Safari Landscape Painting with Soft Pastels | Live Tutorial

peace everyone unmask here and today I'm doing a pastel

tutorial

about a

safari

landscape

and I just got a new set of Rembrandt

soft

pastels

so I'm trying them for the first time and I haven't even opened them yet so Let's take a look at these cakes. I already like the box. In my opinion, the box looks very nice. Okay, let's see what we have here. Yes, it is a very sturdy box. A small brochure will probably have the colors and product information. Yeah all the colors are kind of a color chart which is always good to have and then let's look at these oh yeah my favorite.

What I like most about the

pastels

are the colors, the colors just look great so I have 90 of the half sticks and I have links in the description of this set if you want to see them and yes they feel great they feel a little

soft

er than auto bethello or um faber-castell pastels, so this will be a new experience. these are the pastels I'm going to use and just take them out of the box so I can have them around me. I always keep my pastels in their original order that way it makes it a little easier to keep track of what colors I use.

I'm using them so I never change them, in addition to working with these pastels today I'm also going to work with the Carbothello pastel pencils and I have the set of 60 that I'll use but I'm not sure. exactly how many of those I will use today. I also have the link for the ones in the description if you want to see them and the paper I'm working on is Clarafontaine pastel mat, so this is my preferred paper. Almost all the time when you work with pastels, it's one of the best pastel papers you can use and again, the links for all the products are in the description along with an introductory pastel course I created last year if you want to check it out anyway.

Let's go ahead and get started with this

tutorial

. I want to mention that I also have the reference photo available in the description, so if you ever want to try this tutorial, I have the reference photo that you can see. It's over. on my Patreon page it's free so don't worry and I also have the color swatch on the right side of the reference photo to help you select the right colors for this particular scene. Hello everyone in the chats. Hildi Brenda Stephanie Alicia. jeff and steve are really happy to see you all here, so I like the mini pastel

landscape

s that I've done, I always like, I always like to work with the sky first, so let me browse through my color selection here for a moment and I think um.

So many, many good color options, but I think I'm going to choose this blue. This is the sixth blue from the right. If you have this set, it's kind of a cobalt blue but a little bit desaturated, it looks like it has. some gray there and I'm going to start with the sky very smooth, it goes on the paper very very smooth there's not any scratches which is very nice so I'm going to start by just blocking out where I have all this blue leaving some spaces for the clouds oh yes, this is ours, they are quite soft.

I have to pause for a moment and comment on how soft they feel in my hand compared to Castell's pastel fabric. They are very, very soft. I'm already in love with these cakes. One thing, although I have to say I'm not a fan, is its circular shape. I like the rectangular square prism shapes that the Castell fabric has. Pastels are coming and I'm not a big fan of this circular cylindrical shape, not only do I mean if I leave it it will potentially move, but I like the sharp edges for finer detail with the more rectangular prism shapes so yeah , I'm No, I'm still not entirely sold on the shape of these, but they feel really good.

I have to say it and definitely mention it. Okay, let's go for a little bit of a soft purple like a light lavender color here. and I'm just going to put a little bit of this in to block out some of the clouds up here. Oh, hello Coffee Cat and Gauderbor, so happy to see you here too, and everyone else, everyone in the chat. You might have a little trouble keeping up with today's chat, but if you have any questions, feel free to tag me so I get my name highlighted and I'll be happy to do my best to answer everyone's questions today, so yeah Whether you're new to pastels or have never used them before, a key ingredient to creating really good landscapes is making sure you layer enough.

One layer will never be enough when it comes to soft pastels, so take your time adding the necessary layers. that you need to create the atmosphere that you're looking for and let's see, I think what I'm going to do is take a little bit of white, I'm going to find my sun here real quick and I'm going to go a third down and right in the center, right in the center and about two-thirds down and one-third up however you want to think of it and I'm just going to put a little white dot here to start filling in. where the sun shines brightest, right behind it there will be a tree here like I said, the reference photo is in the description so if you want to see it while I'm

painting

here, feel free to open it that way.

I have a better idea of ​​what I'm trying to create here. The next thing I'm going to do is take a little bit of yellow, not too much yellow. Let's see, I think I'm going to use this is one two three four five six seven eight this is the ninth from the right or from the left and I'm going to go around in a circle around my target here and this is going to look like a real bad sun starting and okay, I haven't done any mixing yet no, no mixing has been done, I'm just putting some of my colors in here, now I'm going to change to a dull orange color, yeah, this one is almost perfect, this is kind of peach color tone and I'm going to go around in a circle again and I'm going to zoom in on this kind of eyeball look, it's going to create that bright sunset effect and I.

I'm going to go back to my yellow and just bring a little bit of yellow into that space that way, when I smudge it, it softens, it fades into itself, the next color I want to grab is a little bit of a purple type. a very light purple color and I'm going to come in from the sides here and I'm going to create sort of the bottom of the sky. Now I'm going to place things over the top of the sky, so I'm going to go down a little bit more than the sky is actually going to show because it's very easy to cover the pastels with other colors, so layering isn't a problem when It's about cakes, I'm just going to lay them out. a little bit of purple here, it's a nice lavender color that works with the same eye type shape.

Where do I get my cakes? So I order all my cakes if you don't know. I

live

in Poland and order all my cakes online. from jackson's art Supply in the UK there isn't much selection in the local art stores here in Poland there is some selection but not the selection I need right now I'm going to put that purple aside and re-evaluate my blue here so I'm going I'm going to darken my blue a little bit more, meaning a nice solid dark blue, and I'm just going to add a little bit of contrast to the sky.

I need to go a little darker up here. sky and give a little more richness to my blue. Right now I need to go to my grays and this is probably something that a lot of people overlook when creating a beautiful, bright sunset. They almost go overboard with the saturation of their colors and forget that the sky really isn't those colors that look unnatural and what you have to use with pastels in particular is that you have to layer gray over your colors to bring out a little saturation. of the vibrancy of the color, that way you go from a colored sky that looks really unrealistic to something a little more realistic and you do it by incorporating some of the grays and some of the other desaturated colors, just white is a color that mutes the vibrancy of other colors, but we're looking to keep roughly the same contrast, so we'll use a gray that might be too dark.

