24 Soft Pastel Mark-Making Techniques You NEED to Try! + PASTEL GIVEAWAY 🎨

Welcome back, pastel artist, to my four-part miniourse called The Magic of Soft Pastels. And I say welcome back because I've already made part one to this, which was called Discovering Your Soft Pastels, going into so many of the different pastel brands, unlocking some of the mysteries and questions about the hardness to softness scale, and so much more. So, check that video out. I'll have a link to that in the description of this video or post. And in this lesson, part two, it's called making your mark. We'll be discovering many of the different mark making techniques that will bring life and beauty to your pastel paintings. And if you're seeing this on the public Monae Cafe Studio YouTube channel, be sure to stay tuned to the end where I'm going to share with you how you could win this 48 set of Paul Rubin's pastels. You do have to be subscribed to this YouTube channel to be eligible to win. So, go ahead and click that subscribe button now. And don't worry, patrons, I'm going to have a giveaway over on my Patreon page, too. One of my patrons could win my curated Earthberry pastel set called the Fields of Sunshine. Yes, it's available again. They've sold out twice. So, if you want to purchase it, you can get a coupon code Susan 10 art all caps to get 10% off. So, patrons, keep an eye out for that post. It will be coming soon. All right, let's dive into this lesson. In the first part of this lesson, I'll be demonstrating 12 different mark making techniques. And in this first portion of the lesson, I'll be making dry mark making techniques. So, be sure to stay tuned for the next section where we're going to play and liquefy these pastels for some wet mark making techniques. These techniques are great for beginners, but really artists of every level because sometimes we get in habits with our mark making techniques, and it's good to break out of those habits and try new things. And in this part, I've actually repurposed a lesson that I've had on my channel for a while. I have better audio in this version, and I'm also inserting examples from many of my painting tutorials demonstrating these techniques. I think you're going to learn a lot. Here we go. The surface I'll be using for our mark making grid is Canson XL black drawing paper. This is a 9 by12 pad and I chose black because I thought the colors would show up nicely on it. The pastels I'm using are called Prismacolor New Pastels. These are great for beginner artists. They're very affordable and they're great for sketching. I have so many videos, this is one of them on my YouTube channel where I use them exclusively for paintings. This was an example of doing some cloud studies using very affordable paper and some very affordable Prismacolor new pastels. These are great when working on an unsanded pastel surface like the one you see with these cloud studies and thus why I chose them for creating these mark making techniques on the black drawing paper. To create my grid, I'm using a Pusca acrylic marker in white. And I'm going to speed this up, but you're basically going to create a grid with 12 sections. So, your measurements will depend on whatever size paper you're using. And if you're a patron of mine on my Patreon page, I'm going to give you a graphic for this. All right. I'm just filling in all of the different mark techniques. And now we're going to get started. Our first markmaking technique is called blending. Soft pastels is a dry medium, but the colors can still be mixed and blended right on the surface. Here I'm starting with blue and yellow, the two colors we need to make green. I can place one color over the other and gently work them together, creating a new color directly on the paper. The order of the layers makes a difference. If I begin with blue and add yellow on top, the mixture may lean one way. Here, I'm just repeating pretty much what I've already done. I started with blue and now I'm going to gently layer some of the yellow on top. And now I'm going to reverse that order. Let's start with yellow. The differences are subtle, but typically the top color layer is the one that will be more dominant. For this particular blending technique, what's doing the blending? Well, it's actually the pastel itself. As I sketch over the initial layer, this pastel stick is pushing the pigments together while also adding its own color. Now, let me show you some other ways to blend. I'm going to recreate my yellow and blue mixture. And this time, I'm going to use a blending tool to soften these two layers and take the blending even a little bit further. These are some of the blending tools that I like to use. Can you use your finger? Yes, you can, and I sometimes do, but my favorite tools are like this little piece of pipe foam insulation, literally what you use to insulate your pipes, and a shammy cloth. I cut them in little squares like this to blend. First, I'll demonstrate using my finger. And like I said, I do this sparingly, but it's not taboo for me to use my finger to blend sometimes. Next, I will use the shammy cloth. And keep in mind, some of these blending tools behave differently on different surfaces. That's going to be part three to this course. And now I'm going to use the shammy cloth. This is one of my favorite blending tools, especially if my soft