Painting Big Skies in Soft Pastel

1. Welcome: Hi everyone. I'm Jay Johnson. Welcome to my studio today. In this class, I'm going to show you how to paint big sky scenes like this in soft pastel. We're going to start off the class with a study on a piece of small scratch paper just to get the feel of things. And then we'll progress to a larger eight by eight size like this with soft pastel on pastel mat paper. Big skies are a fascination of mine. I love painting the sky big and the foreground and horizon area very small and impressionistic and abstract in nature down there. But I want the clouds to be super soft and very realistic and very powerful and basically command the center of attention. And that's what these do. The best thing is you don't even need a reference photo. These clouds paint theirselves themselves, They just develop. And that's what I'm going to show you in this class. You choose some colors, you start laying out where you might want your clouds, and then you go from there and they take on a life of their own. It's a lot of fun to do. I haven't created a bad one yet since I started doing these. Because once I let the clouds take over and develop themselves, everything just fell into place. It's a sense of freedom, it's just fun. And you could do any size you want, from big to small to super big. I'm going to tell you in this class all my little secrets, my little secret tools, my favorites that I have that I use and how I use them. At the end of the class, I'm even going to give you a little tip on where to get some really great frames. I hope you will enjoy the class. Have fun and create yourself your own favorite big sky painting. Thanks for joining me today. I look forward to seeing what you create. 2. Class Project: Hi everyone. Thanks so much for joining me in this class on creating beautiful big sky paintings in soft pastel. Your class project for the class is to create a study like the smaller piece on the left, which is about four by 5 " in size on a piece of scrap paper, just to get practiced. And then to create a larger one, which is eight by eight, After you get the feel of how everything works, you will need to use soft pastels on pastel mat paper. I have provided you with materials list in the class resources. Please download that before you get started so you can get what you need. If you don't already have it. I cannot wait to see the skies that you guys come up with. Thanks again for joining me. 3. Pastel Supplies: Hello everyone. Before I start off talking about supplies, I wanted to show you just a few pieces of my big sky paintings. Let's see if you can see this. I'm trying to keep my head out of the video here so you can see the art. This is a real stormy sky one. I did on a piece of gray pastel paper. This was just a scrap piece of paper and this one turned out exceptionally well. I've been hanging it by this little clip down here in my studio, hoping at some point I'll get a frame for it. But I like to work in the small sizes all the way up to the big sizes, that is a stormy sky. One, here's another stormy sky. Let's see here. Trying to keep that we can see it. This one is a dark stormy sky with quite a bit of color. I like the orange colors, like a sunset after a storm. This is eight by eight pastel and it is framed in 12 12 white Matt. I have the, I ordered the mats online. I can't remember the name of the company, but I ordered it online and I make the pieces specifically to fit these mats. I have the mat made with the eight by eight opening and the match 12 by 12. So it'll just drop in a 12 by 12 frame, Assign them here, and then the back is applied to the back of it to finish it out nicely. Then here is another one I just finished. I put in these clear bags. I get from clear bags.com I've gotten them there before, but I've also got these bags directly from where I got the mats from. I'll have to find the name of that and put that in the PDF. That's going to list all of the supplies that I use with links. Anyway, I love doing these scenes here. This is oceans are some of my favorite because it's my favorite place in the world to be. I just finished this one. I thought, well, that looks really nice. Now, I would like to do something like this, but in the square format like that, I thought that might be a good lesson for this class. This is what the finished pieces look like. I sign and date them, and name them, and write the name on the front. That's why I just started doing this. I don't like to sign on the actual pastel because I feel it takes away from the scenic part of it to have a big signature up in there. I do sign on the back of the original pastel. If somebody gets it and they want to take it out of this mat and put it in something else, they still have the original art signed. But now let's talk about supplies that I used to make these. I'm going to pop these over here on my easel behind me. Now when it comes to supplies, you can use whatever you want. You can use whatever brand of pastel paper you want, whatever pastels you want. But you're probably not going to get the exact same blending results that I do, unless you use exactly what I'm using. You might get results that are just fine for you. But I've had people buy a cheaper, cheaper pastels and then talk about how doesn't blend like mine does. Well, that has a lot to do with the paper you're using and the type of pastels. I'm going to tell you what I use and then you can watch me do this seascape painting. I'm going to do in a size eight by eight. You can decide based on your budget and what stores you have around you or where you can order from, whether you want to purchase different supplies or not. But I'm just letting you know ahead of time If you go to this was ordered online from Blick, which I have the links to in the PDF that I'm providing with the class because they don't have this here locally. What they have here locally is Hobby Lobby. And I love Hobby Lobby, but the pastel paper I bought from Hobby Lobby, while it's nice paper, it does not blend near as well as this does when it comes to making skies blend like these do. I'm just letting you know that ahead of time. If you use different paper and different types of soft pastels, then you might get different results. But hey, it's all about having fun and the process and just creating something cool that you're proud of. Let me stick this behind me. I already mentioned. This passed down Matt. Now that dark stormy one, I just held up. That was done on a dark gray pastel mat. After trying the different colors, I prefer to use white. Like this one. This is white. I've started ordering all my pastel mat in white. It comes in pads like this. It comes in larger pads than this. And it comes in great big sheets. You can make bigger pieces with the big sheets, or you can cut them down to get several smaller pieces. I find the pads for the small pieces I do to be relatively easy to handle. They're easy to store. The bigger sheets are harder for me to store. They are in another room over that way because there's just no room in here for them. They're pretty big. But I had to get some big sheets to do some bigger pieces, which I'm going to do for some places where I'm going to have my art and I want some big pieces to do. An eight by eight, This is 9.5 by 12. This pad, I can easily get eight by eight out of this. This is the one I'll be using for this class. Now let's talk about the actual pastel brands I like. Let's see if you can see it. Unisons. This is a full stick. I have bought half sticks and full sticks from this company or from Blick is where I buy everything. I bought half sticks and full sticks of unisons. I love unisons. They are creamy, they blend well. The colors are vibrant. That's one brand, and I have a lot of unisons. Then in this little dish, see if you can see that. I have two other brands. This is, I believe this is one of the Jack Richardson and this is a Senilia White. I like those two brands too. I have tried a couple of other brands, I wouldn't say I didn't like them, but for soft pastels, these are my three favorite brands. I started by buying the Senellie Paris set, which it was half sticks, and it gives you a wide range of colors to work with. Then I stepped up and bought some Jack Richardson and some unisons, just to see how I like those. And I like those, too. In fact, I like the unisons probably the best. The Jack Richardsons are real nice, too. But I just the unison seems to have bigger sticks, more colors. I don't know, maybe Jack Richardson has full sticks to, but I only ordered the small sticks. There they are, about here's the size different, where am I here? There, leave this all the way so you can see. All right, see the size difference. And I believe a half stick, this is a full stick, but the key is that they'd be soft pastels. I very rarely use hard pastels, but I do have some pastel pencils, and occasionally, if I need to do a fine line or some detail work, if I'm doing a real tiny piece, I might use the pastel pencils. But for this, I won't be using the pastel pencils in this piece. There's one other, you can't see this. This is a worn down piece of white. This white is from a company called Art Spectrum, which is another brand I use and that's on the list in the PDF. Art spectrum has really exceptional whites. They're harder, but they blend real nice and they leave a really strong white. And they're really good for your cloud highlights and edging and your final touches. I really like these and they have different shades of white. Like a white with a pink tone, with a golden tone, green tones, blue tones. I like the warm whites. I do use cool whites as well, but warm whites are my thing. I have a lot of these regs now, these regs. You can get that's not what they're supposed to look like. This one's wet and I wipe my hands constantly on these while I'm working. And then I dry them on a clean, which is also dirty but it's dry. White one. These are T shirt rags. And you could take an old T shirt, tear it up if you want to or you can just go to your hardware store. They have bags of rags and it's basically old T shirt material. Those things are priceless. Then also at the hardware store, I got the rags like this in different colors. These are microfiber rags. These are really good for cleaning off a pastel like this dark brown pastel here. It's gotten dirty and it's got other colors on it. You can just take that and now it's now it's clean again. See, the microfiber does real good for that. That's really what I use this for is just wiping off the pastel when it gets a little bit too dirty. The white ones I usually use for drying my hands. I'll wipe my hands on the wet one, dry it on the dry one. And I keep those right here at the base of my easel so I can grab them constantly when it comes to finishing out the painting. I use this for a fixative by Senellie. I'm trying to turn it right for the video. There we go. Five fixative Latour. This is really good. People say fixative darkens whatever with these brands on this paper. I have not found this to really darken it. Yes, when you first spray it, it does get immediately darker. But within 30 seconds to a minute, that layer is dry and you can spray another layer. Wait another minute or two, spray another layer. But I do this just to try to fix the pastels. It's not justing all over everything. You can still smudge it though even after you've used this several layers, you probably have to use six layers or so of it, I use three. It can be smudged, they need to be handled with care. Of course, pastels need to be framed behind glass. Soft pastels. Another thing I use, and then I got these at the hardware store, these rolls of blue painters tape. I tape up my piece on the board, border it out around the edge, so that when I get done, I can untape it from there. Take it that way outside to my brick wall. Attach it to the brick wall with the tape. Spray it a few times, bring it back in, attach it to my photo table, which is behind this on another board. And take my photos of it before I do anything else with it so that prints can be made later after the original is gone. This stuff is invaluable, this painter's tape. And I got different sizes for just because my husband would pick it up for me and he'd come home with whatever size he wanted. That is a must have, the tape. All right. Let's talk about a couple of tools. I have links to these that is in the PDF. I'm trying to, I'm looking around to see if I'm missing anything. Oh, here it is. Okay, This is a mop brush. This is a size ten silver mop brush, when the pastel might get on too thick if I put too much on. If it's not blending right, if I'm not getting the look I want, I want to take some back off. Just lightly dust in the area where there's a problem with this. It'll come right off and you can add more then it helps the pastel come. I don't blend with this, I blend with my fingers. This is going to be a finger painting class, pretty much because I do all my blending with my bare fingers. I don't wear gloves. It's up to you if you want to do. I like to feel the paper and feel the pastels and I just, like I said, keep wiping my hands during the whole process. But this mop brush is invaluable. If you get too much on there, it's not working the way you want. You want to take it back off and redo an area. Just lightly dust with this mop brush and it'll just fall right off. That must have tool. My other must have tool is this color saper. This is a number ten color shape or by Royal Sovereign LTD and it's a number ten flat, chisel soft. I blend my clouds with this fine detail areas. I start blending with my fingers. But as I get toward the end, I pull this out and will blend a little hard to reach areas where my finger is too big. Because you can blend with this little tip right here. You can blend with the flat side. There's a angled edge right there, so you can blend with that. You don't hold it like you do a pencil like this, hold it like this, and do it very softly. I don't press hard most of the time, but you can, you can also blend lines out, streaking the lines. This is invaluable, actually, because I'm going to actually do some minis that are even smaller than this. Eight by eight. I've actually ordered a smaller one of the soft flat chisels. I think I've ordered a number two which is quite a bit smaller than this for those minis to get the edges of the clouds. But this is invaluable for working these clouds. This is a must have tool. If you don't have this and you try to with your fingers in these fine detail areas, you might not get the detail like you want it. I've tried other color shapers, other brands. This one is the one I found works the best with this paper and these pastels, there's that I also like, this is messy. This is a catalyst wedge. I've got several of these things. This particular one has a long edge here and a short edge here, and of course, rounded over here, but you hold it like this and you can, you can drag it through the pastel. And I do this in the horizon area of my designs to just make some cool lines or marks, you can use either side. I don't use this all the time, but I do use it sometimes. If the horizon is not really working for me, I'll just grab this and just slice through there and draw a few lines and create a few marks. It's really good for mark making. I do recommend having one of these on hand just in case you want to use it. And I'm trying to think. I think that's about all I use. And of course, I have an easel here that I paint on. The board is separate from the easel. I made this board a long time ago and it's just a great surface pastel. I was using the easel for canvases that I was doing with acrylics and things like that. I got back into the soft pastel and I thought, well, I really need a harder surface. I pulled out one of my boards and put it on the easel, and I just my paper to that you can work on a tabletop or a tabletop easel however way you're comfortable. I do recommend having plenty of light. I have overhead lights on in here. I have a light directly on the easel and then out that way you can see the light shining on my thumb right there. That's sliding patio doors letting the light in. I have plenty of light and I can see what I'm doing, but I don't need a very big space as you could tell. I have a little table just right here off to the side that I have some of my supplies on. And then I have a little table right there off to this side of the easel so that I can put my pastels over there and I can reach them real quickly. But this isn't a big room. I don't need a whole lot of space to do this pastel work. You don't need some great, big, fancy deal. You can work on these at your kitchen table if you want. Now I will say they make a lot of dust. Not to necessarily advertise for Dyson, but this little handheld vacuum thing is great. After the pastel drops down here, take that and suck it right up. I do that on my floor too, right around the easel. I keep that right here and it charges when when it stops working, I have to plug it in. I plug it in across the room when it's charged up. I bring it back over here and I vacuum my easel tray and my tray where my rags are. I vacuum that out because dust will get down there. I vacuum my floor. This I'm in a basement studio here. This floor is a concrete floor. But I've just stuck down some of those vinyl stick tiles on top to change the look of the room, The cheapest ones I could find. I did that just to give my room a nicer look because I didn't like the pattern on the floor. But it is a hard floor is what I'm trying to say. You might not want to do this on carpet because the pastel does make a lot of it will hit the floor if you're using a hard floor. Hard surface, it's easy to vacuum up. If you're going to be working in a carpeted area, you may want to get one of those pain or drop cloths to put down under your work area just in case that way you can roll it up, take it outside, shake it off, wash it. And I wanted to mention on the rags, all of these rags, they're all washable. I don't throw them away when they get super dirty. I just throw a whole load of them in the washer. I have a ton of them. They just wash right up and you can keep using them. I think that's it for covering what I use for supplies. I'm going to stop running my mouth on this section and I guess next we'll be ready to start a little painting and I can show you what I do and hopefully teach you what I do. So you can do it too. We'll see you in the next video. 