I'm going to start with a slightly lighter gray so as not to overdo it. first and I'm just going to bring in a little bit of this gray and then when I blend it out, when those colors blend together, it's going to soften the blue and it's not going to be as vibrant and it's going to create a little bit of a more realistic looking sky, so I'm just going to go through above the top of my cloud and a little bit into the blue there and then I'll bring a little bit of gray through the purple down here as well because that's too much. too vibrant and I'm going to fill the space with this gray here do I like soft pals?

Do I like soft pastels more than pastels or pastel pencils? Well, no, I don't consider them those three. Really mutually exclusive things, pan pastels are great for creating a sort of base paint for those first basic layers, but with pan pastels you're never going to get detail because you're just rubbing it onto the paper over and over again. a little bit and then you would use soft pastels like this to get some of that medium detail and then you would use the pastel pencils to get that really fine realistic looking detail, so I think using them in combination with each other is more ideal than thinking of them as mediums separated or just separated from each other they are great tools they are great they are great products to use all together since they are all pastels and I have a very nice set of pastels and I don't really find myself using them as much as I probably should to create that under

painting

effect that you would normally use the pastels now that I have some gray.

I'm going to look again, oh yeah, this kind of peach color that I used here on the sky or for the clouds here, they don't look like clouds very much yet, but they will be soon and I'm going to use that to mix the orange with the purple a little covering the rest of the paper here for the sky, trust me I know it doesn't seem like much yet but once I get to the melting stage the sky will start to come to life, that's what I like most about pastels is when, once you start blending, it's like, oh, this is how it works, okay, I'm going to add a little bit more gray here and I'm going to take a little bit.

The white now just brings in a little bit of the reflections from the larger parts of the clouds, especially here in the middle. I want to add too much white because I don't want this point to be brighter than here. I'm going to bring in a little more yellows here. I have a large selection of yellows. I don't know if you'll let me show you the selection of yellows here. There are so many different warmths of yellows and saturation levels, and I think. I'm going to try this one here, this one is almost white. I'm going to circle the sun here to illuminate it.

Use this to mix the oranges. Make the overall glow of the sun a little softer when I diffuse it. And let's see, I was just praising the wonderful selection of yellows and I realized how minimal the selection of oranges is. They're all too bright for me. I'm just going to add a couple. strokes of this bright orange like that, when I blend it, I get just a hint of orange there, okay, let's see, I'm going to incorporate a little bit of this peach color into the clowns up here and when m when I apply this pastel I'm not making strokes thick and heavy ones that I'm using I'm barely touching the paper I'm letting the paper do all the work for me so this paper has a little bit of a velvety texture to it that just draws the pastel in so you don't have to press with force or trying to apply these colors, they just want to stick to the paper, so I'm being very delicate when I move them and as you may have noticed with the sky, I'm trying to keep most of my movement horizontal, that's all.

It's always a really good idea when it comes to working with the sky to keep your movements horizontal because it hides all the lines much more easily than if you went vertically or in circles or something try to avoid going vertical at all costs okay, let's grab a little bit more of the dark blue here I'm going to Take this dark blue. I'm going to go in here and add some sort of shading to this cloud just a little bit and maybe a little bit over here and up in the corners to get those colors. Color those corners well. let's do the first round of blending now to mix this is my go-to tool.

I basically don't use anything other than this tool. Previously I always used just my finger, but I found that with this tool you actually create a lot of slightly less dust around the edges, which overall makes working with the pastels a little cleaner and nicer, so when I mix I usually just use a sponge and this is just a cake spatula with sponge tips and always have some paper towel on hand a little piece of paper towel to wipe off any excess colors when you change colors so I'll start at brightest area first and I'm just going to make a circle. this sun here and work this way and you will start to see the magic of soft pastels, the way they create the right effect once you start. combining them so now that I'm out of reach of the sun I can start to go a little more horizontal, still trying to stay within those brighter colors first before moving on, like I said this is just the first layer so the paper won't be completely covered yet so you won't get a super smooth blend on the first layer.

That's why pastels require multiple coats to get that really soft color. You have to wear multiple layers, so keep them up. in mind on your ownpastel pieces, making this first mix is ​​more about pressing the color into the paper so you can start applying the next layer safely without moving all the colors around and just like with pastels where I'm not pressing the paper or anything like that really hard, I'm just brushing very lightly with my palette knife here, very, very, very gently and I'm just applying the color directly onto the paper, something else. What I want to mention is that I have this Clairfontaine pastel mat taped down with regular painter's tape and when you do that, you leave a really nice clean edge that allows you to handle the job after you're done. done, but when it comes to working around the edge, make sure you go all the way to the edge and that's how you create those really clean edges and it's very, very satisfying at the end to remove the tape and have that.

Super clean border, so once I'm done with this landscape here at the end of the video, I'll peel it off and you guys can see what the border does because it looks really incomplete when you have a messy border. It just looks less professional, it looks messy and it looks incomplete and nothing is more satisfying than removing the tape and revealing that super clean edge and I've done a few projects in the past where I've experimented a little with how I create my edges, to Sometimes I put extra pieces of tape and make designs. I will place the ribbon in designs to create a unique border.

I didn't do that with this project because well, this project is not meant to be advanced in any way. Where do you get the cake? So this cake pan spatula is the cake pan spatula and you can most likely find this at any store that sells pan cakes and if we are not located near a store that sells them you can simply find them online for a very reasonable price, which is exactly what I did. I found it again at Jackson's Art Supply and I don't remember exactly how much I paid for them, but I can assure you that they were worth what I paid for them right now, we got rid of some of the graininess of our sky and our colors are much softer, even the clouds start to appear a little.

Now you can see the body and shape of the clouds a little better, but now it's time for the next layer and I think what I'm going to do is start over with the sun and keep rising. So I'm going to start with white and just add that little circle for the sun. A nice circle there, maybe a little bit bigger than I want, that gives me a little bit of white to blend and then I'm going to take this wonderful yellow here, just go around the sun, go in that oval shape, fill in slowly. that eye shape that looks like the sun and then see, you know, I don't think I used this last time, but I'm attracted to this color, so I'm going to put it in there, it's a little bit lighter and I'm going to use this color with the hoping to desaturate my orange a little bit because I don't want orange.