pastel surface is not too coarse. Now I would like to show you another blending tool that I often like using. This is from one of my tutorials. These are packing peanuts. Yes, what you find in packages when they're trying to protect the contents. And obviously this is sped up, but I like to use them during the block in stage to blend things in. All right, the next markmaking technique is called broken color. And broken color gives us a completely different effect. I'm using the same two colors, but instead of smoothing the colors together, I'm going to be placing small irregular strokes beside and over one another. The blue will remain visible and the yellow will remain visible. But from a little distance, our eyes begin to combine these two colors together and suggest them as green. This is called optical mixing. The colors mingle in the viewer's eyes rather than being physically blended on the paper. Because the individual pieces of color stay intact for the most part, the surface feels brighter, livelier, and more painterly. And don't worry, the strokes don't need to be evenly spaced or carefully arranged. In fact, a little variation keeps the painting from looking mechanical. I can change the size of the marks, turn my hand, overlap some areas, and leave more of the lower color showing in others. Broken color is especially lovely when the colors are fairly close in value. And value just means where the color falls in its range or scale from dark to light. So, it's best to use colors that are similar in value that way. This is an example of a tutorial where I shared creating broken color to represent some of the distant grasses and flowers in the path of the sun. This technique can also be used to create beautiful skies in your artwork. In a sky, for example, several blues, violets, pinks, or warm neutrals can sit together without becoming busy because they're similar in value. And the marks create movement and atmosphere while the values hold the area together. When you try this, resist the urge to rub it smooth or over blend. Let the pieces of color remain visible. Those separate marks are what gives the painting its sparkle. This technique of using colors of the same value is often called fractured color. Here's a clip from a tutorial where I used a bit of fractured color in the sky. I use a blue. This is an earthberry pastel. Be sure to see part one where I talk about many different pastel brands. And I'm using this just to kind of scumble some of this blue. That's another technique you will learn. And I'm going to add another color to the sky that is of a similar value. This is a little darker in value, but very close to the first blue that I put in. And when I layer colors of a similar value into a sky, it brings a sense of interest in color and yet still remains harmonious. Hatching is simply a series of lines moving in the same general direction. The lines can be straight, curved, long, short, close together, or widely spaced. Their direction helps describe the form of what you're painting, while their spacing controls how light or dark the area feels. I can use one color or allow several colors to weave through the same area. It's a simple mark, but it's wonderfully useful for shading, texture, and movement. And now, let's talk about cross-hatching. Cross-hatching begins with hatching, then adds another set of lines at a different angle. I can cross the first layer with the same color or introduce a new color for more visual interest. And the marks don't have to form a perfect grid. Varying the angle, spacing, and pressure keeps the texture loose and natural while gradually building depth. And now let's discuss feathering. It's a favorite technique of mine. And feathering is built from repeated strokes that move in a related direction. Unlike a rigid row of lines, as in hatching, these marks can fan outward. They can overlap. They can bend and change length. That shared sense of direction creates flow. You're going to see this come to life as I add some more colors. Now, when would we use feathering? I find it's very helpful to suggest fur, hair, grass, pine needles, or any surface made of slender forms. The same technique can build the branches of a tree. Then, smaller marks can add twigs or grasses. Here's an example from a tutorial where I painted a sweet little mouse on a mushroom and I used a bit of a feathering technique to represent the fur. When painting animals with fur, I typically block in some of the general colors and values onto the main form of the animal. And then I will use pastels with a feathering technique that emulates the direction of the fur forming itself over the body of the animal. It's a gradual process and you'll be able to see more here where it's zoomed in. And I just make little marks once again forming over the animals body. I can also use a bit of a feathering technique to create some fun texture and motion in subject matter such as straw. The next example is called the side stroke. We often forget that we've got a nice broad surface to paint with and often I will break my pastels in half so they're not such a long stick. And this technique is great because you can often cover a large area pretty quickly. Keep in mind you can make shorter side strokes with just kind of the tip of the pastel or longer side strokes by laying it more flat. I often use this