4. Cloud Study: Okay. Before I get started on the eight by eight painting, I want to do. I thought I would introduce you guys to a little bit about how I operate when it comes to pastels. The first thing I do is I pick out some colors. I put them in these little dishes, these are actually old ashtrays from an antique mall. I got a whole set of them for $1 They're perfect for holding the pastels. And when I do a little small studies sometimes, and I like to just pick out some colors that would be good for the clouds. I'm going to go through these little colors in here and I'm going to do it on this little scratch pad, which I keep right beside my table. If at any time I'm unsure of what a color may end up looking like, I just make a mark with it. I set the pastels off to the side, and I'm just going to hold this little scratch pad up here and go through some of these colors. Now the first color I want to use in my sky is this brilliant turquoise. Then I also have a more neutral tone, down blue. I don't overdo it with the bright colors. I have a couple of lighter blues. I have this one which is a bright turquoise, lighter blue blue. This is another more toned down, lighter blue. I have a few shades of blue. That's enough for what I want to do in this little study right here. Then also, I like to use a lot of purple in my work. I have this purple right here, which is just a medium muted purple. Then I also have a super dark purple. It's almost black. That's really good for shadow areas, horizon lines, things like that. Then I have this purple, which is a pinkish tone down. Then this one here, I believe it's a muted gray. A warm gray, but it's got a purple cast to it in the sea. Then I have my white, which is incredibly filthy. You can't really see that, but if I go over top, you can see that's just a white. Just to do a little study here. Yeah, that's the warm gray. I've got four shades of blue, couple shades of purple, pink, and then a warm gray and this white. I just wanted to do a little study, to just do a simple cloud. Just to show you the process on how it works. I'm going to put my scratch pad off to the side and clean my hands off with this rag that's wet and then dry. Now when I do my big sky paintings, I will put a horizon line in. I usually just put that in with a piece of tape. I like to keep my horizons very low. I'm not really wanting to do a full painting here, maybe just a little mini study, But I'm going to go ahead and put a horizon in just in case I want to finish it out. If the cloud turns out real good, I may finish it out. I want my horizon, the edge of my paper is right here. I want my horizon like super low. So I'm just going to go, I'll just go right on top of that line right there. Try to line it up. This is not a specific size, this is just a piece of scratch paper. Pastel mat is very expensive. I save every bit. Even little bitty strips I will save because those little bitty strips can be good test pieces to see how something's going to blend on this paper. You could just paint an abstract pattern on them and maybe turn them into a bookmark. There's all kinds of things you can do. I save every piece of paper. I save all kinds of things. The skies, they're typically darker at the top. And as they get toward the horizon, which will be this line of the tape, they'll get lighter. I'm going to basically negative paint where I might want to cloud. Let's just say I want to do one simple cloud here in the center. I'm not going to do a perfect circle around it. I'm going to go ahead and start with my super bright. Turquoise? No, I I changed my mind a lot. Let's go with the muted blue. And I'm going to clean that off with the microfiber rag. And I'm just going to start up here at the corners getting some blocked in. There's a couple of different ways you can make marks. You can make marks as a straight line. You can hold it on the side and makes, you can just scribble, you can break these into smaller pieces. I just try to make a few marks when I'm doing a little study on where the sky might be and trying to decide how big I might want my cloud and the shape of it. And I'm going to leave that area open. Maybe we have a little tail of that cloud coming off to the side over there. Maybe we even have another little cloud right there. I'm going to come all the way down to the horizon because I'm going to go over this with other colors. These are the first layers of color that is muted, medium blue. Now, keeping in mind is going to be darker at the top. And I'm just making this up as I go. I'm going to decide where I want it to be the darkest I'm thinking of, coming down from this corner and adding this dark purple right in there. Then I'm going to put a little bit of it over here on this side, just a little over there, not quite as much. And then come down with this edge. Then down here at the horizon line on this side, just have a little darkness with this is going to end up being lighter. Maybe this cloud actually has a little darkness in it because I'm not sure if I really want to cloud there. But let's just put a little bit of that purple there. Let's bring a little that purple over the top. Now let's go with the muted purple. This was not too dirty, I don't think I really need to clean it. But let's go ahead and come out on top of that blue into the cloud area around there. Actually come up in the cloud because this cloud is going to have some shadows and maybe that can become part of the shadow. Just go over this, maybe pad there. Nothing too fancy. This is just a little study. Now, where might I want that bright turquoise? I'm thinking maybe cut in over here, this side of the cloud and bring it right over. The purple was, is it just layer one? Bring some of it out that way. Put a little bit of that turquoise sky over here between. This is going to be a cloud and this, what might be a cloud, maybe even bring some of this turquoise down here underneath and cut up in here. Okay, that's the turquoise. Now, where's that gray? I just marked these on my scratch paper. This is the gray. How about if we make this top side just a little bit lighter as we come down and come over like that? If this is going to be a cloud, let's just put a little circular cloud marks right there, just in case it might be a cloud. Then I want this area to be light. Bring that gray over that, maybe you can bring that gray on this side of the cloud, just a little up under here. It really doesn't matter because these clouds are going to form their self. I never draw out a specific cloud, there's no point in it. When I get to blending, it's going to form itself, which you will see. Now actually I don't want this to be solid white. I'm going to go ahead and put more of that gray actually in where the cloud is going to be. And then find that lighter blue and work some of that into the cloud. This will give the cloud some shadows, just making little sideways marks real quick. That lighter blue would be good down here too, streaking a little bit. Maybe over in this little bottom cloud if that's going to be a cloud. So it looks like a big mess right now. And how about the lighter purple? We got that in there. Anywhere? No, I don't side where. Maybe a little bit of that right there. Maybe just a few dabs of it over here. Maybe even up here. Okay. I can't remember if I've used this blue or not. Oh, that's that real bright turquoise blue. Let's pop some of that in there. Just over top of that turquoise. This is all just the first layer that will be blended. And I'm wiping my hands off, I'm going to grab that white and go ahead and, oops, I just broke it. Put the bird piece off to the side, and I'm down to a real little piece. I'm wiping that off with my G and I'm going to figure out where the brightest areas of the cloud might be here. Maybe a little piece coming out there, a little bit coming out there. I do these short little marks and squiggle it in circles if that makes any sense, Just on top of the other colors already put down. I might even come on up so the cloud doesn't look so sharp right there. Just circle it on up. And then this little piece here though, I said I might want to drift off to the side, put a little white. There's some white down here in this little horizon area. That's good enough to get started and just practice blending with a few colors. I'm going to wipe my hands off and I blend the darker areas first with my finger. And then before I go, that'll be over here and down here. Before I go into these lighter areas, I'll wipe my hands off and dry them again. I get that all cleaned off. And I'm just going to start and I'll use all my fingers just whichever one, if one gets dirty, I'll switch to another one if it gets too dirty. I'm just turning my finger in little circles as I blend that color in. Look how that softening up get over here on this part where it's dark and then this side of this little circles. Then I'll go up here into this area. All right. Now, see how dirty my finger is. We're going to clean that off. Before I do the lighter areas dry it, make sure to dry it. You can blow your pastels off. A lot of people will put their pastel on a board that they can lift up and tap off. That's fine too. They say don't blow it because you can end up inhaling it. But I haven't really noticed I'm doing that. I'm going to start blending this white area a little bit. I'm going to go right on out. Sweep it up. I'm switching fingers. See, Because I got those now. See, I touched with a dark finger, but that made a nice shadow right there, my middle fingers clean. So I'm going to continue blending with that a little. Now they're all dirty. Before I continue on, I'm going to clean those off and dry them. And I'm not pushing exceptionally hard, just enough to get this color blended together. If it's too dry, feeling like right here where I was just doing it feels dry. So I might definitely need to add some more color in there. Notice I'm switching fingers again and I'm going into this blue down here. I'm not sure about that tail on that cloud. If I really want that, I may end up reshaping that a little bit. Okay, dry, you get this horizon. Usually I just go like this. On the horizons, I try to go all the way to the edges so there's no white showing because when I pull this tape off, I want a nice clean look. I'm not real sure about that tail. I may work some of this color back up into that and have it just misty in the background there. This is all just whatever you want to step back, how does it look? Where do you need to do a little more work, a little more addition of color. This little piece over here that I thought might be a cloud, it may still be a cloud. I'm just going to work some of that color in, let it develop and see what comes out. And then once again, horizon do a little sweep there. All right, now I think I'd like a bit more of the turquoise in there. Really strong turquoise. I'm going to add some more of that. I'm going to come up into that tail I don't really like that. Adds more of the turquoise up in here. I lost some of my turquoise and wants some there, that nice pretty bright turquoise color. And then down here do a little turquoise here. When you do something like this, it just gives you the practice of adding colors and blending medium purple. I bring some of that in and you can cut into the edges of the clouds to give it a little different look. I'm basically working on layer two now. I think I'll put some more of this purple up here. Oops, went into my cloud there, which happens. And go in with some of this later purple. I'm looking for the gray, maybe that was the gray. It just looks purple now because I'm going on top of that darker color. Bring some of the dark purple back in there on this side and up here in this corner bring some of that dark purple back. And over here on this side, maybe right here just to do a little, you can use the tip and form around the edge and start making the look of the cloud. Let's say I wanted to come on over and give this cloud a darker shadow underneath could do that too, not real sure if this is going to be a cloud or not. Let's go on top of that with some of this blue. See if I can form something out of that. And then this blue, the little lighter blue or is that purple? It's a lavender. Now, that still looks like a big mess, but that's okay. Because I'm going to blend some more. I like what's happened here. In the middle though, I'm pretty sure I don't want to mess with that too much. I'm going to go back to the darker edges where I cut in here. I'm going to actually pull some of that in and then you can brush out with a cleaner side of your finger. You get this turquoise worked in there too. A little better. Then here's this dark area here under the cloud, I've put to make a shadow. I'm just moving around to different areas. Of course, fingers get dirty, clean them, dry them. This is a really small piece. It's hard to put a little more dark purple right there. It's hard to blend with the fingertips too long, you know, first layer two maybe. Just moving my finger back and forth through a quick and letting some shapes just form by turning little circles up here, I've got a mess. Let me wipe my hands. Let's see if I can straighten that up a little if I want to take some of that off right there. Just use that little mop brush, blow it off so it's not so much on there. Try to, I lend out some of that white. We got a nice little first layer going on there, that's actually a second layer. Now, let's see, Now that's when I need to test my colors on my sheet. I got this one blue and this more turquoise, really bright blue. I don't think I need the bright down here in this dark area. So I'm just going to try to get a little lighter blue in here. May do extra cloud formation right there. Maybe bring it down a little. Then over here maybe even add to the side of this one with some of that color down here in the shadow area. Just take away some of that. Even up there gets more of this lighter blue back in the horizon. I've lost my light horizon there. All right. Get those little side areas on this. I'm just touching very lightly with different fingers in circular motions to make that little whisky look. And I'll just keep after it with the wiping and drying the fingers so I don't get anything too messy. I decide which area, let's work on this area. There's no set way to do these because they're forming their self. You're letting the clouds form. I'm not going to get into to do this cloud, you got to do this and that. I'm not all technical into it, I'm into just beautiful fluffy things that look like clouds right there. Maybe streak it over a little bit and then work on this horizon a little bit more blending that we're making some progress there. I would like to extend this cloud like little wisps maybe up a little. And I'd like to brighten this a little. Let me get my, you get this little gray, the warm gray. And do a little, a few little areas where I can possibly extend this cloud out. Just little bitty lines maybe even right here add to it a little bit, you just don't want it to look too perfectly round. Then you can come down here and do it like another cloud coming over that we spin down. Maybe even up here a little bit that there might not have worked real well, blow it off, decide we're actually not going to add any weight right now at this point because I'm getting into some little