To be super bright it needs to be nice and soft, so I don't want to go overboard with the orange and I think I'm going to try this color here for the orange. This is the first color I used for orange. I'm just going to add a little bit of this here and you know what I feel like there should be some pink here so I'm going to grab this light pink here and I'm just going to go in and add a little bit of pink and I think this will help make the transition to purple a little better.

It's all experimentation and let's see. I'm going to start with this very light lavender. I'm going to use it to kind of mix it up a little bit, make that pink and that orange start to turn into a little bit of purple, this lavender color could be a really good color used in this piece, I'm thinking because it just, uh, just, It's just a perfect color to fade those pinks, oranges and yellows into purple because you don't really think too much about going from yellow to purple because yellow is actually the complement of purple and if you mix complementary colors you always get brown so you have to.

Be careful of bringing those complementary colors too close to each other. The same goes for blue and orange. Blue and orange are complements, so they mix and form brown. So keep that in mind as if you were just starting out. To get a little bit more lavender, darker lavender violet, so I want to move away from the orange a little bit so as not to overdo it, let's take a little bit of lavender into the clouds here a little bit there. let's go and I'm going to switch to a little bit of gray, kind of a medium gray, we'll start to bring in some contrast here and on this side as well and let's add a little bit of shadow to our clouds up here in the sky. a little bit and I'm not really going to go for any details right now, I'm just blocking my colors in yet, so if you know if you go into the details too early, what's going to end up happening is when you mix them together, they're all just going to disappear, so it's going to take you a lot longer to try to incorporate those details from the beginning and then when you go to mix them up you're just going to make them disappear again and you're going to have to do them all over again, plus having to do them again because you started them too early, you're also going to start You'll notice that your pastel painting becomes a little cloudy, this is it.

One complaint I've heard a few times from people is that they don't understand how I can put all this color here and when I blend because you'll see me, I'm like going all over the place uh with my blend is how my piece doesn't end up muddy the reason why that doesn't end up muddy is because I'm slowly building up the colors and getting closer to the details if I were to go in here and add all these colors that I need just for this detail in the cloud that will eventually appear and then I go combining them and then I make each little detailed section a At the same time, what will end up happening is everything. the colors are going to start blending into each other and everything is going to be wrong and that's how you get that muddy look so avoid it by approaching the details slowly if you are working on the details and you haven't even got the second layer down then you will You're approaching the details too quickly, so take your time.

Oh thank you Tracy, yes, if you enjoy this tutorial or are enjoying it, be sure to share the video. A thumbs up so you know I'm doing something right because I'm planning on making this

live

cake tutorial a regular thing but I only plan on making it a regular thing if people enjoy it so I hope you're enjoying it so far and by giving it a Thumbs up, you'll let me know that, in general, people are enjoying it. Okay, let's go back to some gray here. I'm going to go back to this medium gray. and my sky up here is still too saturated, so I'm just going to do a light layer of gray here, just a little bit of gray in the sky and you know, I'm not feeling that blue, I feel like the blue needs a little bit of purple, like this what I'm trying to think of, let's see here, I think I'm going to go with this, this one has a subtle amount of purple in it, let's see, let's see how it looks, yeah, that's the one. a little purple, where else can I use this blue?

I think there's a little hole in the clouds coming this way, so I'm going to add a little bit of this blue coming through the clouds and I'm going to use this blue to just add a little bit of saturation to this dark gray that I went with. a little crazy here, bringing in just a little bit of saturation, that's one of the biggest obstacles to overcome when we're working with landscapes, this doesn't just refer to pastels, it's landscapes in general and that's controlling their saturation levels, If you're not sure what saturation is, it's the intensity at which the color, for example, let me, let me.

Just giving you a quick example of what would be a good color for green. Green would be an excellent color. Well, look at this green here, it's super vibrant, almost neon green. Now let's look at a counterpart to this, so let's take this one here. So when it comes to value, value just refers to if you were to change the image I'm showing you to black and white, these would have a pretty close value, meaning it's a scale from black to white and all that middle gray and in the middle. but when it comes to saturation, saturation is a little different.

Saturation is the intensity of the color where you can see, this is almost like a neon, but it's a little washed out, it looks a little washed out, like you took this color and mixed it together. with a lot of white you would get this color, which is the difference between saturations and controlling your saturation on your paper is very, very important when you're creating landscapes because if you over saturate like I mentioned before, which is why I started adding gray it's going to look artificial and it's not going to look real it's not going to create that scene that you want it's all about lighting it's all about lighting when it comes to landscapes and controlling your saturation could I give you a little bit? tips on how to store finished pastel work, preferably in a way that it is still easy to see and not put it away if that makes any sense, well let's see, let me aside from my video on how to store and protect pastels, I understand that what in my video I cover how to store cakes.

It's strictly designed for this, I just want to protect it and that's all you can modify the way I show you in that video by just creating folder storage almost like a foam board. where you create a sort of flip book of your cakes and all you would have to do is lay out a foam board, put your cake pieces under some glassine paper and then you could continue layering them where you go with foam board, pastel paints, glassine paper, foam board with more pastel paints, glassine paper and you continue with that pattern and then what you can do is just tape one side of all the foam boards and that way you can lift up the top foam board. you can lift up the top glassine paper and see your work and then you can continue flipping through it as if it were a book, of course you will have to do this quite delicately and you will need to tape your cake pieces to each foam. board layer isn't exactly the most economical way to store all your pastel paintings depending on the scale you're creating at, but storing them to keep them safe and be able to see them easily without you knowing you're framing them and hanging each of them on the wall could be the best option. um, you can possibly think of another creation. uh I literally came up with that at the top based on your question.

This idea occurred to me that I never thought of. I've done it before, but since I keep all my pastels in a drawer to maintain space, I'm going to start mixing again anyway and like I said, I always have a piece of paper towel to wipe off the excess pastel. that I have. I was pre-mixing and I see it has a little bit of blue in it and you can always. I like to take it on the side of my tape and rub it there too to test it if you have a part of the paper that you don't have. used, but you can always brush it.

