Chalk pastels for beginners - A ladybug and an owl

1. Chalk pastels Overview intro: Welcome to chalk pastels for beginners. We have a lot of projects for you. This is ah, whole Siri's. And in this series, we're going to touch a lot of different topics. We'll start with a sailboat, a simple, easy shape. While you're learning about chalk pastels, you're going to be learning drawing techniques as well. So have fun. We're going to just start with a very small, easy drawing and then work our way to, ah, harder drawing like this one. This is the second in the Siri's Ah, bigger boat and a sailboat as well. I just love this drawing. We're also going to have a Christmas section. We're going to have Holly, which is very, very easy, and the Christmas goose both projects you can do within an hour. If you follow these instructions really carefully, then we'll do a winter landscape. Then we'll do a winter landscape, a simple drawing with just a sky snow in a few trees, a summer drawing, a summer landscape. We're going to add greens and yellows and beautiful colors. It'll be really fun. You'll even learn how to do clouds. Then we do an autumn landscape just like this one and that's even simpler. Simple lines, simple shapes. You'll see that designing your own chalk pastels when you're done is going to be. A breeze will be creating ah, whole painting with these two apples, the green and the red, and it's just beautiful, beautiful colors each time you learn new techniques. And here's a brand new technique to it's gonna be an easy one, learning to bland learning to draw learning to layer for each of these pastels. By the end of the series, you'll be able to create beautiful chalk pastel drawings slash paintings that are just outstanding. This owl will take you less than an hour once you have the techniques down. Chalk pastels for beginners This is another section will be doing flowers. I just want you to see what will be doing and the rose. We'll be doing so many great projects that are easy and fun, and each one will be wonderful and you'll learn brand new techniques in each and you'll repeat some techniques in each. But once you have covered all the whole Siri's, what will happen is you'll have all the basic techniques you need to do Chalk pastels on your own and these air chalk pastel techniques that every pastel artist uses, and they'll be easy and simple and no problem at all. You'll be able to create wonderful artwork with chalk pastels, So join me in my Siri's chalk pastel for beginners will be covering flowers, last capes, apples, animals, even boats, and it'll be a great fun for you in my Siri's. 2. Intro ladybug and owl : chalk pastels for beginners, A ladybug in an owl. Here we are going to create our first animals. Now we'll start with the ladybug because she's the easiest and then the owl is a little more difficult, so we'll go from there. What you will need is one box of chalk pastels, one piece of dark construction paper or pastel paper for pastel artists in the smile. Things always go better when you smile. Here is the Lady Buck. Now let's watch the video and see how it's done. 3. -Chalk pastels The paper: welcome back. Choosing your paper now. Pastel paper comes in a variety of sizes and colors, and for those projects, and for most beginners, you can use construction paper again. The same theory applies by the best you can afford and that the results will show the difference. You really do get what you pay for. Now, watch this video and see what pastel paper looks like and at the same time what you do with it once you get it. So here's a sheet of paper becoming a fairly large size, and then all you have to do is to fold it and tear it to the size you want. You can use scissors, but most artists what they do is they tear the paper. They like to see that Dekel edge. Somehow it's a little more artistic, so you just fold and wrap the edge if you need to, and then gently tear the paper, see how easy that is and it doesn't take long. It's the right size, so I want a certain size. I'm going to fool that one just a wee bit smaller on one side and larger on the other. Now there's a certain size I like just for demo ing, and that's what I'm going to tear it to. So now I have my size that I like. And one side is pebbly and the other side is smooth. You can choose the size you like. They come in all kinds of colors. These papers I have my sketch paper and my paper that I'm going to do the work on. 4. Chalk pastels Fixing your pastels: fixing your pastels by fixing, I mean stopping them from smudging because chalks are really easy to smudge. You've probably noticed that. And if you love your project, this is a way to keep it safe. So let's watch the video. Here's hair spree that's one of the ways you can fix your pastel Onley have to do is just spray it on. There are a few drops, and it's scary at first, because when it's wet, it looks like you've messed up your pastel. So I'm just going to show you, um, one side done with Hairspray and the other side done with a special spray. No, my hair