details and I don't want to mess up some things I've already done. I'm going to get that color shaper out, this tool right here, and I'm going to use the corners, this edge right here, and maybe the corner tips to just get on top of those areas in a circular motion, move it around. To softly blend it with what's already there. I'm just gently, I'm not pushing very hard, I'm doing these little circular motions really soft. And then getting over into this area, let's see if I can fix this mess right here that I might have gotten a little too carried away with. I might blend this a little more up into the purple and try to fix what I've done. Then just really miss this area out. Then you can also do like this and with the flat edge, bring some streaks down. You can also go like this and blend this direction, create that little sweeping look there. Now see how dirty that is, because this is made of it like a silicone rubber. You can wipe that off with your wet rag and then dry it with your dry rag. And even though it may still look dark, it will not have color on there. All right. I think I need to expand on the main cloud in the center. Now, do I want to add a little bit of a golden, it's a golden hue into there? Maybe I'm going to reach over to my palate, see what I can find. This is like a creamy move my hostels around. If you can see this, this is like a creamy white. It's got a golden touch to it. I want to add in some of that in a few spots into this cloud to give it some different color and give it a little bit of warmth and still extending out. And maybe even come down here on this bottom part with it, into this darker area. All right, let's see. Joe, want to blend that with the color shaper or try it with my finger. Because this is a smaller piece, I think it might be better to go ahead and use the color shaper. I want to pick the lighter side even though it doesn't have color on it gently in a circular motion. Work that color in. Now, if you have a certain mark that you made that you really, really like, don't blend it out, leave it alone, stay away from it. You got that. Someone go ahead and wipe that on a dry rag, which will help from transferring that darker color over here. You go sideways over here. If you want to make this look a little wispier, you go sideways with that. Then over here, if it's not blending enough, you can push a little harder. Go ahead and wipe that off. But I don't know if you can see that this has got a little creamy color. I'm also going to bring that creamy color down here into the horizon a little bit. Just make some little marks right there. I may bring it over here where this additional side cloud that I can't seem to decide on may be hanging out. That's the creamy color. Once again, I want to make sure my color shaper is wiped and dried. And work on this a little bit. It's starting to look like a nice little whispy cloud over there. Might need to bring it down a little bit. Let me take care of this. Down here at the horizon, a little gold, creamy hue in there. If it's too much, you can press a little harder and scrub it out. But it still will have that color in there in that horizon that might be starting to look nice. I think I want to bring this just down a little bit more with that same creamy color. And I also have it coming into a little point right there. I don't like that, so I'm going to put a little part of it off there. Maybe even bring this out. Oops, I went a little too strong with that. It's okay. This is what blending is for. I wiped and dried this and I'm going to blend this side in. First I got a little excess pastel there which you can just blow off if it's too much. Wipe it, dry it, hold this a little further back to give myself. When you hold it further back, you actually do it lighter. Or if you get real here, you're tending to do it firmer. And I want to stay very light here to give it that fluffiness. And then I'm using the little tip to blend that out and then I'll just sweep it on the larger part to work that in this right here, this whole side, I think it needs a little more of that turquoise in there. Add this really rich turquoise to cut back to this cloud and around this wispy edges here, scribble That in real technical terms here, scribble. But this turquoise is a, is a real integral part of what I'm trying to do. That whole color that inspired me, that's a good way to do it, is pick a color that you're inspired by and make that your dominant color in your piece. There, I put that turquoise in. Again, I'm going to try to work it in with the color shaper starting right here on a bigger piece. I would use my fingers more at this point. Still be using my fingers, But because this piece is so small, the color shape or is definitely the way to go, I'm just working that around till I think it looks right. I don't want a bunch of like, little turquoise lines in there. I actually want that color blended in with the purple. But remember, if you cut too far in, we're going to go back with some white on this cloud. Let's get this bottom part, scrub that in and then back and forth like this. Work it into that cloud. Both of these clouds I'm pushing hard now on this turquoise blow off the excess look at that mess on that color shaper. Okay, let's clean that off. This turquoise is too strong at this point. I'm going to go in with my finger after I make sure it's clean on these little turquoise areas. Sometimes you can just touch real quick with your finger and it'll soften it. But other times you want to really work it in there because I want it worked in with that purple, pretty good. It's a nice blend. I'm going to work on my cloud whispies a little bit more. This right here, I seem to have lost the cream color. I still got the cream color in this big cloud, but I seem to have lost one of these little whispies or two when I was blending the turquoise. I'm going to bring that back in. Just try to work on the shape of this little wispy up this way. I'm going to bring that cream color back down in here. Let's bring more of it in there. Okay, there we go. Although this right here, I think can use a bit stronger cream color there. All right. Do I want to blend that with my fingers? The shaper. How about the shaper? Always? If you're unsure, use the shaper first. Because if you put your fingers in there and they're too big and you're blending too strong, you might mess up something you like. I'm just doing this real light just to work that cream color in these wisps. Try to drag them out a little to the right. I want them kind of laying on top of my turquoise. There we go. Anytime you feel in doubt, circles with the cloud. Now I actually want to do, want to blend this a little, soften, this is looking a little too sharp. Anytime you could take your fingers the side of your finger and very gently just swoosh, then sometimes you might get a little excess color in there you don't want, but sometimes it works. You can always take that excess color back off or blend it in with something else. I'm telling you there's nothing technical about the way I work, but it is so fun to just sit here and put colors down and turn circles, whether it be with your finger or the color shape. I think that cloud is a little bit too sharp on the bottom. So I'm going to clean the color shape or I'm going to get in the lighter area and I'm going to pull down. Of course, I got some of the blue in there, but that's okay. I'll lend it right over it. I do like to see if I can pull down. Might work better with my hand. It almost looks like a rain happening now. I don't know if you can see that. I can see it. There's little lines right there from where I drug with my pinky finger here. You see when you clean your hands, remember to get that too, but just use whatever finger works at the moment. Now let's work this cream color in here. Work this blue up into that purple. I still think I need a little more blue here. Back to my bright turquoise blue. And I'm just going to use the side of it and make a few marks right there. I may just use my finger and gently, barely touching, but it puts a layer of that blue right on top. All right, let's go back to this cream here. I think this needs to be blended up a little more. And I'm pushing really hard now, kind of working this in extending that horizon all the way over here. Now I want to try something. This looks a little too blocky. I'm going to take that catalyst wedge, that straight edge, and I'm going to put it on here about where the blue is, and just push it down hard and drag to the right. If I can make it happen a few times, just a few different lines. It just gives it a little bit of interest there and wipe off your catalyst wedge to dry it. And then I can take the color shaper and I can blend those little lines, soften them up a little bit. If I got them too strong, I can go up and down over them. If I decided I don't like them, but I really like that little blue streak. It put right there, I think it may be time to go back in with some white. Now, where is the white there it is. That little bitty piece of white which I broke. This is Senell'jttty bright white. So, I want to put that in where my brightest areas might be in this cloud, even in these whisky areas, because I want to drag that out. Now remember if it gets to looking crappy, you can always redo it. Get a little bit of that white down in here too, right along the horizon, trying to make my clouds go together a little bit. All right, that got a little white in there. So I'm going to use my finger. No, I'm going to use the color shaper on most of this and just start working that white in on top of those cream colors and those other shades. I'll just blend an area in circular motion until it starts looking good. And then I'll get off of it before I really mess it up. These little side whisky pieces, pull those out with the color shape. Then when you get closer to the middle, that's when it's circle time again. I hear the paper is a little bit dry on that side. I might not even have very much pastel on that left. Pull this whisky stuff out and clean this every so often when you're doing white and blow it off. Bring this out this way. You'll learn when you practice with the shap, er, and the blending. Now, see I'm holding it up close, I am pressing a little harder. But you'll learn how this works. This is why I want to do a little practice piece. You could on a piece of scratch paper, you could learn exactly the feet of this. Because once you've learned the fetal of it, each piece gets easier and easier. Let me get down here and get this white. There we go, mountain. I've lost some of my creamy color in the cloud. I'm going to wipe off the cream color and I'm going to put just a few little marks back in there. Sometimes the pastel will just makes some strange and you'll think, oh, I don't know if I like that, but amazingly, a lot of times it turns out okay. Blend that in with the shaper. I've got a little dimension in there. Now I go back to the white, I'll make a few high light marks there on top of that. One little technique I like to use is the tapping with the finger where you don't really blend it, you just tap it in. I got clean hands and I'm going to do a little bit of tapping like that, switch fingers if you need to. That's a little bit harsh right there. I'm going to use the shaper and soften those up. Maybe even do a like this. Now I'm going to go back to my turquoise and I'm just using the side, a little turquoise back in there. It's a lot of back and forth. I'm doing that tapping again to just tap that turquoise in there with different fingers. I don't want it to look like I drew separate colors by piping. It just works it on in there. There we go. That cloud has got a really neat shape to it. Now, I really like the way this little whispy down here turned out. I do think the white on the horizon needs to come across just a little bit more actually, where's that gray? Might need a little gray right here instead of bright white. The gray and then a little bright white dash in there. I just have a feeling I want a little bright white there. I'm just going to use my finger to soften that gray and my other finger to blend in the white, Give it that look of clouds wisping across. Let's see, where is that super light blue? This one. This looks a little too blocky. I want to bring in some of the blue. And then I'm even going to put a little dash the edge of the turquoise in there. Now I'm going to blend. There we go. It still looks too blocky and bring in more turquoise. Let's use this shaper. See if we can change up the look of this so it doesn't look so blocky. Get a little blue in there. Now let me find that tiny piece of white again. And I put a really nice little brightness there and a little streak through there. And take that color shaper and work that in. It looks like just a long whisky cloud there. Okay, that looks pretty cool for a practice cloud. I don't want to overdo it too much. I've got the big cloud here and some little wispy clouds coming out over here. I'm not quite sure I like the shape of that one, that I could always work on ending that on the side of my finger. Oh, now that's interesting. My knuckle actually did that. Once you've got pastel on the paper, you can use different parts of your fingers and bending them certain ways to make little marks with your fingers that make really interesting things. I do want to soften that little edge right there. Blow off the excess. Now we've got a pretty good sky going on. I'm going to peel the tape for the horizon. Look at that blow off the excess. You still with me? Let me make sure I'm still recording hip now. I'd like to use the color on the horizon. So I'm going to take that little shred of dark purple and go just right underneath that. That gives a little dark background to it. I really have no plan for the horizon, but I had that creamy color in the sky. Let's just bring some of that in there, overlapping the purple. Where's that gray? This is that gray. Let's bring a little bit of, just make some marks. Bring that down to the bottom. Let's see. I like to use the same colors in the horizon that I used up top. Let's say here's a little bit of blue. Let's get a little bit of that mark in there. The turquoise, I hold off on the turquoise. Let me just take my finger and blend this into the paper and see where we're at. Right there up at the horizon where I made a real dark line, I'm going to use the shaper to carefully and softly blend that in because I don't really want to go up into the sky. That dark purple here. How about this medium purple? Let's bring some of that in. It's just a side portions of that give me that dark purple. Again, I have no set way of doing this horizon. I will put a few colors down and blend it just to give an illusion of what might be going on on the ground. I got a little reflection going on here from the turquoise sky. That's cool, Let me go back with some of this medium purple. There's not a lot of horizon and a little dark purple. Since there's not a lot of horizon, I don't need to do a whole lot with it. This blue and there, this is that medium neutral blue. We have that lighter blue kind of indicate some water where that cream color, so cream color has gotten real dirty. I'm going to clean that off. Maybe even drag a little bit with the color shaper through there. I usually go both directions to create some interesting line work. See, that's cool. I just like it. It looks like there's little lines where the water may be hitting something. I guess it's water go in here with the cream color. Now one thing that's fun, that I like to do is get on the very edge. If you've got a sharp edge and just set it on there and gently pull down or press hard to make some little fun marks, I don't want to overdo this. It almost looks like waves. And then we got the little white piece, Where's the reflection going to be the brightest? Maybe right in here, a few dashes of white. I'm just pressing on the side to make those marks. Then if I get a mark like that one I just made right there, that's too much. Just take the color shape on both of those marks and blend that in right here. I don't like that. I got a little off track there going up toward the horizon. So I'm going to soften those up a little. And out here, you really don't need too many sharp marks. But the sharp I'm nitpicking now. The sharp marks give it that interests. Now where's that, the bright turquoise? I need to get some of that because that's in the sky. I want that down here too. But I'm trying to decide where I want it to go. I'm just going to tap little areas in there. Maybe even do I like to get on the side and pull down, maybe you can get some of it up here. Sometimes I get on the side and just drag real gently just to integrate the color in there. If I overdo it, I can just drag the wedge through it or go back at it with the color shape. I did overdo it on this side. I'm going to take that, that dark