I'm going to cover a lot, so yeah, you can see how dark some of the areas are and I definitely don't want that on my target, so actually what I'm going to do. What I need to do is turn this sponge over now that I have a nice clean side and start in the sun, start with that circle again and just blend all the colors very gently. I'm going to try to keep that circular shape. as round as possible so as not to have a strangely shaped sun, although it won't matter too much with this particular piece simply because I'm adding a tree right in front of the sun, but just a yes or no. you decide to change the position of your tree maybe you like the sun shine much more and you don't want to block it with a tree now you should be able to see it at least in this area of ​​the sun because I added more layers of the pastels I'm getting a much softer mix and much more consistent than what we had with the first coat and you will notice that as you continue to apply coats, everything becomes smoother and much better.

I try to stay in my color scheme here before continuing. Let's go to the purple, now I'm going to start blending into the purple area a little bit slowly, working from the center point trying to stay away from that dark gray that I added there and let's go up here to the clouds, I don't really. I don't think it added too much to the clouds. I leave them alone for a moment. Now I'm going to go in from the sides. add a little bit of this dark gray and when I fade that dark gray, it's just going to desaturate my colors a little bit and give it a little bit of darker value, which is exactly what I want to add darker by adding the value Darker around the edges are what helps the sun look like it's starting to shine.

Hey, how regularly do I do these streams? So I try to think about when the last live tutorial I did on cakes was. I'm not sure if you heard me for a moment. ago, but I mentioned that you know, if you give the thumbs up to the video and I see that a lot of people are enjoying these live tutorial demos, I would like to do these live pastel paintings regularly, but only if it's beneficial. For a good amount of people, if no one sees them or enjoys them, there's really no motivation to continue making them, so the last one I made was last year, I think maybe in the fall or something, I've only made three, maybe time four. of these aside from patreon, so for those of you who are new to my channel or new to my live streams or anything, I have a patreon page whereI do live tutorials every Friday and I don't just make pastels, I make colored pencils.

Apparently I also do graphite now, the last project we did is graphite, so every Friday the answer to your question is how often do I do live tutorials, but when it comes to pastels in particular, I don't do many, I haven't . I've done a lot of them but I've been missing working with pastels because I really enjoy, I really enjoy making pastel paintings, they're so fun to work with and they're so friendly and you literally don't have to have any skills to create something really nice with them, so I want to make it a regular thing that I do these live pastel paintings because it gives everyone a chance to ask their questions and hopefully learn something from me and get motivated maybe.

I am trying cakes for the first time and if you want to try cakes for the first time or are new to the world of cakes and just want to improve again, let me reiterate that I sell an introductory cake course on my website and at the link to that's in the description. It's about a five hour course and I'll take you through five different landscape projects, adding a bit of more advanced techniques near the end along with some wildlife for those of you who want to add some wildlife. to your landscapes so now I'm blending in some of the darker areas now that I've made all things lighter you can start to see the skies it's the sky that's starting to have a little bit of depth uh with the values darker in In the upper section in the dark blue area you can see that the sky, the blue part of the sky, is being pushed back a little bit, while this lighter part of the cloud is coming forward and you can see how much it is add that second.

The layer created a better overall softness in the color range in the sky, uh, so the Rembrandt set that I'm currently using is the half bar 90 set. I didn't want to go too overboard with this set because it wasn't. I never used it before, but I'm wishing I had it and bought it as the largest set possible because these cakes are really great. I'm already a big fan of these cakes. they blend well, they feel great, I just like holding them between my fingers because they feel so soft they almost feel like you could squeeze them and they would be a little gummy like a kneaded eraser because they are so soft feeling, um, okay, everyone Anyway, going back to the sky here, let me re-evaluate my colors here, okay, I'm going to bring a little bit more of this lavender color, this light lavender color towards the clouds, here it starts to build up. the clouds a little bit more, I'm just going to scrape off some fluff for the clouds and this will probably be the last kind of base layer that I need, but we'll see, no, I'm not going to use details, but I'm still blocking out the general shapes here, three coats is usually where I can stop, uh, really, anything that takes you beyond three coats, chances are you're not adding enough color for each coat, so it's no, it's not unlikely that you'll go past three. coats, it's just that if you apply enough color at once, you're less likely to go beyond three coats.

You can almost always do everything you need in just three coats. For the base layers, okay, I'm just talking about the base layers, so I probably won't go any further than this with my base layers and then I can move on to a little more detail, especially with the texture. in the clouds but you don't want to add too much texture let me do that make that statement now I always always direct always um I always stay away from adding too much texture to my sky even if the clouds are really very detailed, you know, you have those big cumulus clouds with the , you know, the lumps and things like that, um, because I always want to draw more attention to the foreground than to the sky itself, the sky, as beautiful as it should look, is always secondary when it comes to the foreground in my eyes, that's just my opinion okay let's see I want to bring it in I'm going to bring a little bit more purple around the side so I'm going to take this darker purple just bring a little bit more purple on the sides here because that gray that gray did a great job of desaturating it, but it almost did too good a job, so I'm just going to bring in a little more purple. to bring this purple a little bit closer to my orange here living on the edge, but that's going to be kind of a darker cloud creeping in from the left, so just scraping off that purple a little bit, maybe here under this cloud as well.

Okay, you know, I don't even know what this color is. It looks like a dark purple. I'll try. It's like a very dark purple, but it looks like it could almost be a brown. Don't know. I don't know what color it is, but I'm going to try it on paper and I like it, it's yes, this is like the color that has been missing all the time and that gives me the value that I want there. I'll even add the border here in the sky and to the cloud. I don't know what this color is supposed to be.