type of stroke when I'm doing what's called the block in stage of the painting. It's where you lay down the majority of values and colors before you get started. And now for the side stroke layered, which is pretty much what it sounds like. It is the same side stroke, but I'll be demonstrating just layering color gently on top. And it's almost always recommended with soft pastel painting until you get to the final marks to keep a light touch. Here I'm laying the opposite colors over each other. And you can once again see how when you don't press too hard, you can see the blended color. Pointalism uses dots or small taps of color. The idea is similar to broken color. Rather than mixing pigments into one flat color, I place separate little color marks close enough for the eye to connect them. I apologize that sometimes my left-handedness keeps you from seeing my mark making, but you will as soon as I pull my hand away. And adding a second color begins to create an optical mixture. Just like with broken color, the colors mingle together visually. and a third color can make things even more exciting. And as I've stated, remember to play and experiment with these techniques. Pointalist marks are useful for pebbles, flowers, distant foliage, sparkling light, and small accents. Really, anywhere I want color to shimmer without losing its identity. Now, let's talk about scumbling. Scumbling is another one of my favorite techniques. It's a loose, irregular movement, almost like scribbling, but with intention. I let the pastel wander across the surface while turning my hand, changing direction, and the marks will overlap, skip, and sometimes even catch the texture of the paper depending on what surface you're working on. And I'm not trying to create a tidy pattern. The randomness is part of the effect. Scumbling is especially useful for foliage, rough ground, clouds, or any area that needs lively, broken texture. Layering more than one color makes it even more interesting. Scumbling marks can be seen once again in this tutorial I've shared before where I'm creating just some of the shape of these flowers. I'm not necessarily creating every single part of this flower exactly. I'm kind of making little squiggly marks with different colors and values on top of each other. And I find this is a great way to create a sense of impressionism rather than realism and keep a painting feeling loose, flowing, and painterly. Here's another example of some scumbling marks. This is in one of my tutorials painting some autumn trees. And you'll see here how I first block in with some side strokes using the broad side of the pastel just to get some of the general color and value in. And then I will use some scumbling type of marks to represent the leaves and the little leaf shapes. Just as with the flowers, I'm not trying to create individual leaves or parts of this tree. I'm trying to give an impression and often little scumbling marks like this really do the trick and keep things feeling fresh and painterly. The next technique is called twisting. And this is one I often forget to use, but it's oh so fun. For this mark, I place the broad side of the pastel against the paper and twist my wrist as I move. And that turning motion creates a stroke that widens, narrows, uh, breaks, and changes direction all at once. The next technique is simply called drawing, and it's when we are using more of the point of the pastel and making linear marks to represent whatever subject we're trying to create. And here I'm demonstrating these linear marks with a more fluid and smooth technique. But if you want more life and pizzazz, keep it quick and full of motion. This type of mark making is often great for final marks on a painting when you're trying to capture little tidbits of elements or focal point attention or trying to capture some wispiness or gesture in a grassy field. Keep in mind when painting anything organic, it's good to keep a randomness and a varied quality to your marks and your spaces between the marks. Here is the lesson where I'm demonstrating some basic little drawing techniques. I'm actually using the same pastels, Prismacolor new pastels that I'm using to show you these mark making techniques. These marks in this cowl painting have a more quick and gestural style, which is actually something I prefer. It's great for eyelashes, too. The next is rolling pressure. Another favorite of mine. I love it when I can use a round pastel as with I believe this is a rimbrand pastel and I can literally just roll uh the circumference of the pastel onto the surface. And I believe this really creates a gestural and broken uh very fractured type of line. And to me it feels more natural and more painterly than the drawing technique. With this method, try combining two actions. Roll the pastel while moving from firm pressure to light pressure or the other way around. The resulting marks are difficult to repeat exactly, and that's part of their beauty. They're especially effective for tree trunks, grasses, rocks, reflections, and other natural forms where perfectly even edges would feel stiff and rigid. And here's an example of how that press and release type of sketchy mark can be used to create random and flowing grass shapes. And notice how even though this isn't a round pastel, I'm still rolling it and twisting it and changing the pressure