purple with that dark edge, hard edge, and oops, now really messed up because this purple is really soft. Try to knock some of that off and drag some of that down with the color shape, or soften this turquoise up and blend it in with the purple on the ground level. I like to go up and down too, because it's not what you expect to see. I'm scrubbing pretty hard right here. Softens up those lines, then I can decide how about that gray? This is the gray again. I'll practice on the side sheet with the side of it pull down to see what it's going to do. How about if I just take that gray and get it in here. And pull down and then pull across and touching it. Just press hard on the edge to make little marks. Maybe even this side piece right here and get a mark like that. Is it a real organic, interesting look? This is just a little practice study. I have no idea if the eight by eight I want to do is going to look like this or use these colors or not. I haven't decided yet. I'm just softening up some of those marks. I want the strongest marks to be where I pressed it real hard to make these highlights. I think I might want a little bit more lightness to the horizon, come out that light blue. I got a little point on there. Work some of that in there and then gently use the color shaper to work it in. You can also, especially when you're getting to the close to the horizon line where you got to be very delicate, you can use the very edge of the color shaper and put it straight up and down and drag through in different areas. Looks like we've got a little water waves coming from back there. Okay, I'm liking this little practice piece. Remember I mentioned the art spectrum white. Really good for adding a few highlights in. Let's say I want to add a little highlight into this cloud up here. I'm going to use the tip of, It's a really hard feeling pastel. Even though it's a soft pastel, I'm going to use the tip and just scribble a little bit in there in a few different areas like that. Maybe right here at the horizon. Draw a little bit with that. Now I don't have to blend that in, I'm not going to blend the horizon. I like the market made. It looks strong and I want that. I am going to blend this little. The thing is, am I going to blend it with the shaper or my finger? If I do it with my finger, I'm just going to tap. I'm scared to. So I'm going to use the shaper because the shaper is a lot less aggressive and a lot less big. You can actually use the tip and the edges of the shaper. And I'm doing this like super, super soft here, just going around in some circles. Very gently. Wipe that off. Now, I'll take a clean finger and just gently tap where I put those highlighted ones to soften it. Just pressing and tapping very gently, that's a pretty good highlight going on there. This is a quick little study. Now let me tell you, before you take your tape off or anything, clean your hands because you're going to clean your tools so you don't forget that. Put them off to the side. Clean and dry your hands because you don't want to handle. You've got white edges around this that you've taped off, you do 5. Cloud Study Final Touches: All right. I have taken this outside, I've sprayed it three times. I spray it at about they say like 12 " away. Well, the winds blowing out there. So spraying 12 " away. It just wasn't going to work today. So I got a little close when I sprayed, but I sprayed it three times. Let it dry. At this point I come back and if I know it's right, I don't tape it back down here. I'll go ahead and photograph it and finish out. This is just a study piece. I'm taping it back up here to take a second look at it because it's sprayed. What's on there is now. You can still mess it up with your fingers though it's not that. But if I wanted to add more pastel on top now to fix a few things, I could do that. I'm not going to do that because I'm done with this piece. It's just a little study, it's not a bigger piece that I would maybe want to fix. But I am going to show you a couple thoughts I had as I was stepping back from it outside. Like I said, I tape it to my brick wall outdoors. You don't want to use this spray indoors? Let me say that again. Don't use the spray indoors if I'm really sensitive to chemicals. So I have to be very careful. But it's chemicals and you'd be spraying those in your house. It's going to get in your air, ducks. It's going to get in your nose and your pets nose, and your kids nose. You don't want that If you're going to spray spray it outside. Trust me, the spray stinks. But once it's dry, it's fine. You can bring it back in. And it only takes a few minutes to dry. Don't spray it indoors anyway while I'm outside and I'm looking at it from a distance because I step back after I spray it, because I don't want to be anywhere near that spray and inhaling it. I step back and I see a few things I could have done differently. So I'm just going to point them out because these are things to think about. This little section right here is two squared off. I might have rounded that a little more or even pulled down on that a little bit more on one side, make it a little more wispy like these. That little edge right there is two squared off. That would be something I might consider fixing. Another fun thing to do with your clouds is if you feel it's too bulky, like it's, there are big white fluffy clouds that have nothing from the sky showing through them. But I could put a little sky hole or two in here to break this cloud up a little. With that turquoise turquoise, I could do that. If I wanted to break it up, I could. I would just put like a tiny dot of the turquoise in there to make a sky hole. And I would use the very tip of this tool to gently work that in and blend that in. Well, what the heck, let's just go ahead and do it. I want to pick a spot where I want to sky hole right there, just tiny little marks. Let's just do that. I don't know if it's going to work, but I've done it before. And I'm going to take this color shape or just the very tip and work that in. Faded out a little bit extended out. It's a little bit dark right there. Let me get the other tip. I'm just scrubbing it and pulling, turning in a circle with the very tip. And scrubbing and pulling a little bit. Then if it's too much, take your finger and soften that up. See, now there's a little sky hole peeking through there. If I want to accentuate that a little more. If you put white next to any color, like you're bright white, it will make that color stand out a little bit. I put a few dots of white there. Wipe off the shape, blow it off, take the tip, and work that white on into the clot around that little hole or up over it even. Of the sky hole could have been a little bigger, could go with maybe the other blue. And tap on there and going to go up a little bit. I'm going to end up reworking this whole thing probably by playing with it. That gives you a little dimension to have a couple colors there that looks a little better. Then back with the white strong, a couple little circles there. Yeah, if I keep at it, I'll end up reworking this whole piece. But that's part of the fun to sit there and play with it and see how you can maneuver and manipulate your cloud a little bit. I even go right over it. If you don't like it, you can just scrub over it. And it'll blend in. There looks a little bit more blended now, but there's a little bit of sky peeping through. I don't know if I really like that as well as I thought I would. If you don't. Now this is the Scenellia white, which isn't as hard as the art spectrum. We let me grab that if I can find it. Here it is, the art spectrum. White is just a little bit harder all because I wanted to create a sky hole. But it just dawned on me that it would have been neat to have a sky hole blend that in a little bit while I'm at it. I probably should fix that spot up there that I was talking about. And I'll probably fix that with the cream. You can also highlight a cloud by going around the edge like that, just using the very tip. But don't blend it too far out. And it would create some nice little highlights. Of course, I don't want it to be super strong, just trying to break up that edge a little bit and not make it so square. That actually looks pretty good. Now it looks like there's a little sky hole peeking through there. You could just sit here and fiddle with it and change the whole shape of your cloud, or bring your sky back in a bit. Like right here, I might like to see a little bit more of the turquoise. How about that? Let's just put a few little dots in there and using that shaper and the tip of it gently blend in those dots. And of course you can get a firmer with it by getting in a little closer and pushing a little harder and even scrubbing it like so brought a little bit more turquoise in there. Now my clouds getting kind of odd shape though because that little hole is a little bit big. Where's that gray? This gray right here I was using, it looks purple, but let's bring some of that in there. It's a warm gray. And bring it over. That turquoise circles. Circles are your friend. When it comes to clouds, I'm trying to back up and look at it on the screen to see what you guys are seeing. I don't know if that was a wise decision or not. I still feel like I'd like a little bit more interest right there with that cream. Like I said, I can sit here and rework this now, all day. Some little edge highlights. You just want to make sure that it doesn't look like a drawn on edge and work on. Giving it a little fluff there on that side. It's better to get the sky holes in there when you're doing it rather than come back and have to do it. But it can't be done, of course. Now if I was going to do something with this piece, I would spray it again. I'm thinking I might want to go a little bit Too much straightness up there to that edge. Again, I want to bring some purple in that's that medium purple. And once again, just very gently with the corner. And I don't have my right glasses on when I'm doing this, so there's no telling what this is going to look like. And then if you need to cap in some of that, there we go, That's a little better. But I just wanted to point out, you can rework it after you've sprayed it, But if I was going to do something with this piece, I'd probably go spray it again. Right now, I'm not going to do anything with it. If you don't feel comfortable doing a full scene like this right away, maybe get a couple pieces of scratch paper and just do the sky with one cloud in the middle, just a little cloud. I've done that before. Those are fun little exercises just to practice with the sky. Then maybe take a piece of thin scratch paper. When you cut out an eight by eight out of 9.2 by 12, you usually have a thin edge left over. Remember I said, save those scrap papers. Those skinny scrap papers are good for practicing a little horizon area. The key with my horizons is I don't want to get too detailed. I want the sky to be very realistic and very soft. But I want the horizon to be impressionistic and not as soft. That's why I like these little marks right in there. And I blended it out in the back a little because as things are further away, they're going to be softer than things that are closer to you. That's something to keep in mind with the horizons. As it goes further back, it should be blended a little more and then you sharper marks very strategically where you want to put them up front. Practice with dragging the edges of the pastel across very gently to create some marks. Like I said, if it makes a mark you don't like, you can use your shape or to get rid of it, can totally blend it back out or use that mop brush and remove it. But sometimes those little drag marks create some interesting texture in the horizon where you want texture, you want texture on the horizon to give it that impressionistic look. At least I do so in this did not take a whole lot of pastel, didn't didn't take a whole lot of colors. You could even practice a sky with just, you know, four colors. You could do two shades for the sky, a darker shade for your darker areas, a lighter shade for lighter areas. And you could do two shades for a cloud and blend the two shades of each together into the cloud. By doing your circles, you could do that. I tend to like a little bit more color than that. I've used 1-234-567-8910, colors on this little piece. And half those colors for the background, a little more than a half and then a few for the cloud. About four in the cloud, six in the background, in the horizon area. But they all end up blending together. When you do with your fingers, the little blending, all right, I've talked enough on this little piece. It's a good practice piece. You can just make it up as you go and let your cloud for you can use a picture if you have a picture of some clouds you want to look at and try to form your cloud shape. But I don't draw them out. I just let them form their self. I might look at a picture and say, okay, there's a lot of light right here on this side and then it swoops down. I might try to form it in that same general area, but the actual cloud shape, I don't try to make it look just like a picture. If I'm looking at a picture, normally I'm not looking at a picture these days, I love doing the great big sky and a little tiny horizon. That's the whole purpose of my series of big skies that I'm working on this year. And they're turning out fantastic. Even this little one turned out pretty darn good for a little practice piece. Let's pull this tape off now. I made sure my hands are pretty clean. See, I don't have much of an edge on this piece. Just a little rim. I keep my tape pieces too, by the way, because you can always use those pieces on another piece that you want to tape up. I just stick them on my little table off to the side, and I'll grab them as I need them. Make sure my hands are still clean. Before I handle this, blow it off. Look how nice this is looking. With the tape removed, let me hold this down. Go this way there. Now, I didn't center that right on that piece of paper, but that looks pretty cool. It could be framed up. I do have some little white mini frames and that could actually go in one of those and I could just trim off the edges. But for a practice piece, this is a pretty good little piece. Go after it, try it, Get about anywhere 4-10 colors. If you're just doing the sky, you wouldn't need ten. But I mean, you could try it and you can make your clouds any colors you want. You can make your shadows of your clouds any colors you want. Your sky, any color you want. Don't let anything hold you back. You'll see people say, use this color for this and this color for that. I don't do that. I use whatever color appeals to me. I do pick a color that jumps out at me When I first walk in my studio, and today, it was that turquoise. And I thought, okay, that turquoise is going to be in this picture, then I work with that color and go from there. This is a predominantly cooler color photo. I mean, not photo painting, normally I do warmer colored ones, but because of the turquoise and the purples that went with it so well on my scratch pad I thought, well, let's just stick with that color scheme and not say, get out a bright orange or some red or whatever. Not that there's any problem with that. You can do that. I do it all the time. But for this piece, these are the colors that appealed to me. So this is what happened today. Anyway, I hope you have enjoyed this one and your practice photos. I keep saying photos, I'm so used to doing photography classes, Upload your practice paintings of your little studies like this, and show me what you're able to accomplish. I'd love to see what you come up with and what color choices you make. Don't let anything hold you back, make it look the way it feels right to you at the time. Thanks for watching. 