It has a grayish purple tint, but it turns out I wanted to do it. Try it and it turned out to be like the missing link to my heaven. One thing, I mean, there are a lot of things I love about cakes, but when it comes to their forgiveness, you can, you can, I could probably get away with it. like put a stripe of green in the sky right there and you could add color on top of it and blur it out and it would look like it was meant to be there so never, ever, ever be afraid to go in there with some colors that you're not sure about because those Uncertainties can be corrected very easily, especially in this case where I thought: I don't know what color it is, but I'm going to try it and it turns out that the missing color that I was unconsciously looking for in our sky is starting to come together now that I'm increasing the contrast more and more and let's see, I'm going to incorporate something. of this light purple here at the bottom and let's see, I want uh, I think I want this color, there's a kind of subtle red-orange that happens in the clouds up here, so I'm going to use peach to bring in that subtlety a little bit, let's see here I want I want a little bit more orange, I think, so I'm going to add just a few hints of orange that come here and then I'm going to take a little bit of that yellow, what was that yellow? oh yeah, this amazing yellow here, come over here add a little bit more of this yellow, I think I even go up to the clouds and just give some of these lower clouds just a little bit of yellow to make them shine, let's save that and let's see here .

I'm going to look at this, I mean, this looks white, okay, it's ivory, okay, that's a bad location. I feel like ivory should always be right next to white, so you know it's ivory and I'm going to use ivory. I'm going to use ivory instead of white. Ivory just has this more subtle, it's like white with it's like a 99 white 1 1 light yellow like that, that's essentially ivory in a nutshell, I'm just going to hit some of the brighter spots in the sky here we go, let's see, it's a kind of a streak that happens right above the sun, it's hard to see, but it's like a break in the sky where a little more light comes in and then down, it's going to bring a kind of lower brightness and this will help the mountains stand out a little bit more so this glow will be right behind the mountains just down at the bottom okay I think I think I'm good at blending um I feel like they're missing a gray yeah I feel like they're missing maybe like a lighter shade of gray I don't know maybe I found it here, let's see, I just need a little bit more gray in these clouds here so they're not so boring, give them a little more dimension and then in this area as well, just come here with this lighter gray there. come on and now I feel like the sky is too desaturated up there, so let me go in with this dark blue and just add another light scratch of blue here just to deepen the sky a little bit more and you know, I'm going to get even darker.

This works? I swear, this color does nothing. Well, there it is. I don't know what was happening. It still looks very strange. Okay, I don't know. So dark. This very dark blue. it has a kind of itchy feeling and it doesn't really want to show up as well as it looks, I'm adding a little bit of pressure like nothing is showing up, like it's not doing anything that's so strange, but if I use the border here, the border leaves to see it a little, that's super strange. I've never come across a cake that just doesn't want to do anything so weird that I'm not even going to use that color change.

Back to this, let's go and add just a little bit of dark gray, that's better, okay, I'm going to start in the middle here again, just bring those colors out towards the edge before I move on to my other darker colors. Come on, it's going to mix everything up. I'm going to go for the lightest clouds first, so like I said, this is going to be the last layer of base colors for the sky and then I'm going to go in and add a little bit of texture to the clouds just to give it that kind of final look that I'm going for. , yeah, it looks like, um, so it looks like with that cake that wasn't working, uh, that's incredibly soft.

It's super soft, I just want to hold it in my hand. It's so smooth that it doesn't even want to apply any of its color except on the edge, so that's a unique problem I've never had. come first, okay, now I'm going to bring out a little bit of that glitter that I added at the bottom, there we go and now I'm going to bring out a little bit of that darker purple that I applied around the edges, I'm slowly going to bring that color in. now if you start to see dust, if you start to see dust collecting on your paper, just ignore it, just pretend it's not there, that's the best advice I can give you, it will fall off when you do your vertical piece, um. you can, you can blow it gently or fan it, um, but don't try to smudge it, okay, don't try to smudge it, that will be a fatal mistake and your work will start to get muddier. than you'll ever want it to be, so do your best to ignore the dust, and if you can't, just gently blow on it, fan it, um, whatever you do, don't try to mix it in, okay?

What I liked so much about that dark purple, what did I do with it? It just doesn't look so dark anymore. I'll add more here. I really want these edges to be darker, so I'm going to add a little bit more here and here and even a little bit up here in the shadow of this cloud, there we go and then I'm going to blend it out. I want to add a little bit more contrast to the sides here so that this gives the sun a little bit of a brighter look and to do that I need more contrast around the sides now up here in the cloud instead of going vertically I'm going to touch it a little bit just to smooth it out, press it into the paper, there we go, I think that's good for the sky base layers.

Now I'm going to take that ivory color again and I'm going to start adding some fluff for the clouds very lightly and I'm just using the side of the cake using the shape of the cake to my advantage and I'm just lightly scraping in the direction that I'm looking. which the cloud texture goes, so this is where you can break the rules a little bit. A little bit of always going horizontally now I'm working in the direction that I see the cloud and this part up here has a nice bright highlight right around this edge and I'm just tapping with my finger. a little bit to soften the texture so I'm controlling the texture a little bit by removing some texture just by touching it with my finger that way it's not overkill this is where the magic happens with just the subtle reflections in the cloud that you get around the edges this will help focus the sky a little more.

Oh thanks Anish, I'm glad you enjoy my videos. I appreciate you letting me know, thank you very much. from that broken cloud up here in the sky a little bit well now we have to split this shadow back here so it doesn't look so flat and unnatural I'm not actually drawing anything, I'm just It's like adding a little squiggle of white or in this case ivory, just adding a little squiggle every now and then and then softening it with the touch of my finger so that the texture doesn't get overpowered or overdone, and there's kind of a sudden cloud coming down in this direction and then there's a fluffy one in the back and then we have this kind of soft cloud coming through here and then coming back up and this cloud here has some fluffiness coming out of the bottom, like this which I just add a little bit of that right there and then we have this fluffy white cloud that makes its way over here and connects and then we have a lighter part, not too light, we probably shouldn't even use this ivory color here. but it's okay, I'll blend it out a little bit with my finger.

I feel like this part of the shadow that I have up here is a little overwhelming, so I'm going to add a little more ivory color there. soften that shadow especially around the edges here I want those edges to be very rough now I think what I'm going to do is take I'm wondering if I should do gray actually I think I'm going to do this so That really nice dark purple that I found. I'm going to go in here and add some shadows. A little shadows. You have to be a little more careful. You don't want to overdo it.

Some of those long ones. thin clouds on the horizon, creep towards the sun, break away a little. I'm not even following the reference photo, I'm just adding the clouds where I feel like they should go and then we have this kind of zooming in a little bit towards the sun, there we go, now I'm going to take the white because this cloud here is very bright right in this area, goes all the way and just a little bit of whiteright there in the middle it highlights Those last few highlights in this big cloud up here and I think it's good for the sky.