to give that organic feel and sense of randomness. I find this technique is really fun and really effective. And talking about fun, this dusting technique is probably the most fun of all. The result is a delicate scatter of pastel particles. I'm rubbing the stick over a small grater. It's just a cheese grater. So, the color falls onto the surface in tiny little specks. This technique is lovely for stars, snow, pollen, fireflies, uh sea spray. It's wonderful for sea spray or any place where I want fine, irregular points of light or texture. I can keep the dust concentrated in one area or allow it to drift outward more gradually. Once the particles are in place, I mean these have to stick to the surface, right? What you want to do is place a sheet of glassine wax paper or tracing paper over the surface. Then what I do is I press with a smooth rounded tool. This could be I just grabbed whatever I had. This could be a rolling pin or in my case um a glass. And I'm pressing rather than rubbing because I want to secure the pastel particles without smearing them into one cloudy shape. Now, this technique works best if you are working on a sanded pastel surface because you're literally pressing the particles into the texture of the paper and it really holds great. In my case, it didn't work as well because I was just working on regular drawing paper. Let me show you a few dusting techniques from some of my tutorials. This is where I wanted to add some stars to the sky. I literally cut out some tracing paper around the shapes of my trees because I didn't want it to get on the trees. And I used a toothbrush and I wet the toothbrush, brushed it across the pastel to liquefy it. And then I used my finger to rub across the bristles. And I hope you can see that it's making some very delicate impressions of stars. I find this technique is a little more subtle and represents stars that feel further away uh without so much brilliance and brightness. Here on my same painting, I want to have some stars that really twinkle and show up a bit more. So rather than my cheese grater, I decided to use an Xacto blade and just uh carve away a little bit at one of my pastel sticks. I believe this is a Mount Vision pastel just to get some larger chunks. And I'm literally placing them on the painting with my fingers. I will once again need to press these into the paper so that they don't just fall off when I pick the paper up. This time I'm using a jar of beans. So, as you can see, I always use whatever is handy. I put a full piece of tracing paper on the top, rolled it with some firm pressure, and because I believe this surface was perhaps pastel matte, the stars really did stay in place. Now, you can physically make marks um to add a few more stars if you like. And one thing I love about this technique is it creates a sense of randomness that you often can't achieve if you're making all of the marks with your hand. Well, that was a lot of fun. And I've made a graphic clearly demonstrating these 12 different mark techniques. Also, if you're a patron of mine, you'll get that graphic. Plus, I've provided a PDF for you to participate in sharing your markmaking graph in our shared homework album. All right, now it's time where I want to share with you some wet mark making techniques. So, let's get started. I now have 12 ways that we can do wet mark making techniques using soft pastels. I always like to say you can liquefy soft pastels and turn them into paint. And I have 12 techniques to play and maneuver and manipulate the pastels in a more liquid state. I'm going to be using Canson velvet. It's a great surface. It's water friendly, that's why I'm using it, but it's also a really great surface. It's not too textural, so the pastels move around really nicely on it. I'm going to be featuring the Paul Rubin's 48 set, which is a fantastic set, and they actually uh apply very smoothly to the Canson velvet. And remember, part one of this series or miniourse has uh all about pastels, discovering your pastels with all kinds of information. And I do feature Paul Rubin's in that as well because they're so affordable. They're very budget friendly. The color is great and I'd say they're an awesome starter set for any beginner pastel artist. All right, let's play with 12 wet mark making techniques. This is the Canson velvet. It's called Canson mants. It's a French word velvet. Now, Canson also makes an unsanded pastel surface. Um, and that is going to be something that I cover in part three of this lesson. It's going to be learning all about different surfaces, but I love Canson velvet. It is water friendly. It takes lots of layers even though it's not very textural. So, it's an excellent soft pastel surface. And I'm using the cream color because often when I liquefy pastels, you can do it on a dark surface or a colored surface, but it really shows up best when you use a cream or white surface. And I think it's really gonna make the pastels pop. So this is one full approximately 16 by 12 inch sheet. And rather than dividing this one into the little sections, the 12 sections, some of these uh really blend and move around a lot. So I'm just going to do it without the lines and uh maybe add it as a graphic later. Now, let me share with you about some of the different blending mediums I'm going to be using along with some of the different tools