6. Big Sky Clouds: Okay, I'm ready to get started on the eight by eight. I have cut my paper here to about 9.4 My Matt opening is eight by eight. And by cutting the paper a little bigger would be easy to tape on the back of the mat. And I used that paper pad I showed in the other video. That was 9.5 by 12.9. By 12.5 this half piece, or it was a little over nine, this half piece is what was trimmed off. And like I said in the previous video, I saved these in case I want to do little practice things or just test something out. As far as blending, this is the actual pastel paper. I save all these little pieces in case I might need them now, I did tape this off already. As I'm taping it off, I'm paying attention to these borders where I'm taping it. I'm measuring out. I've got just over eight and a quarter length. I'm about that in width. It will be a little bit bigger, but that'll make sure the pastel is behind the mat. I don't want some little white rim showing around the mat. That's real hard to square up for me. I prefer to have a little bit of the painting actually behind the mat. What I haven't done is put in a horizon line. For this painting, I want to do a mostly sky, but maybe on the horizon just a little bit of a seascape. Maybe a sandy look is what I'm thinking. With some warmer tones and I want to put some of those warmer tones in clouds. But I need to tape off my horizon and I don't want a whole lot of horizon. I want this to be mostly sky. That's why these are called big skies. I'm going to get my skinniest tape which is just under an inch and I'm going to line it up with this tape right there. And that's going to be this little section where I'm taping right here is going to be my horizon section. After I I'll do the sky first and then pull the tape off and do the horizon that well, the sky colors don't get down here and maybe get smeared and messed up. It is just less I have to deal with. It Gives me a nice clean look. When I get ready to start the horizon, I've picked some colors because like I said, I want this to be the sea skate. I do want the sky to be a little bit brighter in this one than the last one. Was a little bit more moody. The little study piece, instead of using that really bright turquoise blue, I have picked out these blues. This is still a turquoise, but it's quite a bit lighter and not quite as bright. And these are really subdued blues, and these are lighter blues. This gives me a wide range of the blues to use in the sky. Then I have also picked out some purples to put in the sky. We've got a light purple, a brighter purple, a muted midtone purple, a light purple, and a dark purple. Those can be worked into the sky. Then in the clouds, I wanted to warm these clouds up a little bit, I picked out some warmer colors. And they're not really in order here, but this age this is more of a golden color. This is a dark terra cotta, then this is like a, a peachy orange color. I like to put those little pops of color sometimes in the Hobrizon, also on the horizon and along the horizon line. Sometimes I like to do a dark line. I wanted a darker color to use down here. But I will probably also use these two colors to warm up in the clouds. Not sure about using these in the clouds, might not just have to see how it progresses. In addition to that, I let me get these in order here. I have picked out some grays because you always need grays when blending. They really help to tone things down. I don't want this to be cartoonish over the top, super bright, bold. I want it to be fine art subdued, really rich in color, but not over the top in color. I like to use some grays to help settle things down when I need them. This is a warmer gray and this is a darker gray. This is a really cool gray. Then I have that little bit of white I used in the study. That's a real bright white. I've got two others up here. This is a peachy colored white, and this is a cream colored white. It's hard to tell until you actually use it. It's real subtle. I've got the ranges of white there and three ranges of grays. I don't know if I'll use them all, but I have them ready to go. So I thought I would do some test marks on my little notebook pad here, which I've already got a little cream mark on there. I just keep. This little notebook pad is not pastel paper, it is a stone, just a little stone hedge, white pad that I probably got a hobby lobby. I just use it to scribble out my palette marks. Really? You do some tests and I've already got pastel on there. I do have my wet reg, Andy, and ready to go and my dry regs, but I thought I'd lay out some of these colors. So, I'm going to start with the blues because this helps me looking at this will help me determine what color to pick when actually applying to the paper. There's the real dark blue that's muted. And here's the lighter one that's muted. Here's that one that's got that little bit of turquoise color, also pretty muted compared to the one in the last painting. Then we've got this blue, which is a brighter turquoise shade of blue. Then this blue, which is a cooler shade of blue. So that's the blues. Drop my dishes here, now let me go for these purples. This is a darker purple. This is that little bit of midtone purple, which this stick looks darker than it did in, for a minute there. But now I see after putting this on the paper, this one is actually darker than that one. That's something to keep in mind. This is a lighter. All of these are still very muted Then this is my super dark purple, that almost looks black. I use that for the shadow areas a lot. And this is a light pinkish purple. Once again, very muted. That's those. Now let's address these golden colors. The one that's more gold is this one. That's a pretty rich gold. Then there's this beige, more of a cream color. These I will use very sparingly because you can overwhelm your piece. If you put these in the clouds, especially that darker one, you can overwhelm those clouds with it. I try to use these a little sparingly. Then for the horizon area, I've got this cota color. Then this peach, which is that little bright papa color. It's not super bright, though. It's still pretty muted. But I wanted to make this a softer, brighter scene. But not bright with color, more bright with muted colors, but brighter overall. If that makes any sense, then we have the grays. We've got this gray here, which is a close to that pinkish purple, but it's more on the warm gray side. Then we have this one, which is a cooler gray, just a little bit darker than that. Then we have this one, which is a lighter gray. There's a few grays because I do want the warmth to appear in the clouds on the horizon. While the sky has the blues and the purples, I'm thinking the clouds on the horizon need these warmer tones then for my whites. Now these are going to be hard to see this. Is that pay. I don't know if you can see that. Let's see, that's that peachy white then This one is the creamy yellow, got more yellow tones. And then the real bright one. Just put that underneath. I'm sorry, I'm trying to look behind me here to see this. There we go. Those are my whites. Now, in looking at the whites, with these two whites right here, being on the warm side, I might not need these in the clouds at all. I might just reserve these for the horizon. We'll, we'll see how it goes, but that's my palette that I've chosen. You get my grays back in order here, and I have my little dishes set out to my left and my tools. I have my mop brush and my color shaper in case I make a mess and need to get some off there. That mop brush will help and this color shaper. Okay. So I'm about ready to get started now. I told you I don't draw anything else. I can tell you what I'm thinking though based on a picture that I had that I took when the last time I was at the ocean on a kind of a cloudy day m, the sky was really pretty with the blues. In the middle of the picture was a big bunch of clouds. There was one really strong cloud coming around here and floating across this side, and then there was these little other wispy ones coming down away from that. There was a lot of clouds in the sky, but the one coming across was really strong. Then of course the horizon was a hint of water and a hint of sand because I actually put my camera up higher to get this mostly sky because that's what I do like to photograph skies, but I had a little bit of the horizon in there. I'm not looking at that picture to do this though. I did look at it before I got ready to do this, but I'm not looking at it while I'm doing it. Because when I look at a picture, when I'm doing a painting, I tend to find myself getting really picky about making it look just like the picture. What I've learned with these is letting the clouds develop themselves and letting them become what they want makes the whole process more free and more fun. And I'm not so tense to get it just right. That's one reason I'm doing these paintings is because I've been craving that sense of freedom. And by getting too tied up and technical details of making it look just like a picture that takes away my freedom. I do look at the picture to get it in my mind and study how the clouds went. That's what made me like that picture, but then I put it away. I don't have to be tied up with that when I'm doing this. But I do know that I want to do a big fluffy cloud all across the middle with a little whispies off of that, into the blue, maybe just a little film of cloud down here to tie it into the horizon. I do know that's what I want to do now. Remember I said in the previous video for the study, the sky is darker at the top, later at the bottom, even though it may be dark down here, which is it was a stormy day when I took the picture. So it did look darker down here, but it wasn't darker than it was up here. Even though I may have a darker blue down here, this upper area up here was the darkest. And then this was a more medium tones of blue. And then down here was a mix of medium and darker tones of blue as that storm was rolling in that day. I'm keeping all of that in mind, I want to start off probably with one of these purples up here to create some darkness. I don't even know that I will use that super dark purple in this. Because I do want the whole picture to have a more lighter feel. Even though it's a incoming storm, it's still bright. I'm looking at these two purples here, that purple right there. And I have to remind myself, sometimes I'll pick up my two purples and I'll do one. And then do the other. This one's the darker one. That's the one I want to start with, with this one. Then next on top of that, as it comes down toward the blue this was of what I was thinking a little bit of dark up here in this corner. Maybe even bring some of it down into the painting. Maybe even add a little bit of that down here. I do like to use the colors in several places and I'll just lay my purples I'm using right now off to the side. And I'm going to go over it with this medium purple, the lighter shade, just a little dusting of that in there. And then I want to get one of these blues. And I'm thinking the darker blue kind of work that in the very top, around the edges there in there. Maybe even a touch right there. Set that there. And then I want this side to be lighter, so I'm going to go with this lighter blue over here. Trying to imagine some of this is going to be wispy clouds, so I don't want it to be too blue. I'm using a real light touch just to have some blue shading in there over here. Then under where that cloud is going to come across the middle, you got to have some blue there under this as well, across this bottom part under the cloud. And I'll just form the blue marks under where I want the clouds to be. I'm not like pressing super hard here. I'm just slightly dragging it. All right, that's the medium blue. Let me pull this more turquoise, blue. Make a mark with that. Make sure I know what color I'm dealing with and get some of that in here. So you have to cover the paper pretty good with pastel before you go to blend it. If you blend these areas right here, right now, the paper is too dry. Let's get some of this turquoise floating around in there because that color is pretty prevalent in my mind that it would be a really nice color to have in there. Okay. Now what do I want to do? Maybe because this is going to be a cloud whispies coming up and this is the brighter area. I'm going to put some of this later blue up here and start making some circles to get it in there, just to get those shades into the painting down here. And like I said, this was darker in my original picture because there was a storm rolling in. So I might leave that a little darker and get some of this light dancing around in there. You can see how outlined where a big cloud may be, the white, wispy clouds will go over top of this other stuff. I'm thinking bottom down here to bring in some of this. This, I thought it was a light blue, but when you put it against other colors, it almost looks like a lavender. I do want a little bit of light on the horizon, on this side because this side is lighter, side will be lighter, the side will be. I think I need to darken that corner. Just a little testing and put a little purple in there to see if that'll darken it. Not enough. I need bring some of this there. We're looking pretty cool right now. We need to get some warm colors going on in here. This lighter trick or is blue, I very gently bring that down into the clouds because they're going to be wisping across that. I do want some of that tone to appear. Now, where are my grays here? Let's see what this gray looks like. That's a warm gray. Let me start mapping out maybe where these clouds might be. Maybe a little bit up in here where a whispy might be coming in. Bring some up there. The darker shades you have in your clouds, the more shape you'll get to your clouds, that's that gray. That's the warmer gray. Because this is darker. Let me try to integrate maybe some of this cooler gray up in there under that one. Maybe over top of this one, this is all going to be covered up and blended. I'm not really worried about how terrible this looks right now, which you can basically throw any colors down. As long as you have a certain area designated for your cloud, you can figure it out. I think I'm going to grab this big color and some of that in here to get some warmth going on across these clouds. I'm just trying to decide where I want it. Maybe you can put some up here, a little wispy there. How about this peachy white? Get some of that in here and actually start forming the shape of some clouds. Now, I'm not painting up and down with this, I'm using the side and just wiggling it around. Maybe you can get some going up in here because there's going to be clouds over that blue. It'll shape out better once I start blending it with my fingers because I have an idea. Let's bring some clouds possibly coming out this way, more of that whisky stuff. Then I want a little drifts of it to come down as well underneath here because this sky that I remember was pretty cloud covered, but it was the strong cloud was in the middle and the rest of it was more just like wispy, filmy looking clouds. So I'm just using a real light touch there now. This is that yellowish white. I can go ahead and just make a few little marks in there where I might want to drop some of that in. Like I said, there is no that's a pretty strong hard white. This particular one, I'm not sure. This may be one of those art spectrum. Now this is a sell, I think. I'm not sure. I can't remember. I have a bunch of whites in all the brands except for Jack Richardson. I don't have many whites in that unisons. I've ordered a bunch of white art spectrum. I've ordered all their whites sell. I've ordered a bunch of their whites. This might be one of their. I'm just trying to decide where I want some really more white strength coming on and maybe some little whispies up in here. These are really good for adding little whis, this particular one, I'm not going to go in with the pure white that much right now. Just little dots of it across just here and there. And I'm just letting my hand decide where it wants to go with that. Just to get some of it in there, I think I may have enough on there to go ahead and start blending. I'm wiping my hands off. I'm going to work on blending the darker area first and then getting in here, that looks like a big mess, doesn't it? It looks like something a five year old would do. This is probably when I was five. I probably would have stopped and told my mom, I'm done, look at my sky, that's fine, I got to start somewhere. I'm just doing the blending again with my finger turning little circles a lot of the time and sometimes up and down marks, dragging some of that color around a little bit, trying to stick with the more blue dark areas first. Before I get really into the lighter colors I put down. Now at the bottom, I always like to do this and drag it across that as it approaches the horizon. The sky is softer and more subdued and most of the time anyway. All right, I got that blended. Now I'm going to wipe off my hand and blend the lighter areas a little bit. Then that will be layer one. I'm going to start up here circles and whispy that out. And I'll switch fingers when I get one finger too dirty on these lighter areas because I don't really want to be, I've got three fingers now. I don't really want to be accidentally dragging that dark down into the lighter areas at this point. If I need to darken it later, I will notice the circular motion. I'll switch fingers in case that one is too dirty. Look at that. Looks like a cloud already. And then this one up here. And then you use my pinky there a little bit. It's starting to take a little bit of a shape. All right. Clean hands again, back to it. This is my favorite part, I think is the blending. I hate to citing the colors to put down where that I've learned as long as I've picked out my palette. Okay, in the beginning and tested it on the paper. I can usually do pretty good no matter what I put