I'm really pleased with the way it turned out, so the next thing we need to do is add them. The mountain range and the mountain range can be a little bit tricky because when you look at a photo that you use, you clearly see the mountains, you see them like you know there's a really stark contrast, but there's actually not that much contrast when it comes down to it. to the mountains, so you have to choose the colors carefully, the best, the best advice I could give you on how to make mountains that are in the distance.

When you're working, you know that most of the focus of this image is how pretty the sky is. You can see it, but a really good sky can be spoiled by the foreground very, very easily if the contrast is wrong and when it comes to trees, hills or mountains in the back, a general rule of thumb is to start with the colors you used first. in the sky um and I slowly make them fade as they go down so that dark purple that I used to create a lot of contrast in the sky, that's what I'm going to start with and since this is not the way I'm used to it, I think I'll go sideways like this and draw on the mountain range and I think this is actually more like hills with trees instead of mountains, but whatever, it'll look pretty much the same. like draw that clean sharp edge that's the first thing you want to do is get that nice clean edge for your hills, mountains, whatever they are, that's one of the most important things, get that clean edge there now, I'm, I'm.

I'm basically done with that color. I don't want to make my mountains any darker, so what I'm going to do is take the light lavender color and I'm just going to fill them in, leaving that top edge. so I'm just going to fill in my mountain here, give myself a lot of pigment to work with and then I'm going to highlight, so I'm going to go to that extra light lavender, so I feel like these colors. They are very similar, while this color has less white. I feel like this is this color with more white, so I like that they have this color section.

I'm going to go down here, just create a line. like this and now I'm going to blend mountains very, very quickly and easily and what I'm going to do is take that clean top edge and I'm just going to pull it down, that's how I'm going to start with this, I'm going to start by bringing it down like this and the goal here is to bring down some of that darker color and just start the process of generally blending these three colors here for things at the minimum distance. three colors absolute minimum, you can't get away with one, you can't get away with two, three color minimum, sure, and you might even want to, you might even need to add a fourth or fifth color, depending on exactly what Now I'm going to blend in horizontally and I'm always going to take your um, I'm always going to take your mountain range or your hills or whatever lower than they need to be because just like we did with the sky, we're going to cover it. the bottom parts are okay so they're not as bright as I want so I'm going to add a little bit of white down here and then on top of that white that light lavender color because they're not as light as I want I want the fog to come up .

In fact, I'm going to push it up a little bit before turning it horizontal. Now just go horizontal and that dark purple. I'm going to take that because there's a separation between these mountains or these hills. here's just one important little detail in the back, now it's time for the foreground and we're going to start with it, it's basically the sky, but it's grass instead, so we're going to start with our base colors and something like that. spread them out and the grass here mimics the sky quite a bit, so I'm actually going to start with that medium lavender color and I'm going to put my horizon line here to find that spot, that sweet spot that I want, let's go straight to the other side, I'm just going to add some of this just like we did with this guy, I'm going to keep it mostly horizontal to fill out the base information here, I'm going to take that light lavender color now when most people think of grass, they think of green, not a series of purples, but when working with landscapes, an important key to creating the setting is making all the colors appear to fit into the same scene, so if you have a very bright blue sky and you are coloring a pond, the pond is probably also be bright and blue because it will reflect the color of the sky well when it comes to a scene like this where you are dealing with grass or sand or something or just rocks whatever is on the ground reflects the colors of the sky so That the colors that occur in the sky determine the colors on the ground, so that's something to make sure you keep in mind when working with landscapes.

Well, I'm going to add a kind of reddish brown color. I don't think I will use this color again, but it is a nice color. contrasts with it, so it'll be nice to have it mixed in there, regardless of soft pastels being a great medium to use. I love them. Normally I paint with oils, but little by little I am preferring pastels. You know, I've always loved them. oil painting and I haven't been able to do it in a long time, but soft pastels, soft pastels definitely help me not miss it as much, yeah, they're a lot of fun to work with.

I feel like you don't need them. I don't really need any experience to create with soft pastels and I think that's what makes them so fun so I'm cleaning up the edge of my mountain here because I don't like the way it looks so I'm just blending it one more time before getting too caught up in the foreground and I can't really correct it, I think it's okay, let's add some browns, I think I'm going to go with this kind of a dark chocolate brown, yeah, yeah, I like it and let's go with a more brown clear.

I always feel like the floor is the easy part because you can just stack whatever color you feel at the time, really let's see, I really like it. that color that I just used I'm looking for uh let's go back to the lavender I think this is the color I'm looking for I'm just experimenting a little bit here mixing all these colors together will give me a better idea of ​​uh where I want my other colors to be okay, I think it's good for a first layer, so let's go ahead and blend this to see where we are with this, let's start with my lightest colors first, I'm not that particular about the background when it comes to blending, you know, go through to light colors, back to dark colors and then light again because as long as everything fits together, that's all you're really looking for when it comes to these kind of grassy plain type landscapes and right now it looks like a very poorly colored body of water is really flat and uninteresting the contrast in color and in value there is another type of contrast and that is the contrast in texture and when we start adding the texture of our grass it will make it stand out much better from the sky, but first let's make sure we have the colors right, so I'm going to go back to that dark purple, I think I'll start building a little bit more. of the shadows I love that dark purple that's going that's the color of the day for sure that just holds this piece together is the glue is the glue that's holding this piece together right now we have some shadows there what I What I'm going to do now is take some of my pastel pencils and what color are we going, so I'm going to use carbothello color 642 and I'm just going to come back here to the horizon and start drawing. bushes trees what not just some jagged lines no real details uh we just give it a little bit of vertical texture here on the back every now and then we just scribble a little bit a little detail there and I probably could have used maybe a dark gray , a medium gray to a darker medium gray, something similar to the center of my mountains here, okay, I think that's good, I'm just going to turn it down a little bit and press those textures. on the paper a little bit there and let's go with a darker tone now, so I'm going to grab, let me see here, I think I'm just taking this medium gray, I'm going to give it a quick touch, there we go.