spray bottle seems to be stuck. I haven't used it for a long time, and here we go, see how it's scary when you spray it on. Looks like you've messed up your whole drawing, but once it dries, it'll be okay. The other is to use a special fixative. It's called retouching fixative, and even though you you fixed your pastel a remember that you can keep drawing on it if you want. So here I spray and you can see the spray is more even. Now. The downside of the commercial spray is that it smells really bad, and it's better to do outdoors rather than indoors. The other option is to just put your pastel up on the wall and let the humidity fix it itself. I live in a dry climate, so I can't do that. I would have to leave my postal up for months, but that's your options. See you in an expert. 5. Ladybug part 1: lady back now What we're going to do is create something very simple and easy, and we start with just a piece of construction paper and some chalk pastels. Now I chose a sandy color chalk because it's easy to blend in. You make a circle and then an eye shape with a rectangle. At the end. You use that same chalk, and what you're going to do is just use the sign off the chalk and make three swishes off color there. Then you changed to a light green and make three more swishes and keep going. The ideas to change color often and then cover the whole black surface of the paper. We choose black construction paper because it's it will make the colors brighter, and it's a lot more fun if the colors are brighter. Now we add after the dark green, some light blue. And as you can tell, I have speeded up the video a little bit. The very last color is the dark brown, and you added in whatever space is left on the black paper and you keep going just like that, that is the last color you will add, and then you take your finger and make little tiny circles all over the color. You want to blend the green with the blue and the two kinds of green and the beige in the brown and blend it all together and hide all that black paper. It makes for a beautiful background, and it makes it look like the leaf that the ladybug is on is blowing in the wind. That is the very basic step that you need to do. Not very difficult. You will do this step and then we'll watch the other video to show you how the second step is done. So do this step now and we'll see you in the next video. Have fun now, Remember, if there's a bit of chalk, don't blow on it. It's not good for your health. Just tapped onto the paper. 6. Ladybug part 2 : the ladybug park to know you're going to work from the outside in, you're going to smooth the background, and then you'll work on the eye shape, which is really a leaf. What you're going to do is lay your chalk down and then fill that space with green. Just make long, smooth marks and then add dark green on one side like green on the other side and fill it in notice. I'm not using the tip of the chalk. I'm using a side of the chalk, and that part is important and you fill in the hole I shape with the leaf, which is the leaf, and then the little rectangle as well. Just like that. And this time you're not going to make circles. You're going to take your index finger, and you're just going to smooth it out. I'm adding a little bit of blue here for shadow so that the ladybug is creating a shadow. Now here's the finger part. I rub gently to mix those the blue and the dark green and light green and a nice smooth. I glide my finger down to smooth the pest, tell everywhere, so I smooth it down And there we are. We have the leaf Now the next part will be the ladybug herself. But see how smoothing it out that way creates an automatic upside and a downside with a shadow. Now you can always go back and re draw your shape. If you're losing the shape that often happens when I'm working with students, the shape gets lost. So here we go. We're just smoothing down the shape and actually just leaving it that way. Fourth, a ladybug. What we will do is just at the chalk itself and not smooth it out. I take the time at this point to smooth anything out that is necessary because you cannot touch it after that, so I'll create some veins. I've decided I need beans and I just add little marks. I don't want those marks to be sharp, so I smoothed them out and make them soft so they look like they're there. But they're not the important part of the project, and so that's looking more and more just like a leaf. The next part is adding just touch ups around the leaf. If I lost any edge of this is a good time because after this we really don't touch any of the background any of the leaf at all. What you do is what it will be. So make sure you do those touch ups right away. Now, next part is adding the red. I take the flat side of the chalk and I feel in the space. And I really, really make that space very red and just press and go over it several times. This is part two. You will be doing this part and then we'll see you in the third section. See how I'm adding the chalk and I'm not going to smooth it with my finger. So I used to talk to really create that dark red that you see lots of red and just keep going and make sure that red works So we'll see you in the next section. 