where. Obviously I have the idea of the main cloud where I want that to be. And that's looking a little choppy right now, so that's definitely going to need some more work. It's probably because I don't have enough. This feels real dry right here where I'm trying to blend and I probably just don't have enough in that area yet to try to bring this little wispy area down now I've got blue on my hands again and dry off. Yeah, I don't think I have enough to pass Stell right here in this area so it feels pretty dry. So that's going to take some more work to see if I can smooth that out a little bit. That purples a little dark. I'm pulling up from the horizon and bringing some of that lighter color up and go all the way around those edges. If I have a little white edge showing though, it won't be too bad because this little edge will be behind the mat. I do not like this how this is framed out there. I think I'm going to just take a little bit of the lighter blue and bring that up, maybe some of it over here like that. And break that purple up a little. Notice how much I'm switching my fingers when I'm lending. We've got a good start there. Obviously the center cloud needs to be stronger. That's what I'm going to work on next. I will probably work on this center area without touching anything else for a while. Work on this, Then I'll decide what needs to happen in this outer area because this needs to be the focal point. And I don't think, I don't think I've got my drift. I wanted this drifting across, but I do like this. I don't know if you can see that real well, but there's a real strong bit of weight right there. It's curling up. I'd like to expand on that and fluff up a little, but not bring the whole, maybe leave this alone over here because that's pretty cool looking. But this looks like a little tail and I'd like to fluff up a little. Such technical terms used in this. I don't consider myself a pastel expert at all. If somebody is a pastel artist that is an expert and they're watching this class, they're probably thinking, jeez, this girl don't know what she's doing, maybe I don't. But I do know how to create a nice looking work of art based on the way I choose to do it. Even if you don't know all the technical stuff, I mean, I'm not going to sit here and tell you, okay, here's the benefits of these pastels and this is what they do and this is what they're made of. I don't care as long as they do what I want. These brands that I use are nice and soft and they do blend nicely on this paper. That's why I picked them. I tried several different brands. These three that I mentioned in my supplies video, these three do very well and the art spectrum for the cloud highlights. I'm going to take a little water break for a minute to get a drink and come back and then we're going to start working on this cloud section in the middle. 7. Big Sky Cloud Highlights: Okay. Have a little water break. I'm ready to get back to it. I stood back and looked on the screen. I'm recording on And I wanted to mention one thing I do a lot of times when I'm doing a painting like this is I'll shoot a photo with my cell phone. Because there's something about seeing it in a different spot, like on your phone or on your ipad or your camera, where you can see what areas are working and what areas are not. I'm actually seeing a couple different cloud areas develop in here that I didn't intend on. I was thinking one big fluffy cloud, but I'm starting to see there's a little cloud here, then there's a longer one here that drifts across, and then there's a little fluffy one up here. I think I might work with what it's giving me, instead of trying to force it to be something that I want it to be, I'm going to work. Let's start with this right here and develop a little bit more shadow area around this and some color to it. I said I wasn't going to use this gold. But I'm thinking I may put a little bit of that in here because this will help tie in with the horizon. Just get a little bit of dusting of that in there, maybe as it drifts over here. Then in here, there's a little hole is formed out here. A little bit of that. You don't have to wait until you lay down several colors to blend. I've put this little bit of gold on here. I'm just going to go ahead and gently blend that in with my fingers to see if that's going to work or if it's going to make it too yellow. That way I also know how much to tone it down. If it does make it too yellow, that's pretty, pretty good. I think I might want a little bit of purple in there though. So I'm testing my purples on my paper here to see which one might work. How about this purple? I haven't used this one yet, I don't think. I'm just going to put a little bit of that down here under that gold area and help build up some shadow in there. Now, I could use the color shaper, but because I'm still in the really beginning stages, I just want to go ahead and smudge this real technical term there. Then I can see that over here, I use too much. It did give it a little bit of a shadow, but now it needs some more of the lighter colors on top of that to build that little piled up. Let me go with the base first, which is not my lightest. I'm just turning a little circles with this. Work it in maybe even over here a little bit. Blow off the excess and try to gently blend that in. This is warming it up quite a bit. That's at that tones down the gold just a little bit. And I'll go ahead and blend out some of that right there. Now, let's get some more of these whites. We've got the yellow white, the creamy white. So let me go ahead and start with the peachy white. We start with this white first. I just form it where I want, very lightly over here. This one that's drifting out maybe a little stronger at the top of it. And extend it out a little bit more. Real light, this should be well, it's got a little bit of a yellowish cast to it. I'm just very gently scraping that across the paper there. Maybe even wispy that out down through here. All right, those are those two whites. I still don't want to go in with the bright white. I want to blend this first blow off the excess very gently. Just rotate the finger, I'm barely touching the paper here. And just g blending that. We've got several layers of color in there now that's started to look like a pretty cool cloud. I think I need to come down with one of those whites just a little bit more. Maybe the peachy one that's got more of the peach tone to it. Peach. I can't even describe these whites when you're doing clouds, get all the different shades of white. You can, it really adds to them. It helps clouds it make them more realistic. You can bring some of that over in here to have various colors in them because when they're on the sky, little bits of color are shining through in the sunlight, is hidden certain spots. And it's just they create a lot of colors when they're in the sky. Okay, I like that. I'm not going to mess with that anymore. That looks like a pretty good cloud area right there. Except for right there. Tidy this up a little. I'm not sure I like this purple. As strong as it is right there. I may take that creamy color. You, when you're dealing with anything that's yellowish or cream colored, you'll learn that blending with purples really makes a nice effect. They blend really well, they make a grayish tone. There's little bits in there. Float those clouds alone has a little golden glow to it. It's going to brighten up when I add the white though. But right now I'm thinking I got some good little shadow going on in that one that helped that one develop. What about working on this one here that goes up through here with some of those same colors? Once again, let me get this gold out and bring some of that in, not too much, and drift it around. Bring some of it up over in here. I already know that I ended up adding some of that later, purple to that. I'm just going to go ahead and do that now. But not very much of that is what I learned from the first one. I got a little big glob of purple there where I didn't want too much of it. All right, Let me blend out this and see what happens. It's going to look a little bit darker for a minute because this is a shadowy area. If it's not blending enough, I'll push a little bit harder, still doing circles with my finger. You can pull some of that over this way. Okay, Now we got a nice little dark shadow area going on there. So let's go at it with this base. And just kind of turn some circles with that and work some of that in. Maybe you can bring some of that up a little higher, have that color dance across there. And over here a little bit more too. That's the big. Let's go ahead and softly blend that in. By the time you get the bijan, you got a lot of yellow tone going on. We're going to have to bring in those whites. I'll pull right down into this blue area and pull up from this white area here, because I don't want that showing as a dark line like is showing now. I'm going to end up softening that. All right, where's that, the creamy white. Here we go. When you get to the stronger whites, this is when it really gets fun. This one is, it's got a peachy color to it, but it's very creamy feeling. You'll notice on different pastels, even though they're all soft pastels, some are harder than others, others go down like butter, just real creamy. Come on up into that blue a little bit, drift across there. That's the cream and white, then this is the yellow, the white. That's a slight yellowish tone to it. This one's a little harder than that one. I was just using the harder ones. I like to make little wisps with them because they blend out very soft. I don't want the cloud to be just like a ball or a line. Okay. I've got those two whites in now. Remember I still haven't added my brightest whites yet. I'm just building these clouds. That's the fun in this. You can just work on a cloud for a long time and build it. And if you get too much on there, you can take some back off with that mop brush, which I haven't had to do yet, I save the brightest whites toward the end. All right, let's gently work this around. Come right down into this blue, real wispy feeling and then go up with your blending. Don't stay confined to one area. Just every once in a while just do a sweep another direction. It doesn't look so shaped out. Just a little drag marks sometimes at the bottoms can really create a nice effect. I think in this area right here needs a little more. Another technical word, umph. Let's go with the creamy make little circles in here, up over that shadow area a little bit. Let's go with the one that's got a little more yellowish tone. Harder. Yeah, I have a few little dots in there, you can blend those out. Those look like wispy things. Now I got a big mess, but that's okay. It's all white, so we're just going to blend with that. I'm doing it very softly. I don't want to overblend this and lose some of my shading in shapes because it's creating its own little shapes. Look at these little marks here. Just by going like this, they create a wispy cloud shape. Back up. Look at that. It's good to stand back. Because you can see where you might need a little bit more of something. I think I'd like to take this right here on up a little bit more into this blue and this purple. I'm going to do that with the, with the creamy creamy one. I'm just doing it very lightly and not necessarily connecting it, just near it. Now, let's get a little bit of the harder one with the yellow tone and drift some of that across and bring some of that over there, all that stuff, pretty much white on my fingers. So I'm going to work with that very gently. I'm trying to let little bits of Sky peek through as I go, so I don't have to add that later. And I'm also trying not to have a exact round shape. So you'll see me do the scraping motion and even go back with some of the blue and pull that up in there so it's not so white. If you've got white on your fingers, you can even put some of that down here and there and smooth that in there. Okay, I think I'm getting somewhere with this, maybe time to tackle this little one over here. Got a pretty good shadow going on here. I'm thinking a little ring of brighter cloud right there. I don't think I need to add more shadow on this one because it's got some and this is the lighter side of the picture, where the darker side is on this side. I'm going to work with the creamy color and go around this one, even right across the middle of that, and off the edge over into this too. Then the harder one that's got a little bit of yellow cast to it, we got a little bit too much there. Oftentimes I'll hold two pastels I'm really working with at the moment in one hand and blend with the other. Still trying to stay pretty light with this blending and switching fingers now on this side. I hope I didn't take away too much of that shadow. But the clouds aren't going to be as dramatic and strong over here because this is the lighter side. I think this is too formed. I need some little going up there. Maybe even just start right here, away from that. That's the creamy one and this is the whiter one that's got the yellow actually. Make some of that drift around a little bit. Once again, really gentle blending very softly. Need something here. May just be able to drag some of that color up through there and soften that. Yeah, I think adding a little bit right here to come across where this purple is, then a little bit of the whiter. You'll learn which whites work for you when you get several of them. That's why I say by several different shades of whites because they really work well for clouds that broke that purple up a little bit. Let me step back. The cloud cover is looking pretty good. This area down here is I'm going to take, as soon as I find it, this warmer gray here, I'm going to just do a few little see that's quite a bit more subdued than this, but it'll create some nice little wispy clouds down in here. And maybe even work some of that up with this and pull it down. That's the gray, that's the warm tone gray. I don't really want to add real brights from these whites down there. So I'm thinking the base just to highlight those just a little bit, not too much. That's a test. I don't know if that's going to work. I'm going to go ahead and clean my hands off before I blend that because they got quite a bit of that brighter white on the. I'll probably add a little brighter white to it because I think it's not going to be bright enough that I didn't want to overdo it with the bright white down here. And just gently work that in. And work it right up toward that white one. It is real white. And then come down into the purple area, a little sweeping motion around the edges. I want these to be very soft and not very distinct. Okay. They're quite a bit darker than that, so I do want to add a little bit of white. Very little. Wait a minute. What about this is lighter gray. What about adding some of that in there at the high light areas? It's all. Just play and experiment and do what you want to do trying to make these kind of drift down. You notice I asked myself, what if a lot that really makes your work get a little more interesting? I think because it forces by asking. By asking yourself, what if you are forcing yourself to consider different things and try different things. Okay, that's pretty cool. I think I need a little brightness down here in the horizon line. Bring some of that latest gray like that in there, and then brush it across, soften that whole thing up a little bit more. That's kind of a neat looking under cloud, I guess you would call it. I've kind of lost my dark purple over here, but that's okay. Um, I don't know that I really need the dark purple in there. What about this blue pull? Some of this you can go back in and cut into your clouds with some of these other colors too. I don't know if that's going to work or if it's going to. Mess it up too much by just pushing the pastel around with your fingers. In different ways, you can create whole different looks. And if you don't like it, you can just go back over it. Let me get some more of this gray in here. Do a little fancy cloud stuff here. Make one drift and a few little drift marks here. You know, I got blue on my fingers. So I want to try to get that off first before I blend that in. Okay, very gently, circular, and then wispy down here, side to side. It's a little too much, you go up and down. Wow, okay. That turned out fairly good. I think. I think this purple corner appears a little bit too dark, so do I want to put some warmth up there or not? How about I bring in a little bit of the dark blue and cut into those clouds and then just a tad mix of that lighter gray over top of it. We'll see what happens with that. I just don't like it to be all one color. I like to have the different shades that looks a little better. Okay. I'm really liking this now. Is it time to add the bright weight? Syria, right here. I'm still thinking, I don't know if