I'm just going to use this medium gray to go around this horizon and basically do the same thing, maybe add some more interesting details, a couple of trees, but still the basic technique of building just a little bit of depth here and I'm working right underneath. the previous color I used and this one is, the color is 726, by the way, carbothello pencils, if you don't have them, if you've been making pastels for a while or you're just getting into them and you don't I don't have the full set of Carbothello pencils . Don't waste money on smaller games.

Get only the full game. They cost like a dollar per pencil. They are so cheap. They are so incredibly cheap it's mind boggling, I don't get it, I really don't, you can spend 300 on a set of Luminance colored pencils, but it's only 60 for a full set of carbotellos, and carbotellos are essentially the best. um pastel pencils that you can get there's really no better brand okay let's make this detail a little less simple and add some bigger bushes in there and then maybe over here we'll just create a little little patch of trees now pastel pencils tend to scrape off a little extra dust so just blow gently or ignore it you have multiple options there okay uh let's see here I think I'm going to go for a darker brown maybe maybe this one yeah I'm going to go for a nice deep dark brown, this is six six three five and now I'm going to be a little bit more picky with my details here, so this color will show through. up a little bit more, so I'm going to put a little bush here and maybe maybe a tree with, you know, some other smaller trees in the back, you can go as crazy as you want with this part, really, um only. work on, you know, a layer right below what you were creating beforehand, yeah, let's just add a bush here, just a little doodle, now let's go down here and add another one, another tree, some little bushes and all that back here um, yeah, maybe another one. tree right here and I'm not even trying to be really super precise with my trees, you know, I'm not going to go in there with any kind of precision, these are all background objects and I'm going to smooth them out a little bit by just tapping down with my blender like this, let's go to one more color, so I'm going to use the 760 and I'm going to go down here, I'm going to add a nice tree right here and this tree will go all the way like this and then smaller branches will come off and then a big canopy and pretty like this.

I'm just scribbling little circles for the foliage on the top of the tree, nothing special at all and let's put another tree right behind it a little further back in the distance so a little thinner, there we go and I don't know maybe let's add that there isn't one in the reference photo, but I'm going to add a tree here too, a little bit smaller, maybe further in the distance, like that, there we go and now we're going to create a little bit of texture on our grass, but We're just going to really focus. on this top half of the grass very, very lightly and I'm going to start.

I think I'll see if I like this color. I'm going to use this edge here and I'm just going to Scrape Vertically maybe, actually, since this edge is so clean, I'm just going to hit it right on the edge and it's going to create these really little vertical lines that are going to create the illusion of grass, so just touching that edge along like in a line and I'm going to continue to make this not the most fun part of working with pastels when it comes to just touching little dots everywhere, but it adds the texture that you need to bring focus to the foreground and that edge is already getting kind of flat, so I'm going to have to start drawing the little lines instead of touching my edge, which got a little boring there, if you guys have any. questions feel free to ask, I'm happy to answer any of your questions if you have any and they've been streaming for a while so if you've enjoyed them, you've been enjoying the tutorial and you'd like to see more of these just be sure to like the video so I know you enjoyed it because otherwise I don't know if you really want to see more videos like this personally.

I would love to do more of these live tutorials because I love working with cakes and I love teaching so okay now I'm just going to use the side unlike my square cakes since these are rounded I don't have the um. For the effect that I'm used to, I always like to use a sharp edge because I have the squares and then I just push the edge down and scrape it and it creates a really nice grass texture, but here I don't do that. I don't really have that opportunity with these cylindrical shapes. I'm not going to go too much into the details here because it's a little bit in the distance, so I'm going to go a little bit flatter and just create some levels of highlight. where the grass is going to be a little bit brighter here, I think I'm even going to grab a little bit of that ivory color, just highlight it right there where the sun is going to be brightest, right now, for the really fun part, I'm going to grab this. pencil here I'm going to take a piece of glassine paper because I need a little bit of control here and we're going to live a little bit and I'm going to draw a tree right here here in the middle and I'm using that color 760 again in case youyou ask, let's see the branches of my trees come here like this and then there will be one that curls like this.

All these branches are very gnarled and twisted, so I have to write. from moving my hand and turning it a little, turning the pencil to get a nice clean edge, now the sun comes and I'll fill it all in. I'll fill this tree with just a bunch of gnarly lines. I'm going to let it be a sort of bald tree, so the key is to get the shape of the canopy without adding any foliage, so I just have to keep adding more and more lines as I go. I'm going to fill in the The tree trunk here maybe widen that base a little bit.

I'm wondering why you prefer soft pastels for white grass instead of just using a pastel pencil. Well, that's a good question. I for the back, so there's just a little bit of texture appears back here because I'm creating what's called depth of field where the focal point is here on this tree and I use the pencils for the last few blades of grass that I put it completely up. on the front so they're really crisp and clean, so for the back I try to keep them a little bit softer, which is why I like to use these soft pastels instead of pencils for that, but great question, I appreciate you doing that, but That's the reason I don't use the pencils for the back because I'm not trying to create any really clear texture, I'm just trying to create a sort of grassy texture feel as I get it. closer to the edge of each little branch, I just slowly lift my pencil so that it narrows away from the line, it narrows, let's see, I think I need another branch to come out right around here, I think that's about this for the branches main things now what I have to do is just come here and add real little twisting twigs, many of them gnarled according to this reference photo, oh okay, they're slowly coming to life here with this tree and then once add the grass in the foreground I think this piece will be complete so I would say maybe another 10 or 15 minutes and this piece will be complete so I really hope you learned a lot I hope you enjoyed the tutorial so I can I justify doing more in the future, honestly, I wouldn't be.