for moving the pastel around. The first is super simple. It's just water. I just have a little dish of water here. The next is rubbing alcohol. I use this a lot when I'm liquefying pastels. And I typically use a 70% alcohol, but use whatever you have. I have even had people ask me if you can use liquor, like white uh liquor. I recommend white, but um I've never tried it. I've heard other artists say they've used it and it works, but don't ask me about the longevity of that kind of a painting or whether it would smell or not. Airbrush medium is another medium I like to use often. Matte medium. This one's by Liquitex. This is a stiff bristle brush. I'll be starting with a smooth brush. Then a fan brush, a toothbrush, a pallet knife, a little wooden skewer, and I love to also put alcohol in a spritzer bottle, like a fine mist spritzer bottle. No, that's not a Body Ecology um cologne or anything. And the second one is just a water spritzer bottle. I'll also be using a sponge for some fun effects. And oh goody, what is this? Yes, we're even going to play with some stencils. Okay, let's get started. This should be a lot of fun. The first way to liquefy pastels is the easiest and the most affordable. Again, we're using just plain water. I have a soft bristle brush I'll be using and I'm going to apply. Let's start with kind of an earthy color because often I will use this technique for something called blocking in or just sometimes toning my surface one color. And often I like to use a complimentary color. That just means opposite on the color wheel. And since landscapes, I paint a lot of landscapes, have a lot of greens and blues, it's a great idea to tone your surface more of a golden color, oranges, uh leaning uh warmer on the color wheel. So, I'm going to start with uh just this pretty earthy color here. It's a little dark. Maybe I should go a little lighter. Let's see here. Yeah, let me go a little bit lighter here. I'm going to go with this orange here. And I'm just going to Oh my goodness. Look how smoothly these Paul Rubin's pastels layer on here. That's just gorgeous. So, so pretty. I think I'm going to uh brighten it up a little bit. Uh, and yes, you can go ahead and mix different colors of pastels before you liquefy. Uh, but be careful. You don't want to create muddied colors. Uh, I'll talk about making a neutral color in a minute when we move on. It's so nice that you actually can do a little color mixing. Oh, yeah. Look how pretty that is. So, we got a nice warm color here. And all I'm going to do is get my soft brush. We'll talk about a stiff bristle brush in a little while for a different technique, but for now, I'm just using a soft brush. Again, I might be just toning a surface to create a nice complimentary underpainting uh or whatever technique you're trying to achieve. So, let's just do this. Now, they're a dry medium, but when you add liquid or water in this case, they do turn into paint. It's cool. I love it. And uh the water control is something that uh you can use to your own discretion. Uh often I have my um my surface up on an easel and uh it allows for some nice dripage. Uh and we're going to talk about that in a second, too. So, that's just a beautiful way to turn your soft pastels into paint. Super easy, super affordable. Next, we'll basically be doing the same thing with a brush, but this time using the rubbing alcohol. One of the advantages about rubbing alcohol, and I would say I I typically use rubbing alcohol uh more than I do water when I'm liquefying pastels, but that's because it dries fast and I'm often making a video and I just kind of need things to move along. But the advantage of water is it doesn't dry fast. So it gives you a little bit more time to maneuver things around if that's kind of what your aim is. So now let's use a different color this time. And I'm just going to use the alcohol instead of the water. I need to clean it off a little bit. By the way, if your pastels get dirty, you can just clean it off. Often I will use a uh a tissue. I keep a box of tissues. I just ran out. A paper towel works fine, too, though. So, let's use this beautiful uh kind of pink uh magenta color. And we're gonna And these uh Paul Rubin's pastels. Oh my goodness, they layer beautifully on this Canson velvet. So, we're going to use the same brush. I already washed it out. And a little bit of the alcohol. And make sure you have good ventilation um when you're using alcohol. Now, one thing I've noticed with the alcohol, too, not only does it dry faster, it tends to have a different effect. I think it makes thins it out a little more, I think, if I had to try to nail that down with a description. So, as you can see, that works great, too. And if you want to know more about this or see more, pull up some of my videos where I do an underpainting because I use this technique all the time. Look at those gorgeous colors. Now, they are going to dry a little more opaque looking uh like the nature of soft pastels. So, that's just two different methods, water and alcohol. And next, I'm going to use airbrush medium. I have a video that's not too far back from this one that I used this to create a sunflower field painting, and I did a beautiful uh kind of pink underpainting, I believe it was. And uh this just blends the pastels a little differently. I kind of like it. I I like all of these