. We can we have a full team of Postgres community engineers. We were one of the key contributors on the new version of FEP 14, Postgres 14. And we have on top of Postgres developed our own enterprise version, which has extended capabilities for Linux one. You'll find out a little bit later. We've now also extended that even further to look at the automation technologies, people adopting cloud native need to use for driving the adoption. Thank you. Now, I assume that everyone attending this webinar is familiar with Postgres. It's not, you know, a new technology. It's been around for a really long time. But what's changed is I think enterprise adoption of the technology has really skyrocketed in the past couple of years. And one of the things that you just mentioned was really around that, you know, Fujitsu Enterprise Postgres, it's a commercial distribution of Postgres, but it's actually built 100% off native Postgres, which is completely cool. But at the same time, this means that for enterprise clients, they're represented with a lot of choice when it comes to picking what technology they should be leveraging specific to Postgres. So maybe can you tell me a little bit more about the key considerations that enterprise customers are looking for when they adopt Postgres? Yes, most certainly. So we have designed our offering Fujitsu Enterprise Postgres from the ground up for customers that really care about enterprise features. And this means that without compromising the 100% native Postgres, we have additional features built in for resilience, performance, security. These are important considerations as when startup projects go into production, they need robust production features in order for the organization to be able to adopt them and pull them out into production. In addition to this set of features, they also need to have a level of warranty and solution assurance on the offering. Fujitsu Enterprise Postgres is designed for T1 enterprises from the ground up. The unique features that we have include security. We have a set of transparent data encryption, data masking, dedicated audit logging. This is built into the product. We have performance features that allow organizations to optimize workloads. We have high-speed data loader that's eight times faster. And we have a backup on Linux 1, we've extended that further. We're using the Linux 1 compression that has a big uplift on the compression on the network as well. Resiliency, we have unique enterprise features for resiliency for disaster recovering with mirroring controller while duplication and connection manager for those organizations that may be across an archipelago or where you have a patchy connection pooling. We've extended this enterprise set of features even further now with automation. We have a level five operator container that allows organizations to adopt Postgres at scale for the enterprise and really leverage not just the operational features for automatic monitoring, automatic scale out, but also make the developer experience of the pre-enabled features for security performance and resilience that are available in the container. So we have without compromising the native Postgres, we have actually these additional features that are included in the product and also available as a bundle with the operator. Thank you, Camilla. Thanks, Nikki. Look, one of the things about this technology that I love is it's really suited for clients and enterprises that are adopting multi-hybrid cloud strategies. And in addition to that, also for companies that are looking for technologies that they can deploy across multiple architectures, right? So this is the type of technology that really aligns well with that mantra, build once, deploy many times, right? Now, what's exciting about our offering is actually we have the ability to now provide clients FEP for multiple platforms as well. So across x86, Linux one, actually Linux on Z, as well as on-primer in the cloud. Now, Nikki, in addition to technology support services within IBM, you've also been working really closely with our Linux one team. And I know that there's some additional feature functionality that's very specific to the Linux one distribution. So can you maybe tell us a little bit more about that aspect of the partnership and then those features as well? Exactly, yes. Well, the operator container, as I mentioned, is multi-architecture, which means that the features that you see here are available in the container for cross-platform from S390X to x86. Now, when Fujitsu started working with the Linux one team, it was a real pleasure to work with them also. We explored the cool, unique enterprise value features of Fujitsu Enterprise Postgres and aligned them with some of the cool features of the Linux one platform. And these then resulted in an enhanced, optimized, dedicated build for Linux one that gives an extension of the security. So for example, our core security value proposition for transparent data encryption, data masking, auto logging, is extended further with integration with the crypto card and the IBM HyperProtect Data Protection, which used to be known as the Data Privacy Passport. So you have a FIPS level certified secure database. On the performance and resilience side, we worked with the native compression on those Linux, where we've optimized the performance further. And when you're moving around data, it's going to be, it's much quicker. We do have some benchmarking data available on that. You can get from our website, which the link we shared at the end of the call. The Linux one deployment actually makes, with the hybrid cloud offering, makes the ability to design applications that you may have a Linux one as a centerpoint and x86 as your endpoints. So you can have a true hybrid cloud offering with security, performance, resiliency built in your developers and your application, line of business application providers only need to develop once and deploy to many as Camilla mentioned, this is a multi architecture operator container level five. This also means that operationally it can be easily integrated into orchestration pipelines. We're running in organizations and developers that are looking to reach customers in T2, T3 customers adopting different cloud technologies. This gives them the way to streamline their operations and get speed to market for all clouds. Thank you Camilla. You're kind of downplaying that level five certification. So I just want to highlight that for a second because this is something that Fujitsu was able to achieve just recently. I think it was just in October. And aren't you guys like the world's first operator that was able to achieve this certification? That's right. The first multi architecture operator container. That's exactly correct.  