7. Ladybug part 3 : part three. We have done the touch ups. We have put red in the center just like that, and now we're going to start to add details when you have too much, just just tap it like I just did there. The next step is the black, so you're going to take your chalk pastel and used the edge and just add a line that goes through the middle from one end to the other. Now you're going to add a small half circle at the end of one off the line. One end of the line, I mean and create the head off the lady bunk. Now every lady buying has two eyes that are two more half circles. So you just add them on top, just like that. And there you are. You've created the center of the ladybug and two eyes on a hand. Now the polka dots on the ladybug you can choose. You can put as many or as few as you want. If you're working with young kids, it's a good idea to limit the number of dots on the ladybug, because sometimes that gets overwhelming. Just remember that if there's a dot on one spot on the ladybug on the opposite side, at almost the same place. But like a mirror image, you have another dot, and you're going to use the very pointy part off the chalk to get a nice edge there. That part is difficult sometimes, so just take your time and do a good job. Remember that the number of dots equals number, the age off the ladybug. And then these lengths are just little V shapes. And there's six of thumb and there's your ladybug. That's it. That's as hard as it gets for Lee to create a ladybug on the leaf. You might want to do a little bit of touch up just like that. But don't use your fingers. Don't rub. Just used the edge of the chalk. No, not very hard. I hope you had fun with this. So enjoy the process. Here are different versions. You have one lady bug another, and each day equals a different ladybug and the different kind of look. So when you do this several times, you'll never have the ladybug looking the same. Have fun 8. The Owl the drawing: M. Owl. Here we will learn new techniques. This is more like drawing unless spreading around the chalk with your fingers. It's all about adding layers and layers of color. I'm going to divide this video into baby steps, so the very first step is the drawing. No, again, we choose the chalk with the lightest color, and this is the sandy colored one, and we start with a circle at two triangles. Add a partial triangle and then two circles for the eyes. These chalks and this color are perfect for blending in now for the body. Then we add a few little marks, too. Start the layers of feathers. Do this step now and we'll see you in index section. 9. The Owl the feathers: final steps. We actually get to do the feathers now. So you just take a light brown to start with and just make marks. What you're really doing during this whole exercise is making marks and drawing. You're going to add layers and layers of chalk, and eventually it looks like feathers. So you started a little bit with the ears and a little bit of sandy color, and now you're going to add light brown. You're actually going to cover most of the surface in light brown. Here. I'm going to lay the chalk down to cover the area faster. I want the forehead or the top of the hand and the eyes to be dominant. I want those to show the most. So what you're going to do is at more distinct marks in that area, because uncovering the bottom part with less drawing, what's going to happen is I'm going to notice the detail left. The next part is actually light blue, and you do the same thing. You add marks, and you keep adding marks to show feathers. Remember what you're doing. You're adding layers and layers of gathering those layers is a great way to at depth, and I mentioned to your painting or I call this a painting. Some people call it drawing. They call pastels away to create artwork, and it's considered in the drawing category. Others consider the painting. It's really up to you. You're not using paint, but you're using pigment, and you're adding extra colors layer after layer. Right now, what you're adding is gray, so you're adding even more layers of gray. Remember that after you watch this video, what you're going to do is keep adding layers. Because I added maybe 34 layers doesn't mean you have to stop. You can add up to 20 layers if you want to. These layers are just extra way to add more depths. More color. The more layers, the better. If you have chalk pastel paper, what happens is you can add even more layers on construction paper. You're probably limited to 567 layers, but with chalk pastel paper, you can add many, many layers every once in a while. What you can do is take out your finger and blend some of those colors together. You can smooth out areas that you want less attention to and then add more detail to the layers. On top of that, there's no limit to the number of layers you can add when you're using chalk pastel paper. When you're