really, but uh it has a a bit of a different feel to it. I think it makes the pastels feel more like paint. So, let me get some color down here. I think I'll do for this one, I'll do kind of like two. Oh my goodness. I can't get over how soft these Paul Rubin's pastels are on this uh Canson velvet. It's like buttery. Wow. I'm going to give two colors here just to mix them together. What I'm going to do, I don't have my dishes for everything here, so I'm just going to put a little dollop down here and rub it in with the brush. All right, let's grab this. I might have to actually get a little more than that, but it it feels like paint. I wish you could feel how this is blending. Um, and I also like how it gives a little bit of a a color mixing that works well. So, let me mix up this blue and I'll kind of blend them together a little bit. All right, I'm going to add a little bit more actually just right on top of here to get most of the water out of here. So, I'm going to blend this blue. I really This blends so nicely like paint. And I'm going to mix these together. So, what I love about this, I wish I had done that with these so you could compare is you actually can mix more like you would with acrylic or watercolor or oil and get more colors. You know how you can mix, you know, yellow and blue together and get green? Um, it kind of works that way with airbrush medium. So, that's one thing I like about this technique. And now, let's do the same with the matte medium. And this time, I'm going to put three colors down. We're going to use this matte medium to blend them all together just to make a new color. Um, rather than keeping them separate like this. All right. What colors do I want to use? Let's do I really like this pretty green here. One, two, three, four. Yeah, I got plenty of room over here. This pretty green. Going to scumble a little color down here. I like this little brown color. You know what? Let me show you how to make a a neutral. Um neutrals are just compliments on the color wheel. So, that is something really neat when you're doing this wet technique um is that you can actually make your own neutrals. And a compliment is just opposites on the color wheel. So, I'm going to go with this green uh green. It's kind of a green like this. And right across from it, it's red and oranges. So, I'm going to add a pretty orange here. I think I will just do the two colors. I'll add a little more green. So, you can see in the dry medium that you've already seen, we already talked about blending like pastel on top like that. And if you keep it dry, yes, you do get a little um different color when you combine them with the dry blending, but you really get a different color when you liquefy them. So, I'm going to apply the matte medium. And let's mix that all up. I can never remember how much I need of these things. So, this I'm going to mix just like paint. You see how we got a nice kind of neutral orange instead of that bright orange. And I think if I added more green, I would have had even more of a neutral color. And by the way, if you need to lighten up a neutral, all you do is add a little white. If you need to darken up a neutral, all you do is add a little black or dark color. Now, so far, I've been working with a very smooth brush. And I often will use a smooth brush if I'm doing an underpainting where I'm keeping a lot of the local color, but I will use a stiff bristle brush if I'm just having some fun and creating an underpainting where I want a lot of texture. So, I'm going to use this. I'm just going to use water for the this example here, but let me get another fun color. I don't have any blues in here. Let's get a pretty well kind of a blue in here. Let's get And this set, by the way, doesn't have really any purples except for um this little lavender right here. So, let me let me do I need some bright yellows, too. Um let me go ahead and do this blue here. And let's see what can I add to that. I'll add a little bit of this pretty green blue to it. And a little bit of water. almost did the alcohol. And what happens is I have too much um water on my brush. I probably should have used the alcohol. Um what happens is you get more of a a textural feel to that. Can you see the marks? And if you want more of a scratchy textural feel, I always recommend using a brush that's a stiff bristle brush. If I had a larger surface, I could demonstrate this better. Another technique that works great is by using a fan brush. And often with this technique, the rattier and more tattered the better. We like those uh variations. We don't want too much consistency. This actually has a little pastel on it. So, with this one, let's get a pretty green like uh we have some some trees. I'm going to put it here. And I don't really have any dark darks in here other than black. So, I think I'll pass on that. All right. So, what I'm going to do here is I'm going to use I think I'll use the alcohol for this one. And I'm just going to dip my fan brush, just the tips of it, into the alcohol. This time I'm going to push. And this is a great technique for just getting some random kind of distant tree line. Alcohol dries so fast sometimes you have to add a little bit more to it. Um, you see how that's almost feeling like uh organic foliage? So, that's a really fun technique. Often I'll do this and quite a few other