Stop Muddy Pastels! The Secret to Vibrant Color on Any Surface 🎨 🎨

Welcome artists to the [music] four-part miniourse called The Magic of Soft Pastels. We are now in part three called Discover the Surface. [music] I'm excited to unlock some of the mysteries of many of the different pastel surfaces [music] and help to guide you into this beautiful journey of soft pastel painting. Welcome artists to Monaet Cafe Studio and part three of the miniourse I call the magic of soft pastels. Here's a general table of contents, so to speak, of what we'll be learning in this lesson. You'll be learning three different categories for soft pastel painting. I'll share many of the different brands and options for unsanded surfaces, describe why I love them, and what some of the advantages and disadvantages are along with so many of the different brands of sanded pastel surfaces. There's lots to choose from, but I think I break it down in a helpful way, and I couldn't resist. I just had to do a side-by-side comparison of the layering qualities of an unsanded surface versus a sanded surface. I think you'll find this fascinating. The last category is do-it-yourself surfaces. Not only are these great for saving money, but I actually prefer them often because of the flexibility, the control that I have over color choices, and I really love the painterly results. Just as with [music] the previous two parts of this course, if you have purchased this lesson or you're one of my patrons on my Patreon page, [music] you'll also be receiving my companion guide. It's a PDF document with so much supplemental information that goes along with this course, including videos with timestamps you can watch when I'm talking about a particular product [music] and so much more. As a special bonus, be sure to stay tuned to the end where I talk about one of my most asked questions is, do I fix or seal my final pastel paintings? I'll also share with you some of my favorite ways to store your little pastel beauties. I have a couple of different systems I use. And there's more. I'll bring you behind the scenes to show you my inventory system of how I store my pastel paintings that I put in my Etsy shop. So, there's a lot of content in this lesson. I'm ready to dive in. How about you? I often like to share that the birth of Monae Cafe was literally me just sharing all of the things that I did wrong when I was first starting my pastel painting journey. And oh boy, did I do lots wrong. From choosing pastels to knowing how to make marks to part three here, which is choosing surfaces. And if you've even started on that journey, you know there are a lot of choices and it can get a bit overwhelming. I think by the time this portion of the course is complete, you'll have a thorough understanding of the different types of surfaces and which ones might be right for you. There's really not any wrong choices, just more informed choices, and I think you're going to learn a lot. Now, I'll admit this looks like a lot of pastel surfaces, but keep in mind that I have had years to accumulate the bit that you see here on the table, and you definitely don't need that much to get started. So, I think you'll be encouraged, and you'll learn a lot, and you'll discover which surfaces you might want to try, and then you just add as you go. Again, there's no right or wrong. And I love a little bit about all of these surfaces. So, let me change the setup and we're going to get started. [music] The first category is unsanded surfaces. Just think of these like um quality drawing paper. And there's so many different brands. Some of them are specifically um designed or they market it as for pastel painting. And some of them are just nice drawing paper. And I use a little bit of all of these. And when I first got started, I if you go back and see part one for more of my story, I did not know what I was doing. I kind of accidentally discovered soft pastels when I was searching for uh art supplies to get back into painting. And I didn't know what to do with the pastels. So, I literally I just had some drawing paper at home. And oh my goodness, I was very disappointed. I was not getting the results that I saw other pastel artists. I started looking at other artists and what they were achieving and I thought something's wrong with me. [laughter] But little did I know I wasn't even using papers that were this good. So I'm really glad that I stuck it out. I'm a little bit like that. So I want to save you from those challenges. Now I'm going to start with one of the pastel unsanded surfaces again that is marketed as for pastel painting and it is called Canson is a a huge company period with many different brands of art supplies but they have some wonderful surfaces um for various pastel surfaces. And I'm going to share this one which is called Meons. Now I used to butcher this name. I thought it was Spanish. I said mientes but it's French. It's meons. And now that I know a little bit more about what I'm doing with pastel painting, I actually love this surface and it's very affordable. This is a great surface to