I wouldn't be totally against trying to do this weekly. I even considered not doing the drawing journals anymore and just doing live tutorial demos. I think the hard part would be not doing it. live streams, but I come up with new ideas every week, so I don't know if I could do it every week, but I would certainly like to do it more in the future. Okay, now what I need. Do I need to grab another color and the color I need to grab is going to be a super bright orange to make some of these branches crossing in front of the sun and maybe even a little bit darker orange around the edges and now my black pencil to get some of that contrast there we go, I think that's it, I think that's pretty good, yeah, I think it works for the tree, I'm going to save it, put my pencil away for now and take a little bit of let's see here, I think I'm going to go with that purple again, that dark purple, I'm just going to scratch up the overall texture of the grass a little bit before I switch to pencils and I'm going to blend it, I'm going to blend this grass, so I'm going to make a sort of texture layer and then I'm going to blend this grass and instead Instead of doing it horizontally, I'm going to do it more vertically just to bring out that subtle grass-like texture as you get closer. and closer to the bottom of your page you need to create longer and longer pencil strokes pastel grass strokes make sure you try to vary the direction so vary the direction of your grass you don't want to go in one direction because then it looks Well, it just doesn't look natural and the way I like to start from the bottom and then move up, that gives you that nice tapered line that gives it that more grass-like shape.

I would consider it between tutorials and drawing journals. It's a great idea. Coffee Cat, I think would probably be more ideal, so every two weeks, do a drawing journal and then the week off, do the live demo tutorial. Thanks Olivia, I'm glad you enjoyed the tutorial. I appreciate it, okay, let's change the colors now. I think I'm going to go a little darker, so I'm going to take this dark brown. I'm just going to add some dark brown grass here and I can't. forget about our light grass, so I'm going to add some light purple stripes, there we go, now I'm just going to blend it in and I'm just going to brush it down just to soften it up a little bit.

The reason I do this is that it creates layers of texture, so when you have this kind of base layer of texture it looks pretty good, I mean in my opinion this grass looks pretty good, some people might even stop here , but you like how you layer color to create that depth. Here we're creating a sort of texture layer where the texture is softened slightly, it's almost like it's out of focus and then you create a little bit more focus. texture on top of that and you can even blend that a little bit and then add even more texture on top of that and keep it nice and crisp and then you have kind of a layering effect with all your texture and it gives you a lot more, it gives you a lot more depth. with any cr, any texture that you're creating, so in our case with the grass here, doing this helps create layers of texture that just give it more depth overall, okay, I'm going to take this lavender color and do a little bit of lavender grass now and cross the base of that tree a little bit more, push that push, push the base of that tree into the ground just a little bit, there we go, just balance those colors. just find what you like when it comes to grass, create the depth.

I'm going to go back to that dark brown. I'm going to start incorporating a little more of this into the front to create a little more contrast. around these edges there we go and let's do another smooth blend of this texture, don't push too hard, you don't want to get rid of all the grass and you don't want to, you don't want to do anything that looks cloudy I just want to build that depth of texture, okay, let's change to pencils now and I think I'm a little limited with my choice of purple color here with my pencils, I don't have that lavender color, I'm going to see what this looks like yeah, I don't like that one, come on, let's go a little yellow, I think yeah, let's go with a little bit of yellow, so this color here is kind of a cream color, it's 105.

I'm going to go in here. Add some nice long pieces to the pencil when you're using it so you don't have to sharpen it every five seconds to have a nice sharp point. You will see that I constantly rotate the pencil, maybe I will. So naturally now it's a little hard for you to see me do it because I do it so fast, but I'm constantly rotating the pencil with each stroke, back and forth, you can see my hand doing this over time. that's why I hold the pencil so strangely if you were, if you're wondering why I have such a strange grip, remember that as you get closer to lengthening the grass, of course, it depends on the type of grass you're on.

The color Obviously, if the grass has been mowed, it will be less exaggerated and long. Okay, let's go for a darker color now, so no, I don't want that one, I want this one, so I'll go with that one. 760. brings in some of my darker spots again, especially in this shadow here from the tree, so this is the actual shadow that's cast from the tree, let's highlight that shape a little bit more and add some different types of levels in the part from the back I'm just going to draw some lines that way so that the floor looks a little uneven, which is more natural to expect some uneven spots on the back, there we go and you know what I think, what I want to add.

What I want to add to this is just a little bit of foliage or bloom, so what I'm going to do and I've shown this in a previous tutorial, so I'm going to take my x-acto knife and I'm just going to scrape a little bit, I'm going to scrape gently a little bit of powder here, it will create little flowers, little flowers, little ones and just bring this piece together completely, but don't go overboard. and you know what, let's have a little fun here, let's think about a color that could appear here maybe like a bright red so let's incorporate something like a subtle muted orange, I think that will be a good option. just a little bit of this orange, almost nothing at all and then the best complement to the purple, like I said, is yellow, so let's add some really pretty yellow bits, just a touch of yellow flowers in the background to complement the purple there Let's go and just bring it, it just brings life to the weed and you're probably wondering, well, isn't that dust going to come off?

Yes, it will, so we take a piece of glassine paper and just rub it on. You don't have to apply any pressure, just place a piece of glassine paper, run your finger over it very gently and that's it, you have your little flowers, all good, that's it, the landscape is complete. I hope you enjoyed this tutorial a lot. I have to thank everyone who came, saw it and was with me. Remember, like I said, if you enjoyed it, like the video if you want to learn more from Pat about cakes. I do. I have a cake course.

I have the link in the description. I sell it on my website. It has five landscapes that I guide you through. It lasts approximately five or six hours. Other than that, you can also join me on Patreon if you want to learn. A little more than pastels, I also do graphite and colored pencil tutorials. I have the links to all the products I use today in the description if you want to get your hands on them, but other than that, I hope you can. you guys had a great time, probably not as much fun as me, I really enjoyed this one, it was a lot of fun, so I'm going to, oh right, lady marigold, oh my gosh, I'm so glad you mentioned that, um, here I am .

I'm about to log out of the live stream and I completely forgot. The most enjoyable part of all this is the recording. You're right. I'm so glad you mentioned that because I almost forgot and I can't believe it. I almost forgot my favorite part of making this, so here's going to be how pretty it looks without this ugly, gross ribbon on the edge. This is my favorite part. Yes, I'm really glad you mentioned that it looks better now. It is not like this? those that get those clean edge lines just make the work look so complete and so nice, there you go, that's not the most satisfying thing.

I love removing the tape. It was almost a little greedy there and I kept it just for myself, so I'm glad they mentioned that. Anyway, that's all for today, so I'll see you next time, take care, peace.