using construction paper, those pores get filled up faster. The pores air smaller and the texture is last, so it catches less off the pigment, the chalk pastel pigment. So now I'm smoothing it out, and I'm trying to get rid of that by black background. And then I can add a few more details. So white is the next step. And remember, you don't add the colors equally. What you will do is add quite a bit of brown, a little bit less of blue, a little bit less of gray and even less of white. Add layer after layer, the beak and the eyes will be the main feature. They will be the area that everybody pays attention to, so those areas are around those areas. That's where you want the most information or the most detail. When I say the word information, I mean detail, so you really want to add a lot of detail to those areas. So now I'm just adding little tiny details that I want to make. It looks like the light is hitting the feathers and on the side there just a little bit of highlight so that our eyes taken from one area to the next. So now my, I will go from the eyes to the what I would call the cheekbones and then a little bit Teoh bottom layer and then back again. But my I will continually go towards the eyes because that's where there will be the most detail. I'd like to bland some of those feathers in and leave others with more sharp detail. Now, for the beak to beak is plain black, and I'll add it and it goes right over the I remember that the black you will not blend you will Onley draw and leave it as is, and part of the eye has black. You could leave the paper, but it does show it doesn't look as good as if you fill the paper with that pigment color. Once you have added the black stop, this is the end of this section and will go to the next section for the next step. We're adding a little bit of black and shaking off the powder. Do this now and we'll see you in the next section 10. The Owl Last details: Hi again. I rewound some of the video so that you could see how the beak was done and how the black was added again. Keep in mind that you cannot redo the black, or at least not very easily. So take your time and do it well. If you go over the edge, just take your time and use another color and cover it. But covering black is very difficult. Now we're adding yellow for the eyes. See how that makes the I pop out instantly. Ah, light against the dark and the eyes look sharp and I think by owl looks a little bit sleepy compared to the very first towel I did. Now he's the one in the back of the class that's falling asleep to my words. I hope you don't do that with this video, so you add very carefully you don't use your fingers to blend it. You only use the chalk itself. Remember to tap the chalk off when you have too much of it there, and then you keep adding to it. So I'm going to add a little bit of brown to the top around the black. Keep in mind that when you're doing these chalk pastels, everyone is different. You. If you do this project 10 times, you're going to have 10 different owls. It's never really the same every time I love doing this project in the classroom, because if you have 20 people, then you have 20 different owls. This is the step where you tweak very carefully and add little tiny details everywhere you go, so anything you don't like very much, this is the time to change it. You can add more feathers to the ears at more light around the sides of the owl like I'm doing now. You can and uh, maybe a bigger beak, so he looks more ferocious. Um, you can change it any way you like. It's really hard to change dark colors, so be very careful with changing the Dark's. But the lights are easy, easy to cover. Now you're going to use a little bit of white, and you want to create on, um, a contrast near the beat, because that's going to be the important part. So light against dark is one way to create contrast, so I'm adding little bits of white around the eyebrows, the tops of the eyes. They don't really have eyebrows. It's just that's the way I am talking about it. You want to catch little areas of white where the light is shining on your owl. You add also a bit off light on the beak. You know how big is rounded, and it catches the light. So when the light shines on it, there's one little tiny spot that's brighter than the rest that's called ah, highlight and you want create that highlight. It makes the owl look riel or more riel. Now, to create a highlight on the eyes. You take the chalk and you rub. Just take the pointy part and create one spot. See how that adds to the owl and makes it look more alive. If at any point right now, you're not happy with your health, this is the time to add little tiny details. So do that now, and we're actually done this project so we'll see you in the next video on chalk pastels. Have fun with your owl and we'll see you soon. 11. The Owl the background : Now this is another baby step. You're going to take the dark blue more like a royal blue, turn the chalk on its side and then feel the background. This is so easy and fast it, but the background