get started with, but don't get discouraged like I did if you're not getting the layering. You're going to learn more about that when we get to the second category, which is sanded surfaces. Pants and Maons pastel paper comes in individual sheets, but you can also buy them in these pads. I kind of like buying the pads in different sizes. There's so many options. Uh, they have different color families such as gray tones. I love this one. They have earth colors and I love that one, too. There's another earth colors I have. And this is one I got. Uh, I think someone gifted this to me. I'm not even sure if they still have this one available. I like the fact that it's a spiral binding and it has glassine pages almost like tracing paper in between the pages and it would protect your paintings if you decide to leave them in this book. I also like to share that the pages of the Canson mitons pastel paper have different textures on each side. The first side, if you have a pad like this, you open it up, the side that's facing you is kind of a honeycomb pattern. And the side on the back is more of a smooth pattern. You get two different um textures when you're painting on either of these sides. This is one of my YouTube tutorials where I painted this cute little duckling on the unsanded Canson mants surface. You can see the texture. This is the honeycomb side of the paper. And I will in the companion guide have parts one and two to this lesson. So, this is a great surface for beginner artists to get started with. It's very affordable, but keep in mind if you're not seeing some of the rich color and layering uh that you're seeing from other pastel artists, it's probably because they are using sanded surfaces and this one is not sanded. And this to me, I've gotten to where I like it a lot more. I actually really like it. The better I got as an artist. I I didn't need as much layering because my art skills just got better. This is another unsanded surface that is marketed uh as a pastel paper for pastel painting and it's similar very similar to the Canson mants pastel paper and this one is made by Rimbrandt. By the way, someone mentioned in part one of this tutorial or this course that I didn't mention Rimbrandt pastels and they were right. [laughter] I I mentioned so many pastels in part one, but Rimbrand are also a great pastel uh brand to get started with the actual pastels, and this is the same company. Um they are more affordable. Rembrandt pastels and the surface uh but they're a little bit harder. They definitely don't get the brilliance and color that some of the softer pastels get. Again, go back and watch part one if you haven't seen it already. But yes, the surface is very similar to the Canson meant. And I think I tend just me personally, I tend to like the Canson meant surface a little better than this one. Maybe I need to try this one again, but uh but they're both very good surfaces. And this is another brand of an unsanded surface that's marketed as a pastel surface. It's made by Strathmore. Now, I have many Strathmore brands that I really like. I haven't actually used this one that much. I think I tried it one time, but it's again quite similar to the Canson Me Taons. And it's probably because often when I work on an unsanded surface, I like to work on one that is toned. I'm going to talk about that in a little bit, too. They come in white. They come in different tones like the uh the earth tones that I showed you with the Canson mants. And so many of these brands have variety of color options available, too. But uh I think this one's probably equivalent to the uh the Canson maons, too. And quite affordable. One of my favorite surfaces for doing some pastel sketching is one by Strathmore that's not even really marketed as a pastel surface. So, I want you to keep that in mind. It doesn't have to have the name pastel paper written across it. Um, you can just experiment. And a lot of these quality drawing or sketching uh surfaces work great. And this Strathmore pad that I've been buying for years is one that I really love. It comes in some different colors, probably more than these, but uh these are the ones I use the most. One called toned gray. Uh another one called toned tan. And like so many of them, they come in different sizes, too. I often use these pads for doing studies or lessons for my YouTube channel. This was an example of choosing different color palettes using the color cube. That's a fun product. Here's another series of paintings exploring color with these little road painting studies. I also like to use these pads as a sketchbook. This happened to be a lesson on my YouTube channel about perspective, but see how well the pastels apply for sketching. I wanted to share a couple of lessons that I think are great for the very newbie, very beginner pastel artist. Both of these lessons are on Strathmore toned gray surface and using very limited palettes. So, this should be really good for beginner artists. Another Canson product I like to use is also not marketed as a pastel paper. It's just Canson black drawing