The other thing I just wanted to mention is specific to Linux one. One of the things that I find is a major differentiator that you talked about were really the security features. We find that our Linux one clients, things like security, we need to make sure that we need the highest security standards so we can leverage these technologies. Clients can leverage them in industries and geographies where there are regulatory and compliance things that they need to be able to meet. So I think just another differentiating factor that is fantastic for FEP on Linux one. Now, sorry, go ahead. You're right, Camilla. What's also important is that organizations that have transparent data encryption is a very low performance hit on the other system level. So it's 1% performance hit. Whereas some legacy infrastructure, if you turn on your transparent data encryption, you make it a 33% performance hit. And organizations, therefore, not only that they have to license it separately, it actually has a technical debt in terms of running it. So our transparent data encryption is very, very, very optimized for the platforms. Great. So let's just shift gears a little bit. And we're going to focus now on talking a little bit about market trends. So my first question for you is around really what trends for Postgres are you seeing when it comes to adoption in the cloud? Well, we're seeing organizations and some organizations are running to public cloud as quickly as possible, especially as regulators. For example, in this region opened up public cloud for FSIs. What that has meant is you do end up with a disparity of flavors of Postgres in the cloud. And not all Postgreses are native. So it's very important that if you need to have cloud portability, you need to be able to have a native Postgres. That's the first thing. The second thing is that organizations are really looking at, as they're starting to do a display strategy on some of their legacy infrastructure, they are really looking at how can they take this opportunity to containerize and modernize their applications. So we are seeing organizations going from bare metal cloud now up to looking at how now they can augment and fast track their development using automation technology in the operating containers. So maybe we can talk a little like the trends that you mentioned there, fantastic. And honestly, on the technology support services side, I find it fascinating because I have a very different lens than you do. Because when we work with clients, it's just in a different capacity. You're very much focused on the technology where a lot of times I talk about support all day long. But a lot of the trends that we see align with one another. And one of the ones we were chatting about the other day was really how current events, world events that have taken place in the past couple of years, it's really changed enterprise priorities when it comes to IT. And one of the things that we've seen obviously is an acceleration of digital transformation initiatives as well as cloud initiatives. And especially depending on the industry that the enterprise is in, we've actually seen that accelerate in some industries a lot quicker than others, because it's been a matter of survival. What's interesting though is when we talk with clients around this, there really is a big impact that comes out that we see and it's around the theme of cost reduction. In technology support services, we have clients that come to us that are looking for ways to really free up budget that they can refocus on strategic initiatives. Now one of the great benefits of our offering is that we are able to provide our clients now with a rock solid commercial distribution of Postgres through FEP. And then we can combine that with IBM's world class support. And ultimately what that results in is significant TCO savings for our customers, which again can really help them accelerate the journey to cloud or even digital transformation, whatever those strategic initiatives are that they might be working on. And you actually mentioned it a little bit earlier, you gave an example of one of these things. And that's really about a lot of these features that FEP offers, it's built into the standard offering. So a lot of times these types of features, you know, additional security elements and whatnot, they're actually treated as an add-on. But for our offering, it's actually included right in the base, which again just represents additional TCO reductions for clients, which is fantastic. Now, Nicky, can you tell me about application providers or ISVs and what they're looking to deliver on cloud? Let's talk a little more about that. Yes, thanks Camilla. ISVs looking at reaching and maximizing their reach. So they cannot really afford to have multiple support, multiple flavors of cloud, multiple flavors of Postgres. They need to have a take a standard space approach. And in addition to that, they need to make sure that their customers have an enterprise grade Postgres as an option because it gives the customer the ability to free up budget to be able to deploy more on the ISV application tooling without introducing any risk at the data level. So at the data level, by working with Fujitsu Enterprise Postgres and the operator container, it means that they can reach multiple, they can build and deploy for multiple environments without compromising their development. And also by adopting a standards-based open source, they can actually then innovate their platform, build in innovation, get faster time to market and broader reach. In particular, in markets such as FSI, REC tech and FinTech, where their customers are currently running on public cloud because the regulators have said it's okay. If the regulator were to say these types of applications need to move back into private cloud, the ISVs need to be able to do that quickly and be able to prove that it can be done quickly. So this really is a good option for ISVs and developers, where they can actually get an efficiency, they can get depth and they can get time to market without compromising and getting a lock-in strategy. So it means that application providers can give their customers choice, cost-effective and without inhibiting any of their development lifecycle. Also with the operational automation in the operator container, it means that their customer and customer organizations can actually easily understand how they're going to deploy this new technology and how it's going to operate in their environment. It's also very important