artists do it to um darker values to get an underpainting of like a distant tree line and just some really organic shapes. That's what I always feel like with this one. And you can vary the uh the value of it based on how much liquid you add. But this technique, you don't want to add too much liquid or it's just going to all blend into the paper. The next one is pretty fun and I've pretty much already demonstrated it. It is the toothbrush and it's a pretty simple technique. We're really just going to dip the toothbrush in a little bit of water. This is I demonstrated it on the uh the dusting technique where we made some stars. So, this does work good if you've got your painting already laid down and you need to create some seafoam or some stars. Let me do a few colors with this one just because this is so fun. I'm going to do a little bit of this lavender on here. Hopefully, you can see it. I'm trying not to get this all over the paper. And I'm just going to make some little splattery marks. Isn't that fun? Oh my gosh, that's so fun. And the more water you add, the same with this one, the more it's just going to blend together. It has a little less water on it now. And uh instead of um instead of cleaning it off, I'm just going to go ahead and add the pink. So now it might be a little thicker. Yes, these marks are a little bit thicker. But that is just so fun. Just splattering some of this this color on here. This is great if you've got some rocks and you need just a little splatter of dirt or texture. Um, all kinds of various things you can do with this technique. Sometimes, if you're familiar with watercolor painting, a lot of artists will just use this technique or tapping their brush. I bet we could do that with pastels. I haven't even tried that. Where you just wet your brush and um add some pastels to it and tap tap tap it. And it just adds some fun and life to your painting. Another technique, let's see what color do I need here. Is let's get some bright yellowy orange is um to get some linear marks. Let's see if we can get this uh with a color that'll show up is to use an element that you might can get some linear marks. Either a pallet knife or even these little skewers here. So, what I do with that is I'm going to wet the um pastels, liquefy them just a bit. I'm using just my stiff bristle brush here and I'm going to wet it a bit. You kind of have to work fast with this one. That's why I use the water. And we can just move things around. And again, you want to keep things organic. You could even roll it. Um roll it around. I'm having to pull across the water for this one. Let's see how that works with the with the pallet knife. I need to add a little more water. And again, this technique, if you don't have enough water with this one, you don't want to overdo it, but you're not going to get the paint to move. So now I'm just going to take this pallet knife and kind of blend it up. You could get broader strokes with the pallet knife. Lots of fun. So just play. That's what I recommend. Just play with these techniques and you will learn as you go. That's been the whole uh journey for my pastel painting career. The next one I wanted to keep some of these at the end because I need some drips. This is a favorite technique of mine. What I'm going to do is make some Let me see. I need something kind of dark. Not a lot of darks in this set. I am going to paint some trees upside down. I'm going to give a bit of pastel here. Like this. And let's see here. Maybe I'll put even a little bit of this dark right here. And I'm going to spray. I'm going to try to First one I'm going to do is with alcohol. Actually, I could do Yeah, I could do either or, you know. I'm going to do just one of these. So, what I'm going to do is I'm just going to spray this. I'm going to spray good dose of this. And then I'm just going to let it drip. And you can kind of guide the drips if you want a little bit. Just kind of pull it down. And what happens is you end up getting shapes that are kind of like organic tree shapes. I think I overdid the alcohol, but you get the idea. So, it's a really nice way to create almost like an upside down drippy texture. Plus, I love things that have just a a real uh natural flow versus man-made. For the next one, I am going to use just the water spritzer bottle. I'm going to combine Let's go ahead and use this like purple here. And I'll get in a little bit of this pretty pink. And maybe just a little bit of this light blue. These are pretty sky colors, right? They just But look how pretty they look even blended dry. I like both wet and dry methods. So now I'm just going to use my spritzer bottle instead of letting it drip. Um I really wish these pages were separate so I could make the the display a little bit better. I'm just going to spray it and give just a little bit of a a feel of the drips of water. If I zoom it in here, you can see it just gives a little bit of texture to the uh to the pastels. And we'll wait and see what it looks like when it dries, too. The next one is really fun. We're going to be using a sponge. And I I think I came up with this one my own one day. I was like, what would happen if I put some water on a sponge and much like our toothbrush example and just added some pastels to it. Look at that. Look how that applies. Isn't that fantastic? And you can get some really