paper. It's the XL Canson pad. And I really love the effects of pastel on black paper. It's just so brilliant and bold. So I do like I typically do. I just paint within the pages and uh add little sheets of tracing paper to protect the pages. You may recognize this one if you saw part two of this miniourse. This is the mark making sheet that I made to show you so many of the different marks. But as you can see, this uh black drawing paper works great. And these are nothing special. Usually I'll take these uh on a trip with me and uh just do a little bit of sketching. Carry some tracing paper and uh just have some fun. Often I will work with the Prismacolor new pastels. That's uh an very affordable pastel brand. Um and just do some sketching. This is another black surface I've used. It's for sale on Amazon. And I like these pages are kind of thick and they have a little bit of texture to them. And this is very similar to the other black surface I mentioned that they're just fun. They're good for sketching. And I also like the fact that with this type of product, you kind of feel like you have the license to play. You're not as stressed because the product's not that expensive. So, I find I often have a lot of fun. Uh this was just some pastel sketching with some white Pusca acrylic markers. And uh this one I played with creating some jellyfish with some iridescent pastels. You can't see the glim glitter here, but it really is sparkly. So it's a great way to just have some painting fun and uh let your hair down and paint like a kid again. This is another black sketchbook that I really like. I shared it in a video oh not long ago. You could find it. And I used it to experiment with Neocolor 2 wax pastels. And I didn't go over those in the first part of this course, but it's a lot of fun. And you could you could do the same thing with regular pastels, but I just wanted to show you just how fun it is to see all this color. The thing I love about these wax pastels is this is this video did so well just because I did this with it. They don't smudge. Is that amazing? This was from another painting I just touched. Um, isn't that amazing? They're kind of like uh coloring crayons. They feel like it, but they're a professional wax pastel. Um, but you could use this pad for regular pastels, too. I want to try using the Prismacolor new pastels in the sketchbook. So, those are examples of unsanded surfaces. There's a lot more. Like I said, get creative. You could use just about any nice drawing paper. But now, I want to show you some of the sanded surfaces. But before I dive into the different brands, I want to show you just an [music] experiment with some of the differences between an unsanded surface and a sanded [music] surface with respect to layering. As they say, a picture is worth a thousand words. So, this demonstration should really help you to see a sideby-side comparison of the differences when it comes to layering. That's one of the main differences between an unsanded surface and a sanded surface. Unlike paint in a liquid form, soft pastels are a dry medium. And the pigment of soft pastels in its dry form needs texture to hold on to if you're going to layer on top of it repetitively. And when you're using an unsanded surface, there's no grit or texture for the pastels to hold onto, and thus you're only able to get limited layers on top of each other. But the sanded surface because of its texture literally kind of like hardware store sandpaper, but this is a professional quality. It is archival, acidfree, doesn't uh yellow or fade over time. This type of pastel surface with the texture gives you that ability for the pastels to have something to hold on to and thus get a lot of layers. I wish I had these in the same color, but this is kind of close. This pastel surface here is the unsanded Canson mit tons pastel surface and the surface on the right is a very popular sanded pastel surface. It's called UART and much again like hardware store sandpaper. It comes in different grits and or textures. This one is a 400 grit. I'd say it's a middle-of the road grit and it is a very popular paper. Lots of artists love it. I love it. I just don't love the fact that it curls. In the humid climate I'm in, I find it often curls uh on the edges, but I do have a workaround to that. I I have a video for almost everything pastel related, but because it's such a quality pastel surface, I thought I'd use it for this demonstration. Here I have a 40 half stick set of Sellier pastels. I love Sellier. They're very soft, and that's why I chose it for this demonstration. Uh the softer the pastel, usually the less layers you're going to get typically. And uh we're going to just do that side to side comparison right now. As I mentioned in part one of this tutorial, it is best to layer lightly. Uh that's one thing I did very wrong when I first started painting with pastels. I thought I had to get a solid application of color to begin with. And really with soft pastels, it's best to let those colors peek through. And uh that's where the uh optical color mixing