from a standards-based and from an architecture viewpoint that the discussions around data security are able to be had consistently, whether you're on AWS, whether you're on Azure, whether you're on Google Cloud, whether you're on private cloud. Thank you Camilla. So now that we've talked a lot about FEP, do you mind if we switch gears and talk a little bit about the other half of the equation, which is technology support services? Yes. So I was actually just about to ask you about that and I'd love to hear more about this as well. Awesome. So I'm fortunate that all day long I get to talk with clients about enterprise support in general. That's what we do in technology support services. Now my passion in particular is really around open-source support and as I mentioned previously, my area of the business has been doing this for over two decades now. But when I start these conversations, I always like to talk a little bit about the definition of enterprise support. And the reason I do that is because I can talk to 10 different clients and none of them will have different responses to what enterprise support means. So it's important that we actually kind of level-set and make sure that we're talking, that everyone understands what enterprise support is, world-class support. Now I like to challenge people a little bit because when you think about support, oftentimes you think about it in the traditional sense, which is break-fix.  Well, we've actually evolved our support model within TSS and what we try and do is work with clients to actually provide them options, whether it's in a proactive capacity or even just work directly with their development teams to help them gain access to different elements of enterprise support. And what I mean by that is it's not just standard level one to level three support, but we also provide assistance with things like how-to usage, installation, configuration. In fact, we tell developers, hey, guys, when you're developing these technologies, if you run into an issue, give us a call and we'll help you while you're doing the build. You don't need to wait until you've deployed the technology or your solution. We can actually help you during that process. What's really cool with that is that obviously has a lot of additional benefits for our customers, especially in the area of developer productivity, which I'll talk about in a couple more minutes. The other thing that I want to mention to you, and I highlighted a little bit earlier, is just the type of support that TSS delivers to our clients. Our delivery team is world-class. And I can honestly say that because I know so many of our delivery teams, we've got support engineers all over the world, which allows us to provide that 24 by 7 coverage that clients need. We can pick up the phone all hours of the day and give you the assistance you need to really ensure that, look, when you do run into a major problem, we can get you back up and running as quickly as possible. But then, like I said, also help you become more efficient in these other areas of your development process. And one of the benefits of partnering with a great company like Fujitsu is the ability for us to collaborate on support solutions. So that means that if you call in with a really challenging problem, and it's one of the very, very few issues that we might not be able to handle, we've got the backbone and we can call Fujitsu and get on the call with them and make sure that we're getting problem resolution to you guys as quickly as possible. Exactly, exactly. So Camilla, when you work with clients then really it's very much a holistic approach. Not just necessary about one technology. Yeah, that's very true. So one of the things that I love about this partnership is that it really complements the rest of our portfolio beautifully. So we provide enterprise support across a multitude of technologies, open technologies. Right now we're probably in excess of over 300 commercial and community versions of open source software. Now, yes, that does mean that we do also support community Postgres, but that's one of the reasons that we absolutely love this offering is because FEP is built off made of Postgres. And what we actually find, and I think you'll find this if you speak with or hear from industry analysts as well, is that the majority of our clients are actually adopting a hybrid approach when it comes to community and commercial versions of software. And it makes perfect sense, right? In a lot of cases there are not commercial options available for select technologies. And also as clients are building these complex software stacks, depending on the use case and what they need it for, they don't always need all of the feature and functionality that comes with a commercial version, especially if it's in a test and dev environment, but they still want that enterprise support that comes with it. Obviously, depending on the use case, there's a place for all of these different technologies. And our goal in technology support services is to help our clients really simplify and streamline support for the open ecosystem. So give them that single point of contact, that one contract, that one number to call for any of their issues and really approach it from a holistic standpoint like you mentioned. Great. So Camilla, it sounds like there's many factors that organizations should consider when choosing the enterprise support partner. Well, what are some of the new considerations you're seeing specific to the cloud? Yeah, great question. So as you mentioned earlier, I touched on something called scarcity of resources. And this is actually really interesting because as we've been building out our open source support practice over the past several years, what we found in the industry is that finding individuals, finding developers and technical folks that have a broad resume, if you will, of different technologies is very difficult to find. So if you have this concept of build once deploy many times, oftentimes you need developers who have familiarity with different clouds. So whatever type of cloud platform it is that the company is using are multi-cloud, hybrid cloud. In addition, they have to be able to understand multiple technologies. Long gone are the days where we had developers who were focusing on one technology and you could make a living in a career out of that, you've got to be able to have an understanding of this broader stack, especially if you're looking to optimize your development. Because of that shortage of resources, that scarcity of resources, one of the things that's really cool that we found, and we actually found this out because