is essential. It's really important that the background, uh, is filled in completely to hide all that dark paper. It will really set off the owl and make him look bright, and the attention will go all to the owl, and that's what you want. The background should be just that. A way to enhance the animal itself. Take your finger. Make tiny circles all around on the blue. A chalk. This is a way to put the pigment right into the little pours off the paper. It will help brighten the image and really solidify that color background. Do this step now and we'll see you in the next section. This is very important. Don't delay doing this Well. Remember to shake off the dust if there is any, and then it's the time to do those fine details. See you in the next section 12. Infomercial pastels: Welcome to my infomercial. It's all about pastels and using pastels. And just to let you know, there's a lot of history related to chalk, pastel and all this information I've taken from the Internet. You can go check it out and find this information yourself and even more. I just want to give you an overview of what you can do with chalk pastels. The very first pastel artist is Leonardo da Vinci. He was creating and making artwork in the 14 hundreds and early 15 hundreds. In those things, chalk pastels were used to sketch out paintings, frescoes, murals, all kinds of artwork, but rarely wasn't ever given any credit for being are an art piece by itself. But he started showing his drawings, and these were drawings in chalk pastels, and slowly he started the transition towards having chalk pastels as an art medium all by itself. Just a zone aside. He was known as the most innovative artists in the world ever known to man. He drew all kinds of different machinery. He did aren't working it painting in the murals. He did a little bit of everything. He blended science with art and made it wonderful, fair Lena, Victor Jane The Lack O. R. He's another one that used chalk pastels. Ah, lock some of his paintings. He did in exact scale or very close to exact scale in chalk pastels. And those are still with us. Look at how much detail he used. Look at how much detail, he added with his chalk pastels. The result is amazing. He was known as a French romantic and part of that school. In fact, he was considered the leader of the French Romantics because they created paintings and drawings off all the major stories in history. And he was known to show very emotional and tragic scenes. At Ghirga. He's one of my favorites. He lived in the 18 hundreds and early 19 hundreds. He created paintings, sculptures, drawings, all kinds of artwork at Kirti Got or, as you say it, in French Ed, Ga. His real name was El Al Gentle May at Golf Durga, and he was born in 18 hundreds and lived until 1917. He did sculptures, drawings, paintings, prints. He tried every medium, their wives. He's mostly known for his dance drawings, and these are often done in chalk pastels. He's regarded as one of the founders of Impressionism in a classical painter for contemporary times. The God did all kinds of work with pastels. He would steam them to fix thm. There were as many as 20 layers on his pastels. He really works. Um, He also had a reputation for borrowing back the drawings and paintings he sold just to fix thm because he was never satisfied with what he did. He just kept perfecting the drawings all the time. Whistler is a British version. Whistler is a British artist, American born, but he lived mostly in the States and he worked a lot with pastels. He did a lot of drawing. He's one of the few that actually went out in nature and drew what he saw. He kept trying to find parallels between painting and music, and he influenced the art world in many ways that are still being felt today. But look at the chalk pastels and how he used them. They're wonderful. He had a very sensitive ham. My all time favorite is Mary Cassatt. She's also in American, but she lived in France most of her life. Her family traveled all over the place and she decided France was the place for her. She fell in love with art early and studied there, then decided she wanted to stay. She was friends with the god that we saw earlier, and she was part of the Impressionist group. Her favorite topic was women. Women With their gowns, Women with their Children, women in the activities that they did every day. She was one of the three women that were known as artists that were members of the Impressionist group. Before that time, women didn't really join groups. Art was really ah hobby. But these women and Mary Cassatt in particular, really insisted that she was an artist, just like the guy Waas. She started the Independence Movement for women artists so that they could be recognized not as just hobbyists but as true artists themselves. I hope this informercial helps you and have fun looking through the Internet, finding all kinds of different artists that use chalk pastels. There's a lot of them out there, and they create beautiful work, so have fun searching and have fun creating