kind of comes in. So let's get started. Let's see what color do I want to choose here. Uh I think I'll start with a pretty green. So let's layer this beautiful green here. Oh, that's a nice earthy green. And this I believe is the honeycomb. Yeah. Can you see the honeycomb pattern to that? Now uh let me hold it up to the camera. This is what I was mentioning that one side of the Canson manton surface has a texture to it and the other side is more smooth. Now I'm going to add this pretty golden color just gently on top of the surface here. And look at that. Can you can see the green? I'm keeping a very light touch here and here. I'm going to layer some of it here. I can already tell the difference in uh just the way those colors um visually mixed. and physically mixed. Now, let me go with an even brighter yellow. Let's go with this one right here. This would be if I had a field with some grasses in it and then I'm layering some golden flowers on top. I would start with my darker golden color and then gradually add like um some lighter values where the sun is getting onto the flowers. I haven't actually used this one yet. It's a little jagged. Yeah, definitely was able to layer with that one just fine. This one's a little dirty, too. Already, I am not. You see how I'm not really getting any color here? I hope this is very clear. You can see it is a really big difference. And that's what happened to me when I first started painting with pastels. I was seeing artists with this vibrant, gorgeous color, and I was like, why is mine not as vibrant? And it really has to do with the sanded surface versus the unsanded. And yet, like I said, there's no right or wrong. Now, I actually love kind of that soft impressionistic quality of the unsanded surface, but if you're looking for layering and getting lots of color, then the sanded surfaces is going to work better. All right, let's just take something that's, you know, very different so it'll show up. I'm going to add some pink right on top of this. You see, I'm still able to get that pink. I'm just going to put a little few pink marks on here. You see that? It definitely still was vibrant on top. Now, let's add some pink to this. It's It's layering, but barely you're barely seeing it. All right, let's get another color here. Let me get this pretty uh kind of magenta pink purple. And let me add some of that. Look at that. I can still add I'm adding on top of that pink as if they were like little flowers. We'll just keep going with that. All right. How many layers is that? One, two, three, four, five layers so far. And I started marking harder there. Um let's add Oh, did I didn't do that one over here, did I? Let's do this one here. Oh, yeah. That layered a little bit. Oh, and that's I'm I'm glad I did this because that uh leads me to something else I want to mention. Often your mark making and your layering ability has to do with not only the different pastel brands, but the different color colors are made from pigment and physical products from the earth. And they have different qualities to them. So, some of them layer better than others just by nature of what material they used to manufacture that color. All right, let's try Oh my goodness, look at this gorgeous color here. You see how I'm still able to get layers there? Look at that. And let's layer them here. I'm able to get a little bit there. Let me try this bright orange here. I'm just going to glaze kind of softly over this here. Let's see if it layers. Yes. Look at that. Still able to get some layers. And let's try here. Sort of. Not really. Let me get this bright green. Let's just put some green in here. Oh, yeah. Still getting layers. I don't even know how many layers I've got in here now. Nope. There we go. We've reached the layering ability. And what happens when you you've reached maximum layering, what happens is, oh, I'm going to show you this, too. Watch the dust. See all that dust? It's because the pastels can't stick into the surface. They're literally just kind of sitting on top of the surface. But when you've reached maximum layering um ability, the colors start getting muddy. Have you ever experienced like, why are my colors not bright? Why are they muddy? And it's because they can't layer on top of each other. So, they literally just start rubbing into each other and making kind of a neutral color. So, let me hold up these two examples for you to see. Here you can see how the colors start becoming muddy and you're not able to add any more individual colors or strokes. With the sanded surface, I think you can clearly see you're able to get multiple layers, but also add those distinctive marks on top without them muddying or blending the layers underneath. And I hope that demonstration gives you a nice visual of some of the [music] differences between these two types of surfaces. And now that we know of some of the differences, let's talk about some of the sanded pastel [music] brands. I've tried to kind of loosely arrange them by affordability. Uh I may not have it perfect, but uh this is a brand I actually it's not