we did a study in conjunction with IDC. And what we discovered is that because we're taking this proactive approach with clients and helping them solve problems before they occur, giving those development resources access to experts and knowledge and things to help them become more efficient, we actually have the ability to increase developer productivity by upwards of 18%. And we also found that study also found that we can help clients deploy applications faster. So I'm super excited because I have no doubt that our offering is going to be able to do the same with our clients, where we're really going to be able to help them address that scarcity of resources issue. I think the other thing too, oh sorry, go ahead, Nikki. I was going to agree with you. And I think also the some of the automation in the sophisticated level five operator to actually acquire those resources to get them integrate and get them to do that level of integration work in your organization is a huge cost saving because it's already automated, already built in and available from IBM fully supported. So it's very good. Absolutely. Yeah, I know for sure. And I think, you know, the other thing too is this partnership, it's great, because what it means for our clients is that they have, you know, access to industry experts, both at IBM as well as Fujitsu, whether that's for the actual, you know, subscription and support elements that they purchase, but we also are teaming together to provide a more robust set of services as well. So if clients are looking for assistance on how do they actually get FEP up and running, you know, things like implementation, migration, this is an amazing alternative when clients are looking to kind of displace legacy, legacy databases, whether that's in a migration, or whether it's really just to deploy net new workloads, delivering the technology, we do see both, we are going to be able to offer services that help clients with that as well. Exactly. And, you know, as we said at the top of this call, based on many, many years experience in both organizations, from simple to complex projects. So what Fujitsu says is, you know, Fujitsu software says that it's predictable when you have a standards-based approach to delivering these types of expert services, the results are predictable based on experience. So I think this is terrific. And as you also said, our teams are working very closely together to deliver delighted customers and enable developers. Absolutely. And look, another common goal we share, we want to be able to delight our customers, right? And I really believe that both our teams are going to be able to do that jointly. And we're going to now be able to do it globally, which is fantastic. Exactly. And I was just going to say, software business unit is committed to the continual innovation of PostgreSQL and the dedicated builds on the IBM platforms of PostgreSQL. So we look forward to a long, and wonderful partnership with IBM. Likewise. So look, I think that probably concludes, you know, our conversation for today. But I think we wanted to open it up for any Q&A that we might have. I believe that you have on your screen the ability to ask questions. And Nikki and I will now be monitoring that if you guys wanted to ask any questions. And by the way, while those are coming in, I just want to give a huge shout out to Nikki for joining, because Nikki is joining us from Australia. So it's like, what time is it there Nikki, like 3.30 in the morning for you? Well, it's now 5.30 and the day and it's daybreak. It's exciting to be here. So, Marissa, we actually don't have any questions coming in at this point. Is there anything else that you wanted to cover off before we bring this to a close? Nothing else that I need to cover. If anybody has any questions, you can put them in the Q&A down at the bottom. Otherwise, we can let Nikki maybe get some rest. Thank you, Bull. I'm excited. I'm ready to go. Let's go. All right. Well, the lady's here. Yeah, I guess if there's no questions. I just want to close by just Nikki thanking you and your team. You have been an absolute delight to work with. It's been an absolute pleasure and I cannot stress how much I'm looking forward to working closer with you and your team and bringing this offering to market. I think it's going to be a great opportunity to help our clients really improve a lot of the initiatives that they're using. You guys have a wonderful technology and I think that combined with our support, it's absolutely a winning combination and I can't wait to see how we kind of shake things up in the marketplace. Absolutely. Fantastic. Really looking forward to continuing to work with you and your team, Camilla and just a little little advert. There is a link in that chat, the postgresql.fastway.com. There is a large resources section on that website where there's white papers, technical papers. Please feel free to read. Go ahead and read. Thank you and reach out to us. Thank you. Sorry, that was going to be the last thing I said. I say I was going to do a shameless sales plug here and just say if anyone's interested in learning more, you can either reach out to Nikki or myself or any of your local technology support services, sales representatives, they're ready to go and answer questions. Feel free to reach out. We're here to help. With that, thank you so much. Appreciate you guys joining us today. Thank you. Awesome. Thank you so much again, Camilla and Nikki for joining us today and thank you everyone for attending this webinar. Just a quick reminder that this recording will be on the Linux Foundation's YouTube page later today. Thank you again so much. Have a wonderful day. Bye, everyone.