something's bugging me. I think it's too dark. It, I guess because I have it in my mind. I want this one to be a little bit later. So I'm going to take that gray again, drift up some little marks here and once again drift along the horizon. Let's see if that'll fix that area for me. Very gentle blending. I won't press harder unless I realize it's not blending out enough. I don't want to really see my little scriple marks or lines right now. I'm wanting to blend a little harder. There we go. All right, that looks a little better. Backing up Pka, let me just stand up Pka, stand back from it. And if at any time it looks too choppy, which I'm thinking it may look a little too choppy right there. You can use the mop brush and take some of that choppiness down, but I also don't want to mess it up. Let me just you barely have to touch with this. I don't know that that really helped a whole lot. But let me go in with the color shaper. The color shape, you can press a little harder into the paper with it, so it'll get a little smoother blend than you would if you're blending with your fingers. You can using that flat side of it still, once again doing the circles and the back and forth motions, you can push that pastel around and settle it down a little bit in those areas where it might look a little too choppy. I don't know if that helped a whole lot, but I'm trying it do it on this one too. There are some like little sharp marks in there that I actually really like. It gives it that interest by pairing some sharper marks with some softer marks. A little spot right here in this blue area that's bugging me. What's up with that, might need to come back in with a little blue. Since this is the lighter side. Let me bring some of this light blue just a tad in here there. Maybe you make some of that dance around in here a little bit. Now remember, I hadn't even come in with the white, the really bright white yet I may come in. This is the der harder white right here. Just a little touch of it on top of these. This one I like to do because it's a little drier, I like to do some streaking motions with it that brighten that a little bit, but not too much because I barely touched it on there and I'm barely blending. I think this cloud needs to be accentuated a little bit on this side. I do want a little sky hole peeking through there. And I'm barely touching, just tapping. And then kind of go up into this blue area, barely touching. Go into that blue area too, right there. A little bit out. That looks a little more interesting. And I'll do this stepping back stuff and I'll lay a little bit down and roll back. I have a chair that I'm rolling in, so I'll roll back in my chair and take a look at it. From a distance I just realized I don't even have my right glasses on to do any of this. Which if this looks terrible, that's why I don't think it looks terrible. Because when I go back from it, I think it looks pretty good. I've got this big section across. I wanted it wisping across the sky. Might need a little bit. Oh shoot. I didn't mean to do that. Line a little bit more blue up under this one. The cloud looks like it's emerging with the horizon. Actually even pull some. There we go, Sometimes you just make an accidental mark and you go, oh, that's why I used to tell my dog, Leave it there. That's a little better. Okay. Let me put my right glass on for this and see if it even looks right. I knew something was off. Okay. That actually doesn't look too bad. So now I'm ready to add the brighter white. So I'm going to take a water break and I'm going to come back and add the brightest white to the highlight areas. And then take a look at this background sky and see if any touch ups need to be done there before it's horizon time. 8. Clouds Final Touches: All right. I took a water break. I stepped back and looked at this. There's only one cloud that's bugging me, that's this one. It looks like a round ball. I think I need to bring the blue down over that just a little bit. Now the question is which blue this is. When I take my blues and go to my scratch paper here and see which one I might want to do. I don't know if I've used this one or not. I haven't used this one yet. So I'm going to gently just over top of the edge of that cloud, cut in with a little of that blue. And this is the blue, it looks blue when you put it on white paper, but when you put it on another darker color, it's got a lavender tone. I'm just going to gently, very softly weld that in, whip that around. Now, that cloud doesn't look quite as much like a round ball, which I mean, sometimes they look like that. It was just bugging me when I said this is why you stand back because you can tell then you know where a problem area might be. What might be bugging you. This little cloud right here is tad bright, might bring some of that blue right there. Work it in all around to soften that. Because my focus point I've decided is this little area here in there. I do want to bring some white into there now. Some of the brightest white which is that SeneliaI think I hadn't even got to the spectrum white. I may not because that's a real strong white, the art spectrum white. But we'll see what this white does. I believe this is the senellie, it's a cooler white, so it'll tone down some of this warmth. I'm just going to go right along some of the edges of this center section where I decided I wanted my focal point. And I'm using it very sparingly and I'll probably use the color shaper. I like them to little marks to overlap. I just took this mark and overlapped it under the bottom of this mark. Then this cloud down here needs some little high light to remember the lights coming this way. This is the lighter part of the sky. I'm trying not to put any on the back sides here. I try to alter the shape on the edges to give it some interest. And drag it around a little bit. If I get it to square looking or whatever, I'll make a little piece go up. That may be enough. You don't want to do too much of that at once. Let me take my color shaper now and with that corner of it, just gently blend that in. If it's too bright I can go back over it with that white that was harder with the yellowish tone if I've got it too strong. But sometimes just by pressing harder with the color shape or you can work it in well enough where it's not super bright, but yet you could tell there's a difference in the shading in that area. There's a little highlight there. Let's get this one down here. I put a little bit more down here on this one. This is a little, I'm pushing a little harder here to work that one in because I got a little bit strong. It's real subtle. The difference I'm pulling down now to pull it into that creamy color a little bit more. If I can't pull it in enough with the color shape, I'll use my finger because that will usually soften any of those hard edges. See now there's a little high light there on those two clouds. I'm thinking I might want to add some right here in this little curve. I like that kind of, if you do want a sharp edge on a cloud, the color shaper is the way to make that happen. Because if you don't blend very much, you can get a really nice sharp edge. There we go. I'm thinking maybe right there I need to be a little stronger. I like to usually have one really good strong area, but I might have got it too strong too boxy looking. Scrub it with that shaper and work it in and then take your finger, soften it. I do want, I'm trying to get the right little bit of white there that, that I'm thinking of. And it may take a combination of finger blending and color shaper. I don't want to put this bright white down here near the dark. Anytime you put it near the dark, you're going to have a lot more contrast and it's going to get a little bit more dramatic. That other white, this harder one that I couldn't figure out at that Senellia or art spectrum. It's because it's a little bit harder feeling. It does a little bit more dryer application. It just blends out a little bit softer and rougher the different ones. That's why I say get all the different whites. You can be of the different brands because the different ones react differently. You can, if you do have some colored pastel paper, you can take your whites on a darker color pastel paper and mark them out and see what their tone looks like, and then practice blending them. This one is real powdery, it is the harder one. Here is really good for the whisky where the softer white is better for the full blending or for some really thick highlight areas. How are we looking here? Let me stand back and I like to take my glasses off too. When I stand back and kind of take a look, she still thinks I might need a little more blending. Those clouds look a little choppy to me, so I can just do that with a clean finger and gently I've got a mark right there that's bugging me. I'm going to go across that with that beige. I don't want a real dark color there. I don't know what that mark is. It might be a defect in the paper. I may just have to leave it fairly strong right there. What you can do if you put it on real thick and then just tap it in? Yeah. I don't know what what's up with that. It's not one to not show the mark. All right. Now, I got that beige in there and it's a little bit too strong with that darker yellow right there. And then maybe even that later purple in there. Make a little more show shadowy area in that section. No, that looks too gold. Okay. We're going to have to tone that down so I'm coming back with that real chalky white on top of that. The real soft, the harder one. I'm going to go ahead and press that in and get a little high. Maybe I could turn that paper mark into a high light right there. Use the color shape. No, the paper mark is still there. It's just it's not going to cover up paper defect. Let's get this chalky white going on this side there. I've about got it. That chalky white's a little stronger. Hey, I think I might have got it. It's too rounded at the top though. See, now I'm starting to nitpick, which I end up doing. And this is why I don't like looking at a picture because I'd be sitting here nit picking through the whole thing to get it to look just right, which is what I'm doing anyway. But at least I'm not trying to make it look like something else, I'm just trying to make it work. So when I step back, it looks nice. I need a little whispiness off to the side there. When you get too much pastel on the paper, you won't be able to blend a whole lot either. So that's something to keep in mind. I try to avoid that there's that creamy white. I think I'm want to come up into the shadow area just a little bit more and I'm going to use the color shaper just to fine tune that. Okay, I'm happy with that spot and we'll leave it alone. I think at this point, I'm pretty happy with the entire sky just studying it a little more. I think the shape of this cloud is too straight along the bottom back to that creamy white. And I'm going to cut into that shape a little bit with that creamy white and break that straightness up. That's one thing about clouds. Even if they look straight, they're not really straight. There's always a wispiness or a softness to them that takes away the straightness. Now, that's better. Still trying to decide if I need some more white right through this one decisions, I should probably leave that alone. Yeah, I'm pretty happy with this sky, this little purple and blue section up here. I'm not real happy with. I think I can fix that real quick by just taking clean finger and getting on that white and pulling upward to make it wisp off the page. Yeah, I'm getting nit picky now and I don't need to be doing that. But you see how you can sit here and like right now, if I didn't like this Mill section, I do like it. But if I didn't, let's say I wanted to break it up or make it smaller, I could come in with these darker colors from the sky and cut back in to those and make this cloud area smaller, give it more sky. That's what I like about this pastel medium, the soft pastels. They're dry and you can brush them off of the mop brush if you don't like something or you can just cut back in to different colors. Or you can take your finger, like right here on a lighter area and just do a so another swoosh to tone that down a little. Doesn't tone down enough. You can add just a few circle marks and tap and blend at the same time, and then pull it out with your fingers. You can change the look of anything by just very little pastel, very little finger blending. I just love that I could sit here and play with this all day. I wanted this to be a lighter sky and lighter scene than the last one, which was more dark and moody. And even though this is moody in a way, it's, it's a lighter feeling image. But if I wanted to go real stormy and make it dark and moody, I could do that. Just by darkening up the sky. I do think I still need a little more lightness up there. Where's that light blue? That looks lavender. Just bring some of that up through there to break it up a little. If I decide, well, it's even though I want a lighter scene that's too dark. By adding the lighter colors over the darker, you can tone it down a little bit. Okay, I'm going to stop fussing with the sky. Next we will get to the horizon where we're going to use these tones here that are in these clouds. We're going to bring them down here, but we're going to use these two, which we haven't used yet, to add a little bit of color to that horizon. And I'll also bring these whites I've been working with down in there to indicate some water or reflection. I'm not going to paint anything exact on the horizon, It's just going to be an impression of what might be there. When I have my next water break after that, we'll get busy on the horizon. 9. Big Sky Foreground: All right, You ready to start the horizon? Well, you're going to peel this tape and we're going to put that off to the side, save all your tape pieces, at least until they're unmanageable. Then get rid of them. Blow off your painting. And I'm going to start with, I'm going to try to go with the blues and then come into the warmer colors. I'm going to start with these two blues. This is the darker one. I'm just going to go along that line that keep in mind there's a little light right there in case I lose that when I'm blending. I'm going to bring it back because I like that there's a little bit of that blue. Now, we're going to go with this more turquoise blue. Make a few little marks with that. Not exact here and there, like this. Just to get some of those colors in there. Now maybe this really bright blue that we used right there, spring, some of that in there. Over top of some of this, there's the lightest area right there in the horizon. I mean, in the sky. I'm trying to tie in with some of that. Where is that color? I can't remember if I use this color or the blue color. This is where the scratch pad comes in handy. Let's try. I think I use this one. It's the more lavender shade that's pinkish right there. I'm not exactly sure what I use. Let's just use both. Oh, I must have used that one. Let's use both of them. And just get some of these colors in there trying to mirror some of the colors that are actually in the sky right now. I'm going to wipe my hands off even though I haven't finished the whole horizon yet. I'm going to go ahead and blend what I've just put down the best I can. I mean, the paper is probably still not got enough pastel. But I'm going to have to push pretty hard because it's pretty dry. That's okay. I can come back over it, say there's not enough on there blending. That's what happens when you don't have enough pastel. Okay, how about this super dark blue on the sides right here? Work some of that in. I don't want too much of that in there. I do have the purple in the sky, so let me bring some of that in over the dark blue and maybe even into this and blend that. Just blending a little easier now. So I've got a little more on there. I still don't have enough now. I'm going right over the horizon line. Any lightness that I might have brought in there, I may have to place it back in. But it ties the horizon in with the sky so they become one in a way. All right, I need a lighter. Bring you some of this lightness in there, especially over here on this side. And I can use the color shaper if I don't want to mess things up too bad to just soften that up. It blends it in pretty nicely and I'll just scrub a little bit harder here. I got it too bright. You can also use your color shaper to trim that down by using the very edge. I messed that up a little bit, so I want to gently rub out that line I just made coming down into the dark area a little bit. You can press a little harder in a smaller area with a color shaper and move it around. I guess that's why it's called a shaper, Because you can move it around a little bit easier, but you got to have enough on the paper, which I still don't. I need to, so I didn't mean to put that there. Make