my favorite, but it's available on Amazon. It may be in other places. It comes in different colors, but it's it's quite affordable. uh my muofen. I don't even know if I'm saying it right, but a lot of artists have used it and it's quite sanded. Um so it's nice if you want to get started and try a sanded surface and uh you want to save some money and just kind of play, uh that might be a good one to try. I was able to find one of the little studies I did on this surface and I remember now I I liked it a little better than I thought. So it's a great surface if you're trying to save money and you just want to practice and play. This is one that I do recommend and I use it a lot. I recommend it mostly uh well, two reasons. It's a good quality and it's it's quite affordable for pastel artists who are branching out and want to try a sanded surface. It's called Color Fix and it's made by Art Spectrum and this is available on Amazon. Dick Blick, Dakota Pastels. And I like the variety. You This is called the Rainbow Pack. Talk about variety of colors. That's awesome. I also love that this is water friendly. That's something I haven't been talking about yet. Uh most of the unsanded surfaces that I spoke about before. Artists do um play around with some of the homemade wet media techniques that I'll be talking about in a minute, but usually I don't add wet wetness to the unsanded surfaces that are more paper um texture or quality or material. But this is water friendly. That's why it has the little uh um different um mark making products up here or brush and a pen and a pencil and a pastel. So, it's a multimedia product and it is water friendly and I love that. Uh it comes in so many different colors. I also like to point out I didn't know this for a long time. The color fix surface comes in two different textures. This is what's called the original and I think I have this right. The original is the one that's more textured. It has more grit. You get a little more layering ability with this one. There's another color fix that's called their smooth surface and uh it's uh it has its own reasons that the smooth is a good surface, but I usually prefer the original. This is a painting that was created on color fix and I believe this was a lesson where I only used 12 pastels. And this is one here that has kind of um gotten so popular with soft pastel artist. It's again by Canson just like the Canson Me unsanded paper and the Canson black paper, but it's called Canson Mance Velvet and it's really cool. It's I'm sharing this too because it's it's really kind of for a professional pastel paper. It's one of the more affordable ones and I love that it's also water friendly wet media. And what's really neat about this one is it is takes a lot of layers just like the UART demonstration that I did. Um, but it doesn't have the grit. It's like magic. There's another pastel surface that's the same that I'll share in just a second. So, I'm always like, how does it do it? It doesn't even have much sanded surface. Um, but it really does take a lot of layers and it does come in some different colors. Um, but I actually really like often working on the cream or lighter surfaces when I'm wanting to tone my own uh papers. I often like to tone them a beautiful underpainting color. And keep in mind, underpaintings are not part of this four-part miniourse, but these courses are going to continue. Just so you know, I'm going to have a course where it's all about underpainting. So, that's on the way. But, I love using a cream surface because I can tone it. you know, a vibrant color for an underpainting. And I often buy this cream colored canson. You don't have to buy a pad this big. Um, it comes in smaller sizes, but I like the large pages because you can cut them. Um, it's sometimes more cost effective and then you can cut them to uh your own custom sizes. Here's a tutorial where I created a painting on Canson velvet for the first time, and I was hooked. I loved the amount of layering I could get. And you can kind of see here how even though there are a lot of layers, the individual marks still show up unlike if I had done this on an unsanded surface. And this is the other surface that I mentioned is kind of like the Canson velvet. It is Oh, I love this color here. Uh it's called Pastel Matte by Cla Fontaine. Again, another water friendly surface. You could use wet media uh like I often do. And this one has the glassine sheets between it, too. I usually with a pad like this that doesn't have a spiral binding. I usually tear the pages out. Um, so the glassine sheets is, you know, it's nice. Uh, but um, but I don't find it that practical for me. And this surface, like I said, is so much like the Canson velvet in that it takes a lot of layering. And yet, you can't hear the grit here. You can literally hear the grit with some of the more sanded surfaces, but it takes a lot of layering. I love pastel matte. I use it often. Um, I love some of the different colors in this pad. And I'm pretty sure this one is a little bit more expensive than the Canson velvet. I haven't done