Now, maybe we'll just go through a checklist of things that managers can do. Just brief responses to basic questions like, if someone came to you and said, what should I put in place? What's the first thing you'd say? Smile. It's amazing how many managers wreck their culture by not smiling. If you're going to do one thing, just make sure they use smile. When you're talking to someone, make sure they use smile. I have that problem, but when I get into my head, I get very serious, and then people get intimidated. And when I learned that lesson, now I've forced myself to just smile. And if I'm sending an email, send an emoji, a smiley, at the end, so they know that you're okay. Because that's the question people are asking. Are we okay? That's what your staff are wondering. Am I in trouble? Are we okay? And it's ridiculous because we're grown-ups, and we hate it. We don't want to think like that, but we do. And we need to acknowledge that. What should be taken out of the workplace? Oh, Facebook? Social media. People do too much comparison. When we go on Facebook, what do we put in our holiday pictures, and we see the people having this wonderful life? And where are we in the cubicle, looking at our Excel spreadsheet? That's not very convenient. You can do the Facebook in later. What should be added to manage a training? Skills-based training. Awareness isn't enough. We can't just be aware of this issue. We need to actually know how to deal with it. One of the things that I've seen those organizations do who are benchmarking is it becomes part of induction. Part of the induction program is that we care about psychological safety and workplace well-being, and here's a basic skill set that teaches people from the very beginning that this is the culture we support here. So they get that attitude shift as well as the skills and the knowledge to be able to apply it and make a difference. So for managers, yeah, mental health and well-being training, that is skills-based, that is going to teach them how to be better leaders in this space. For staff, resilience training. We need to become a little bit tougher. We've become a little bit soft. And this idea that somehow life is better roses. And it's not. It's not. We need to get back to reality and learn to cope. And I think those two would be a great addition to anywhere.


Welcome to Monet Café, your own little personal art studio, a virtual studio at home. This is a scene that I took some video of and I'm calling this episode painting a moment and I titled the painting Wind Dancers. It was a beautiful unexpected moment where I just went for a walk while on a trip and these wild Queen Anne's lace flowers were blowing in the wind and dancing in the wind and it was just one of those moments you want to capture and remember. So I did a painting of them today. I hope to do more of the pictures that I took and I thought I'd give you a little video of me in my studio. I know I'm always zoomed in up close where you can't see but I thought you might like to see that it's really just a little 10 by 13 room that I work from. Again this is the studio that my husband and I renovated an old home after the flooding of our home in 2017 and we've been making it work. You know we don't have all the conveniences we had in our other home but we make it work and this is just I wanted to show you I've got a standing easel. I have a sitting easel.  I have all of my pastels to the left of me. I'm left-handed. I have that tall shelving next to me and it works really great for having my pastels and art supplies all very accessible. Accessibility is key when you're painting. You don't want to have to stop and run and hunt something down. So over the years I've gotten a system that works pretty well for me. As you can see on the easel there the you art paper it will warp in humid climates. I have tried darn it to find a way that it won't warp. I put it under heavy things. I keep it in its packaging as long as I can but you know lo and behold it always seems to warp on me. But I have ways that I can flatten it out. I actually have a video where I show you how you can iron your art paper. Now I'm just getting all set up here and I also have you'll see my iPad to the right of me on a little shelf and those shelves just so you know are from IKEA. I love those little shelves. They're inexpensive. Now I keep a little box of index cards to the right of me. I love to do a little notan. This is not a beginner video by the way. I mean it could be a beginner video but I'm not focusing on beginner videos like I've been doing lately. But a few videos back I have my process in a beginner video of how I create a notan or a value study. They're very helpful. They kind of loosen you up for one. They get your values kind of correct. And it gives me a direction of what is the feeling of the painting. What do I want to capture? What was important about that moment? Again like painting a moment. Now I am going to speed some of these things up in this video. I think I'm going to keep some real time at the end. But this is just me. I'm looking at the reference image and I will include the reference image when you see me actually painting. And I'm looking at some pleasing positionings of these flowers that are called Queen Anne's lace. I like how it had a sweeping motion kind of going from the bottom right up to the top right. It was sweeping around. And I liked just the playfulness of the flowers. So this is just to give me an idea of where they are and where I want to place them. And now I'm just doing a quick little value study. This doesn't have to be anything or it shouldn't actually be anything very detailed. You're basically just getting in three values. Well actually four if you count the white of the paper. A dark value, a medium value, a light value and then the white of the paper. And again it's really to establish a composition that's pleasing and a harmonious structure or foundation for your painting. And I find these really do help me. As simple as they look and as messy as they can sometimes look. It really does help me once I start painting to remember what it is I wanted to capture about that reference photo. Now here is where I wanted to show you a little trick or a tip. I really liked the reference photo had a longer more narrow format than my UART paper does. My index card happened to have a little bit more narrow format. It's a three by five. So I want to get the same proportions on my UART paper as that little index card. So all you do is you take whatever image or proportion you're wanting to emulate. You put it in the top corner of whatever surface you're working on and then you get a straight edge and you take the top corner of the little paper you're working from in my case an index card and you put it on the bottom corner. Just a diagonal top to bottom, top left corner to bottom right corner and then wherever it ends up at the bottom of your paper like there I just make a little mark with my pencil right there at the very bottom of the UART paper where that ruler ended up. That's where I'm going to, I just measure, I think it was just like a couple of inches and you didn't see me do it, but I made a line down that and I ended up putting a piece of of artist tape to block it off. Now here are the neocolor wax pastels that I'm going to be using for the underpainting. I sometimes forget about some of the materials I have because I have some stuff all stacked away underneath these shelves and I thought oh my gosh I love these wax pastels. They look like crayons actually, but the magic comes when you add water to them. So