fun texture using a sponge technique. Isn't that neat? Let me see if I can get another color kind of blend with it. What should I use here? H I wonder if we could get kind of the feeling of purple if I added some blue to it. Maybe like an illusion of purple. Almost like the broken color in the dry medium example. So, that's a lot of fun and a great way to get some texture in a painting. All right, the next one is my favorite. kind of like the dusting one in the dry blending or mark making techniques and it is stencils. I have a couple of videos on my channel where I have used a stencil technique. I wanted to pop a little clip from this lesson that's on my YouTube channel for you to see a method of using the stencils with a dry technique. You're going to see me in just a second use it similar to the way I did the sponge before, but you can use pan pastels if you want to use stencils on your pastel painting with a dry technique. If you're familiar with pan pastels, I just use these little sponge tools. And this way I can literally just um apply it on top of the stencil and it has a great effect. And I did add another product to this lesson where I got some actual sparkle to the pastels. Now, let me show you how to use stencils with a wet technique. But these are a few little stencils that I have that are just fun. This is just a fun way to paint. So, I'm going to do a combo of these. And I'm just going to lay my stencil down. And I'm going to use the sponge similar to how I did with this technique here. Let me get the brush. And I'm just going to paint on a little water. My brush is a little dirty, but I don't mind. Let's get some pretty green here. We'll start with this one. Look how good that just applies. And you got to work a little fast here because you want to make sure you uh your sponge doesn't dry before your pastels won't apply then. And also hold your stencil in place because you don't want it jumping around while you're doing this. And so we're just going to give a little fun with that. Pull it up. Look at that. Isn't that so fun? I mean, who knew? I am the queen of experimenting. I just love it. It's just like, you know, art is supposed to be fun. We don't have to, you know, be all stuffy and always follow the rules, right? Well, there's some rules you have to follow, but in art, you know, have some fun. So, another thing you can do is uh layer the stencils. I'm going to put another one on top of this one. Kind of go outside the edges a little bit. So, just a little more water on the sponge. And you can repurpose these. You can wash them and reuse them. So, we got enough water on here. And there's that green. Let's see. What did I want? I'm going to try this color here. A little bit of this pretty turquoise. Oh my goodness. This is fun, isn't it? I love it. All right. I'm going to take this again just in some random spots. All right. Now, let's lift that up. You see why that's my favorite? Isn't that so fun? Here's the aftermath of all of our fun and exploration in liquefying soft pastels and making textures and linear marks and blending and just having fun. This is such a beautiful medium. The sky's is the limit. I have yet to discover all of the different things we can do with soft pastels. And now, are you ready to find out how you can win the 48th set of the Paul Rubin's pastels? Well, hold on to your horses for just a bit because I want to give you a little more information. This lesson that you're seeing here is the public version of my part two in my miniourse. And if you would like the full version, which is pretty similar in content, but it has all of the extra goodies, which includes my companion guide, within that PDF document, my patrons receive the markmaking challenge and practice grid, featured video links and timestamps, and even more. and I'd love to have you as part of my Patreon family. You can find a link to join in the description of this video. All right, drum roll, please. If you want to win this set of Paul Rubin's 48 pastels, first go ahead and like this video, click that thumbs up, subscribe to this channel if you haven't already, and then leave me a comment. That's all you have to do, letting me know why you would like to win this set. And I apologize, but this contest is for US residents only. I'll be randomly selecting one lucky winner from the comments and announcing the winner on September 30th. If you're selected, I'll reply directly to your original comment from this video and I will pin the winning comment at the top of the comment section. Once the winner is announced, you'll have 24 hours to respond. If I don't hear from you within that time, I'll have to randomly select another winner. So, please keep an eye out for my reply to your comment. Also, keep an eye out next week for part three of this miniourse called the magic of soft pastels. We'll be exploring pastel surfaces. Oh, and if you already are a patron of mine, you can of course participate in this contest for the 48th set of Paul Ribbons pastels. But it will be next week that I'm going to be sharing a post with you guys to offer a giveaway for my Fields of Sunshine set through Earthberry Pastels. So, keep an eye out for that. All right, artists. We're halfway through this miniourse. I hope you're learning lots and I'll be back next week with part three. As always, God bless and happy painting.