this a little more slender right there. And you can also push up to make it a little bit jagged, give it a little texture if you want to, which I like to do. I don't know why it looks like waves coming in. I want to do that. All right. You need to get some of these golden tones down. I don't want to overdo it on this, I just want a little touch of gold in there, which I'm going to cover up a few little marks. Too much of that. Maybe then take some of the darker, haven't used this color yet. Work some of that in this can look like a sandy ledge. Bring it right over there, put a little bit right there. Then I'm, I haven't done the peach color yet. That's going to be a little accent and I'm not quite sure where I want to put it. I'm going to take the beige and go over some of that. And around it, the big and the gold is they're pretty similar. Then where's the creamy white? This is it peach white. Bring some of that in. I'm actually going to bring that up over a little bit more. I'm thinking of reflections in here. Light from the sky, it'll help blend all this too, because I don't have enough on the paper down here at the bottom. I'm going to blend this with my fingers now the best I can. Still don't have enough on the paper, but it's a start. Let's get some more of this creamy white. Keeping in mind that I want this to be a pretty light scene. I'm going over the dark, but it'll show when I go to blend it. At some point here, I'll stop blending and just start mark making that point is coming very soon. See, we've got a little reflection now with the colors of the sky. With the addition of this little dark, I haven't used this peachy orange yet. I may go ahead and do that now. I'm going to clean it off first. And see I like to do these accent colors, like using a flat side of it, but it's a round pastel. I'm just pressing it. And you can kind of drag it, maybe even just pressing it in there. It's just like that color. Rather than blend all that in, I think I'm just going to use the color shape and kind of go sideways and up and down and work that in. Rather than blending it with my fingers. I like that color. It's a little bit too much. If you go put the darker brown back in there in a few areas, it will brighten up that peach and it will also give it some dimension. I just kind of work that in do a little up and down, Sharp marks get messy with it and even extend it on into those other areas a little bit. Now I'm going to go back with the creamy, the creamy white. Just drag it, help tone that down. When you drag it on a side like this, it gives it these little sharp and rough marks which is great if you're trying to indicate like a sandy area. See, I like that little rough market made there. Then you can take that cast wedge if you want to create a little line work in there. I like to just go sweep it back and forth across and make some lines. And you can also pull down on the wedge to create some interesting marks. And a watery look got going on there. And then if you mess up like I just did and got the light color up here, and I didn't really want to just take your color shape and blend that in. I'm wondering about adding a little bit of dark right there just to further break that up and enhance it. The question is, what color dark do I want to try the dark blue, which would be this or the dark purple? Before I've used the dark purple, I don't know if I want purple in there. Let me just try a little touch or two of this blue, maybe even some over here. There's no hard inset, rule over this, but you see I've put it in three spots. Usually when I bring in a color like that into a certain area like the sky or ground, I want to add that color in three different spots. It's not just in one place. I'm going to take the color shaper and see if I can just maneuver some of that around. Up and down and sideways, and I don't even know if you'll see this bottom edge corner. Once I matt it, you will. If I matt it up high enough, that might be a little too dark there, but I haven't done my really brights yet. I can actually take the side of this creamy one and just put it on there, rest it and pull down real fast. Just put it right above it, and do that in a few spots, gives it some interest, a little bit of texture in there. And then if you get too much on there and you don't want it, take the edge of your color shaper and scrape wherever you don't want it. You can also go up and down with your color shape. Just like to give a little bit of texture there, you can even just scribble with the color shape to shape it like you want. But it softened that blue just a little bit. Gave a little interest right there. May even pull down. When you pull down like this, after you've made a sharp mark like that, it gives it a watery look like the water is overflowing a edge that might be present in the sand. I might put a little that blue right there and do the same thing. Then once again with the creamy white, put that in there and pull down and even then take some of it back off. You can create some really neat abstract abstract. Is that a word shapes with this color shape? Or creates like a little ridge right there and I still feel like I want some more white right there. So I'm just going to drag this across a few spots and then pull down, or move up and down. I do it both ways. Now that's it for the creamy white. I think I need a little bit of high lighting just to add a little pop. I'm going to take that really bright white, the lights coming from here, it's reflecting over here. I'm thinking about adding just a touch, that white right in there, and then just a few little scribbles of that white down in, through here like that. And then I don't want the sharp edges on that. So I'm going to take the color shaper very lightly and blend that in and cut into it a little bit like you would do with the catalyst wedge cut into it. Say it creates some really neat lines in that way, everything doesn't look so structured because none of this should be structured. By cutting into that white, you can bring back some of the dark and create some neat little lines that looks pretty good based on what I'm seeing with these glasses. Because it looks like we've got some water coming in back here and then coming down to a sandy area. And we need a lighter blue in here. I think we do in this water area on both sides. And that's a blue, but it looks lavender when you go put it down. And I'm going to blend that in. I don't want the blue color to be textured. A little bit of it is okay. Maybe even bring some over here into the peach area, like some water is flowing across there. I really like this light blue which pretends to be lavender. I really like that to bring that down over the peach area. If you followed me at all over the years, you'll know that my two colors are the blue and the orange. That's what I call my power colors. I tend to use those in a lot of my work, Not every piece, but a lot of it. See if I can bring just a gentle glazing of that blue in through there and the little color shape of work there. So back, remember by the horizon, it's always going to be softer then because it's going to be more out of focus, more faded as things move back. I try to keep it sharper up here and not blend as much when I'm doing them. I keep calling the bottom the horizon. I know you all are probably sitting there irritated with that, but I know the horizon is up here. This is the ground level or the foreground. I guess I should be saying. I might even bring a little of this blue right in there. I want it to look like the sea and the sky have become one. Keeping it lighter over here and darker on the other side. Foreground and see have become one that almost looks like a wave right there. You'll see shapes develop as you play with this. That's a lot of fun. Oh, I'm, I have done with this. What do you think? I think it looks pretty good. I'm going to step back and change laces or take them off. I like to look at things, how they're going to look like across the room in that way, if anything jumps out at me, I can usually see it from a distance. I know I'm pretty much alike. That's the way it is. I think I may call this one done yet. It looks pretty good on the camera too. The next step will be for me to spray this, which is going to be a challenge today because it's raining outside. Remember, don't ever spray the fixative spray indoors. It's full of chemicals you may not want in your home or your studio unless you have a good ventilation system, which if you're working in a home environment, you probably don't. Now, I need to find a way to get this outside in a covered area so I can spray it. Once I spray it, I'll be able to photograph it and then pull the tape. And that's the most exciting part. I will be back after I do all that, I will pull the tape, then we will talk about some final thoughts on these panics and go over a few little things. I'll be back shortly. 10. Final Thoughts & Tips: Okay, I have sprayed this painting outdoors and I want to just show you what it's going to look like. I've also photographed it. I want to show you what it's going to look like with the mat. Now, I've made the painting a little bigger than the mat. When I go to position it, I'm going to have to decide exactly how I want it to look in the matt, how far over I want to be. If I go too far up, I'm going to lose my foreground. I'm thinking I'll probably matt it something like that. That looks really good to me because I want that dark area at the bottom to be in the final piece. I just wanted to show you what it's going to look like before we pull the tape. All right, let's pull the tape. This is my favorite part. I has always saved the tape. I stick it over here on my side table. Let's see, let's pull this one first so then fall down, blow any excess off. Even though it's been sprayed, there may still be some little pieces. Also, make sure you wash your hands before you do this. When you handle the edges and you can see I got it crooked with my tape job, but that's why I made it a little bigger than the mat that it's going to go in, because this white part will be behind that mat. Pull this, there we go. Now let's show you what it looks like. Isn't that pretty? That turned out really good. I'm surprised. I wasn't sure how that was going to work. But that's the beauty of this. I'm never sure how it's going to work. And the clouds form themselves. If I just keep after it, they eventually form something that looks really neat. No picture involved. I did look at a reference photo I got at the ocean, but I did not look at it while I was doing the painting. I wanted that clear brain to let it develop itself and let go of control, and I think I managed that. I got a little spot right there which is still a loose spot. So I'll blend that in. Even though this has been sprayed three times, you could still smear this. Be careful, don't handle it now, the pastel pads come with some sheets of glassine paper in the pad. I use those if I'm not matting them to store them between the sheets, but this one will be matted and it'll be put in one of those clear bags like those original ones I showed you in the beginning of this class. That usually protects them well enough. A little dust make it in the sleeve, but it's not real bad. Long as it's not handled on the front, it doesn't disturb it. But this is now ready to be matted up and framed. It is going to be in eight by eight Matt opening in a 12 by 12 Matt. So it can fit in any standard 12 by 12 frame, which can be found just about anywhere these days. And I do try to prepare my work so it will fit in standard frames. I'll tell you a little thing that I do is I'll go to antique malls, Goodwill store, places like that. I will find really good deals on some antique and older wood frames that are in great shape or even if the frame needs painting. I do that too. I will make a piece to fit a frame. I often buy frames with really nice double matting in them. That might have been some somebody just wanted to get rid of. I don't ever take original art out of the frames. I buy original art sometimes at these places, but I never take them out of the frames. I do take prints out of old frames that people have decided to get rid of if the frame is usable. And then I will use it to do my own pieces and I'll make the pieces to fit in those mats. And in those frames, it's a good way to acquire frames. That often are very expensive custom framing and matting. Because just last week I went to our local goodwill store and I came home with, I think, six frames. And I know that at least four of those frames out of the six were custom frame and Matt jobs. I have to take them all apart and I have to touch up anything, fix anything. If there's anything that he's fixing, take the print out, put my art in. Then I put them right back together with new paper on the back that I have in my studio here and finish them out again. The frame gets a new life with a new piece of art. I get nice frames for my pastel works at very reasonable prices instead of having to take them all to the custom framer. That's just a little tip. Let's see, what else do I want to go over in the final thoughts on this process? My main thing I want to reiterate is keeping it light with your pastel application and with the blending, you can always go stronger later. It's a normal thing if you've never worked with a soft pastel. When you pick it up, you're going to handle it like you would a crown or a piece of chalk, and you're going to push down really hard. This is why I say, get some scrap paper, like my little notebook I showed you. Play with it on scrap paper before you use this good paper, the expensive paper. Because if you're going at it too hard, you're going to fill up the tooth of the paper very quickly. And you won't get near as good of color applications and blending results. When you get to this paper, the past paper, keep it light when you apply it, don't apply it super, super hard. When you do your blending, start off really light. If you need to press harder than you can. Same with the color shape, or when you start with that, try to use the tool very lightly. And don't push hard unless you see that what you're doing is not blending out. Then you may have to push a little. That's the main thing I've had to learn with going back to this medium. I have not worked with soft pastel, exclusively like this in many years. I recently, just right before the beginning of this year, picked it up again and said I've been doing mixed media and digital for so long and I've explored lots of different media. But I picked this back up and I just did one piece solely with soft pastel, no alcohol wash, no water involved, just the dry media. That first piece came out so well. I wanted to do it, do some more of them, and I decided I loved it so much. I wanted to go for a while. For this year, my challenge is to work with one media exclusively just for my own personal challenge. This whole studio is filled with paint and ink color pencils and intense acrylic paints and water colors, everything you can imagine, as well as the soft pastels. But I set up my workspace to just work in soft pastels for a while. I have another workspace in the other room. If I want to do some mixed media stuff, I'll do it in that room. This room can be used solely for this. I'm really pleased with how this is going. I hope you guys will enjoy giving it a try and working with these and making some beautiful, big skies with lots of fluffy clouds in your paintings too. Keep that in mind about the size because they do need to be framed. If you make one at a o size, it turns out really good, then you're going to want to frame it. If it's in a really odd size, you're going to have to get it custom framed and that's expensive. Either make it to fit a frame and matt you already have or a matt you already have, That'll go in a standard frame or make it in a standard frame size like five by 78 by ten. But your practice pieces that like the one I did in the first video for the study, that is a very odd size. I could kick myself for that because it turned out really good and now I want to frame it well, because it's an odd size, it's going to require custom matt and frame. I could kick myself for that one, I should have done that in a standard size, but I used a piece of scrap paper. And that's fine for practice, but sometimes your practice pieces turn out really good. That's something to keep in mind. Anyway, I would love to see what you guys do. Upload your projects, Show me your clouds, your skies, your foreground, which I've been calling horizon the whole time. But hey, at my age, things like that happen. I hope you have enjoyed watching this and learning some things about how I do these. I hope you'll be able to produce some really pretty things like this too. I have no doubt you'll be able to once you practice with it a little bit. As always, thanks for watching. I hope you guys have a great day.