here once again I'm just going to, I'm actually just using here a new pastel in you pastel. They're harder pastels. You can kind of sketch with them. You could use whatever you have. You could use a charcoal pencil. I like the new pastels. I like to pick one that's not black and I'm going to be using a lot of these mossy greens. So I thought I'm just going to go ahead and sketch out my my little value study where I really kind of liked the placement of the flowers and just sketch it out with this new pastel. I like to focus on and I'm trying to get better. I'm always trying to get better myself. Trying to get better at letting the flowers turn. There's a beauty to the composition. If you can have the I always say the flowers seem to have a personality to whether turning and facing and dancing like I said I called these wind dancers so that they're not just all flowers facing the same direction or or static or stiff. Also different sizes not just turning different ways. You're going to have different sizes, different layers. Some are closer to you. Some are further away and I'm trying my reference photo was a pretty good composition. So I'm I'm kind of I'm sticking to it to a degree but you know I don't like to get so fussy that I feel like I have to do everything just like the reference photo. Then I start to get too tight. Okay here's the fun part. I've got a like it's a dark bluish greenish color. It's maybe more of a teal blue and I'm doing my darks kind of around. Notice I'm kind of going around the flowers. I want to keep the flowers fairly light to remember where they are for one thing.  So as you can see I'm also I'm working around the flowers but I'm moving it kind of directionally. I'm trying to keep that momentum of the strokes kind of sweeping up and now the sky I am going to have those clouds up top so I'm kind of leaving that blank for now but I liked that that blue sky back there. I'm using more of a cyan blue or a teal blue for the sky. I don't know why I just felt that mood more than a sky blue color and so I'm just kind of working it in and around the flowers and then I think I'm going to end up using a actually because the ur paper is kind of creamy colored oh now I'm using oh I'm blending in this it's a really neat lavender purple leaning more towards the blue rather than the red side of purple and I'm just adding some of that in and amongst the flowers and to give that other color I put down a little bit more pizzazz. You'll see when I add the alcohol to it you could add water or alcohol I use alcohol just because it dries faster. Now I'm adding another purple with these and again you will see the pizzazz when I add when I wet it the colors will just kind of play with each other and really look vibrant and beautiful. Now is where I think I actually I was saying before the color of ur paper is actually creamy color so I have a white in this new pastel not new pastel neo color two wax pastels and I use a gray and a white just to kind of get that the cloud value in there a little bit. I was actually couldn't remember if they come out very good the white color but when I started adding the alcohol it actually did lighten it up a little bit it was kind of neat. Okay so I'm about to get finished up here and now it's time for the fun. Okay so I'm using alcohol but you could use water if you want. I even had somebody ask can you use like drinking alcohol like gin or vodka or whiskey and you absolutely can if you want it to stay light in color I would stick towards the clear liquors. I do think people have actually used white wine. Now I'm using I use a bigger brush the better for me it keeps it loose so I'm going to use that wide flat brush. I didn't feel like going and finding anything else. I have a bigger round brush sometimes I use round sometimes I use the wide one and then I just had my paper towel there because when I dip my brush in the alcohol it's pretty wet and drippy so I just dab it a little bit on the paper towel you'll see me here I just do a little dab dab not much because I I do like the drips the drips give it that impressionistic feel. Now you can't see right now that that light or the white and gray I put down showing up but you'll be able to see it in a minute it it does actually blend kind of nicely. So I'm focusing on sections at a time basically because if I just blend everything together it'll become like mud so but I'm not worrying about drips they actually drips go with the the pull of the earth or gravity if you want to call it that and they make really great lines if you're doing stems or things like that I mean you don't want your stems always straight but or trees so the drips kind of enhance things sometimes now you can see that white actually is it's lightening it up a little bit so just playing around a little bit here and as you will see when I get to the darker colors that's when it really starts to get fun especially because I added like three or four different colors and again I'm working around the flowers but it's not that big a deal if the if the alcohol drips in the flowers like it's doing there it kind of gives it that dreamy you know neat feel you see those colors look at that in that fun and I am also using my brush in a way again instead of just painting straight up and down why not go ahead and get that feeling of that energy and that movement that's happening because of the grasses so I'm trying to focus on that a bit and really just trying to get it kind of all blended in so I'm going to speed this up a bit now to finish this I thought I'd add too that a lot of the more recent beginner paintings I've been doing lately I've been doing a warm under painting which means you just use the warm tones from the color that side of the color wheel in this one I really wanted to get those those cooler tones in this underneath the grasses and so that's kind of why I went with this particular color palette for the under painting now you can kind of see how it just gives that dreamy impressionistic feel and now let me show you my pastel selections these are the pastels I've chosen and I may look like a lot I usually don't choose this many to begin with but I really didn't want to have to go back and pick more so I just got a big variety these are going to be my sky colors I have um a variation in values from dark to light I even have a little bit of this purple in there um skies well with everything you you don't want to just layer one color it's so much more interesting if you have colors of similar values like um like this blue um like a more of a teal blue and this lavender are going to kind of play on each other a little bit in the