a whole uh analysis on all of the costs, but I I'm pretty certain that uh this one's a little more expensive, but it's such a great surface. Love pastel matte. Here is one of my paintings created on pastel matte. Kind of a taupey beige color. I like how my mark making is a bit more smooth on this surface versus some of the other very sanded pastel surfaces. This is another surface that I really love and it was one of the first sanded pastel surfaces that I discovered once I knew there was such a thing. And I can't even remember um how who recommended it or why I got it. But I learned very quickly by mistake of course. I'm telling you, that's how Monae Cafe got started. I shared with you guys all the things I did wrong. I learned very quickly. This is not a water friendly product. And it's because I tried applying some pastels and blending them. And it the paper just deteriorated. So, this is not a water friendly surface. And it is a long name. I always say it's a mouthful. It's made by Selier, one of the pastel brands that I love, love, love that you can see in part one of this course. I love them. Um, but it's called Senellier Lacart Pastel Card and it's called pastel card because it's kind of thick. It's like card stock. It's kind of a thick surface. It comes in individual sheets or pads like so many of them. Again, not water friendly. This one has um uh different colors in the pad, but it is it's quite sanded. Hear that? But it's a softer sanded surface. It literally feels kind of like a soft sandpaper. And what I find with that uh quality is that often the paintings I produce have a soft kind of impressionistic effect. So that's what I love about the surface and uh it's it's really still one of my favorites. Here is a painting created on Sellier Lart pastel card and it was actually using my Fields of Sunshine set that I curated through earthberry pastels. This was a fun bright and happy painting and I love the soft effect of this surface. Now, because it's not water friendly, uh Senelier Pastel Lacart Card uh came out with a water friendly version of this product. It's called uh Selier Lacart Pastel card mixed media, meaning yes, it is water friendly. Thus, the little water droplets on the pad. And I have discovered that I really do like this one as well. Um I have so many options now because I've been painting for so many years, I sometimes forget to pull them out. But when I experimented with this one, I really loved it. When I first purchased this, I wanted to do a little experiment and just see how different pastel wet media techniques would work on this surface since it was a brand new surface to me. So, I have that video available, too, if you're wondering about this particular surface. I tried all of these different mediums, water, alcohol, airbrush medium. I tried watercolor, wax pastels, inktense blocks. Uh, that's a whole education in itself. So, this is another surface that I really love and I was so happy to see that Sellier made a water friendly surface. Now, pastel grain is a surface made by Clear Fontaine. If you remember, that's the same company that made pastel matte and kind of similar to how Senellier had a nonwater friendly surface and they wanted to make a water friendly surface. Well, Claire Fontaine has pastel matte which is not that textured. still takes a lot of layering. So, they wanted to make one that was more textured. So, they made this pastel grain. And uh it is uh is this one also water friendly? I think it is. Yes. Uh and it is very similar to pastel matte, but it has a little more texture. And yes, I do like this one. I really loved this one when I played around with some Prismacolor new pastels. It's the very affordable set. I've talked about so much. I have so many vid videos on it. great for beginner artist. They're harder pastels, but they they just worked so well for a little sketchy quality on this surface. And I did a painting of um a cow from a a property where we had cows in our backyard and I did a sketch with Prismacolor new pastels and they worked great on this surface. This is a surface that I really love. I've run out of all of my large sheets. Um but it's called Luxe Archival. It's a professional sanded art paper. It is water friendly and I would say it's kind of similar to U Art. It's probably a little lighter in color. It is quite sanded. I believe this is a 400 uh grit paper. Uh I'm pretty sure that's what this one is, but I don't know if you can hear it. It's quite sanded. Water friendly. Takes a lot of layers. But here's what I love about this one. It's a little pricier. Um but I look how flat the surface is. And it takes if you're doing something that's kind of waterheavy, you know, you're doing an underpainting that's got quite a bit of water, this product doesn't buckle much at all and it's a little thicker, you know, um, and I just love it. It's great. It's just kind of like a workhorse for a pastel surface and it takes so many layers. This is another surface that I really like that is offered through Dakota Pastels. It's called a Mazuli art pad. Now, it's in a