sky this is my darkest these two are my darkest this notice is a little more um periwinkle colored um and these two will be more in the upper atmosphere in this case kind of right in between the clouds in the top and then everything gradually gets lighter in value as it goes down to the horizon or what's behind the flowers and of course some of the lighter colors here or values here will be for the the clouds the whiz I'm going to keep them very wispy um I've chosen for the actual queen Anne's lace uh you basically lay down your darker value first and kind of layer on top of them with lighter values so I'm going to use some of these you know the little pods that hold them are kind of a warm green so I'm going to use a combination of some of these greens for that and then gradually layer the flowers I'm actually seeing they're not just white I'm actually seeing um some other colors in there this is a white that's actually kind of got a little peak pink or peach tone to it and some of these colors may um make it more interesting before I lay the lighter colors on top I've got some neutral colors in here too that add to where you don't want something to be the star of the show or stand out more than the other flowers it's nice to have neutrals that push those flowers back like these are these are both a little more neutral for flowers that may be hiding down in the grasses and I have a variation of other greens in here for grasses and things like that and for those pods it's the pod right before the flower opens they're so interesting and oh I just think God's world is so amazing and they're darker and so I have some pretty dark values here and some lighter ones to kind of go on top to portray those little bits that are about to open up and so I've got a variation of green and some neutrals and then here I've got of course some of my darker colors here darker values are going to be the darkest darks down in the deep grasses and they will help to ground that earth before I put down the lighter wispier grasses on top so this is just something to start with and play around with and we'll see where we can by the way I have a variation of types of pastels these square ones that are longer I break them unfortunately I accidentally broke them one time when they fell off my easel but these are great americans and they are nice and buttery I prefer terry Ludwigs to the great americans that's just a personal preference these are terry Ludwigs they are so buttery and smooth and great for final strokes at the end or layering at the end so any of the ones that look kind of square little little shorter rectangles are the terry Ludwigs and some of these in here sometimes I can't tell the senelier from the unison but usually if they're round mine end up looking a little flat because I use them on the sides and some of the smaller ones I may I have some jack richison in here these are jack richison they're rounder like this and let's see what else I have in here of course I have over here I have the giro pastel set I just bought and I do love those those really make nice linear strokes at the end of a painting too because they're kind of a medium to hard pastel all right time to get started and I am going to keep this real-time footage I believe the painting took over an hour maybe about an hour and 15 minutes and just you know I enjoyed this moment not that I don't always enjoy painting but there are sometimes when I'm painting and I'm still kind of thinking about the things that I have to do and it just that's a that's a joy stealer so for this painting this morning I just enjoyed the process listen to the rain outside and it was just a nice nice experience and again it's kind of like the point of this video you're trying to capture a moment or a memory or an experience that you had and you know that way the painting will hopefully remind you of that moment and that time in your life you know there was an old singer or he's old like me now I'm sure Matt Davis and he had a song called Stop and Smell the Roses he actually was a really great songwriter and that's just a good philosophy you know so anyway here I wanted to point out that I'm putting in shapes of where the flowers are going to be and even though you might say but those are white flowers why are you putting down like a medium to lighter value green and you put your darks down first with pastels typically now those darker ones that I'm doing now those are the pods if you look at the reference image you can see the pods that open up to become flowers they are darker than the flowers the whites aren't showing yet but again back to the whites that I'm talking about the the lighter color green I put down first the white has to have a foundation something to to rest upon also we know that they are part of that pod that opened up so you put your layers down the the flowers if you just put white down there they're just going to get lost in that blue sky they've got to have a darker value foundation to rest upon okay so that's typically how we work with pastels we lay down our darks and gradually work up to our lighter layers that's the opposite of how it is with watercolor watercolor you usually work light to dark you want to preserve those lights in watercolor because you can't really get it back you want that luminosity of the paper so again I'm just getting in the the motion of the flowers the like I say the personality of the flowers the sizes of the flowers and I am using a very light touch here it's something I've been purposely trying to work on is not filling up the tooth of the paper too quickly I've often I've painted too quickly and too heavy-handed and sometimes that has to do with your mood like I said sometimes I'm thinking about too many things I may be a little more stressed or whatever but if you can just take a deep breath put on some music relax and take some notes and put next to yourself on your easels light touch I think it was Karen Margulis I think she got it from another artist who said a light touch is the right touch you can always go back and add more pastel but you can't really you know effectively I think get the the tooth back you know unless you start brushing it out and I love the efficiency of stroke where your strokes are put in the right place to begin with not that you can't be random but you don't want to go back and fuss and fix things a lot. Now while I'm working on this I thought I'd mentioned too in my last beginner video I mentioned how some of you guys have been so sweet and kind and I think a lot of you from the Monet Café art group know that you know I've had a lot of life challenges and stuff and I try to bring these videos I try to bring consistent just because it's my heart my passion and I I love to help artists in their you know art education and learning but it does get hard sometimes so some of you have been so sweet to say you want to help you want to support the channel and I can't tell you what a blessing that would be for me I would be able to do more I would be able to have better equipment I mentioned in the last video just recently had to buy a new Mac book pro computer I didn't expect and you know the Lord provides but I do have other ideas there is a studio light that it's not super expensive but it's just one of those things you know you just kind of got better weight on that but if you guys would like to support the channel I'm going to come up with a way that you can do it I may create a patreon account that's more just for Monet Café channel support and I will I'm thinking I will you know like to hang out with you guys or you know while I can't give a whole lot more time to a patreon providing more videos on there it could become a neat little thing for those who would like to become patrons for the account and something neat for me to kind of just deal with you guys that end up ones that want to support the channel so might be kind of a neat experience so I've heard of feedback from you guys and it sounds positive so I just may explore that again feel free to give me feedback on that I also have a PayPal if anybody ever wants to support just one time rather than doing the patreon thing it is uh let me find the name of it again it is PayPal.me slash Monet Café I'll put a link up here I should I should include that you know in all the videos but I don't know I just I have a hard time asking for any help even though I could use it so anyway all right back to painting enough of that so I'm just continuing to work here and the main point that I'm or the main thing I'm working on right now is basically getting where these flowers are if there's any smaller flowers and there actually are some smaller flowers I add at the end I I don't have to put those in right now I don't have to work around those I can layer those and then put grasses on top of them now what I'm doing is I'm going in I'm working around the the bigger flowers that I've put in and I'm adding the dark um I've like you saw in the pastels I've got like three different selections of a dark I'm paying attention you may not be able to see um on whatever screen you're looking at I'm paying attention to where the darkest darks are there's some parts in the grasses that are just really dark and and deep like they're down closer to the ground and maybe a lot of grass is growing um so and I'm again still trying to keep that movement I felt that sweeping motion still I I actually could have emulated that even more I think that's what I'm going to try to do with these uh Queen Anne's lace photographs that I I got I got a whole bunch of photographs and video footage by the way take video footage sometimes of things um reference material and you can often get way more um material because you can just pause the video at any spot and take a screenshot so I got a lot of video footage of these flowers as well and I think the more that I do the more I'll loosen up and uh and keep that what I see in my mind anyway in my in my mind I see them just flowing in the wind and moving so uh I'm going to do more of these um give me your feedback on that if you'd like to see more Queen Anne lace uh flowers and also anything else you'd like to see more of I like it when you guys um give me recommendations I had a recent recommendation from uh on one of the beginner videos to do more uh or to do a beginner video on reflections and I actually happened to have footage of that um I I took one day and did about um five um small to medium size paintings and I saved the footage so I've got about three more beginner videos that I'll be uploading soon one of them does happen to have reflections in it it's not going to focus totally on reflections but I will um I will give a little instruction on reflections now I'm adding um that more of a purpley color um even though the clouds are going to be lighter I'm putting down the dark see those clouds have a little bit of a a shadow or like where rain may be starting to accumulate so I'm getting the darker shadowy arrows areas in first and um then I'll add the the lighter colors on top of that and I liked how the clouds were reaching kind of out to the sides so I wanted to keep that energy and and uh feeling in the painting I love I say this often but I love how flowers and trees and things reach to the heavens and just seem to praise the lord and I think that's why I like to paint them a lot is this just like a rejoicing feeling you know I mean it's just beautiful how how all of creation just uh has this beautiful harmony and um and life and uh beauty to it so all right now I'm adding the lighter it's a lighter blue um but it's lighter than that um kind of teally more teal blue that I put down before and uh I'm just keeping again a very light touch and uh continuing to build slowly and gradually with this I even like this rough stage you know I say this often I'm able to look back um when I film myself and see some of the areas that I may have kept even more loose than the final painting all right I am going to keep this real time but I'm going to add some music let you guys watch and enjoy and I'll add some more commentary as I see things I'd like to give you advice on and by the way the song that I'm using it was like a just a sweet little memory for me it's one of my earlier videos um when I first started doing videos it wasn't one of the first ones but it was pretty early and it's the song that I used it's a it's actually one of the songs that youtube has in their audio library that they allow you to use and I think it's called The Temperature of the Air and it was a video of mine that actually got a lot of views and a lot of people mentioned that they like that song and and I always did too so I'm using a song that I used in an old earlier video and I hope you enjoy the music I'm getting close here to finishing and I really wanted to try to capture deep within those grasses where some of these really beautiful bluish purple flowers and so I wanted to hide those kind of down in the grasses like that and I just think that gave the painting a little more pizzazz and beauty so I hope you enjoyed this I hope you learned something I will continue to keep trying to bring more free videos your way as long as I can so I am very blessed to have this channel because you guys bless me as always happy painting