pad form with a spiral binding. So, I like to use it like a journal. But what's neat about this pad is all the other ones I've shown with like a spiral binding are unsanded paper. This is a professional sanded surface in an art journal with a spiral binding. And I always like to share uh I love the spiral bindings because you can lay it flat. You can just open it up uh versus a binding, you know, like you know, a binding that's not spiral. You can't really lay it flat. And uh it also has now this is where I love the fact that it has these glassine pages in it. Uh like kind of like tracing paper because I like to keep my paintings right here in this journal. It's it's a journal, you know, you're saving these paintings within the journal. This is one that I did. This my first experiment I did on this new pad. It was fun. Just a crazy fun painting. I did a an underpainting that's that bright green. So yes, it is water friendly. Just some crazy pigs in the sunshine. And uh it's a professional sanded surface. I can't remember what the name of the surface is that they use in their pads. And that wasn't even all of the sanded surfaces that are available, but it should give you enough of an idea of things you might want to try. And now for the do-it-yourself surfaces. [music] What started out as a way for me to save money turned into a technique for creating pastel surfaces that I love. These are just a few scrap pieces of some do-it-yourself projects that I've done. And uh I just thought I'd share a couple of those along with some of my videos uh demonstrating the process of how to do it. Uh I used to often work on just uh matte board um just like some white mat board. And I liked this because I could cut my own boards and have kind of a sturdy surface to work with. And then I could tone it whatever color I wanted and add a little texture to it. Now, that's the trick with my method anyway of do-it-yourself pastel surfaces is I'm trying to create that grit, that sanded surface myself on a surface that's not sanded. So, matte board is great because it's already sturdy. But some other surfaces you can use to make your own pastel surface is watercolor paper. This one's just on regular watercolor paper. This is a technique I love. And I love creating a golden color under the painting. And that's back to what I was describing is I love the flexibility and the creativity of being able to make the colors that I want with the texture. I used a very textural brush for this one and uh it gave a really neat effect. This is another one I did on a piece of matte board. Nice and sandy. I did mark on this one. This was clear gesso. This is by far clear gesso. You're going to see it in a minute. My favorite one to use to give some grit to a surface because it's very affordable and it's very easy. But I even added something called fine pummus to that one. Don't get overwhelmed by all of this. Um again, I'm going to share videos with you. Just get started, play, have some fun, and it'll all start coming together. Here are a few of the products that I use to create texture when I do my own DIY pastel surface. And I'll just go ahead and share my favorite first. It's clear gesso. Uh it's easy, it's affordable, but I like to stress it's the clear gesso, not regular gesso. Regular gesso is just white. And there's a reason why this clear. Two main reasons why this clear is what you want. For one, it's clear. So often I'll create an underpainting that's a color. Um and I'll want to give the texture on top of that. And if I used white gesso, it would just cover it up. It'd be white. So, it's it's literally clear and it dries pretty clear. Um, another reason is it has texture to it. Little bits of sand are in this. I don't know why really. Um, but white gesso does not have that. So, this is really one of the best ways um to make texture, give texture, layering ability to your own pastel surface. Again, this is the video I mentioned where if you want to get creative and play with making your own surfaces, you need to check it out. It's called eight ways to make your own pastel paper. This is another product by Art Spectrum, who makes the color fix art uh paper uh pastel sanded paper. And they have um a clear uh textured product that you can apply too, much the same way you do with clear gesso. And this product comes in different colors as well. And this is called fine pummus gel by Golden. It's another one. This one's really good. I like this one for just adding the texture. This one happens to be a gray texture and uh it works really great for making a sanded pastel surface. Here's one of my paintings where I created this painting on watercolor paper using just clear gesso. And yes, I have a video on it. And again, these videos that I mention are going to be in the companion guide. It'll be a very organized, easy way for you to find the videos and the timestamps of where I mention them in this lesson. Another way I like to make [music] DIY surfaces is in journals. Yes, it can be done. Let me share my methods with you. I shared with you the journal that had the sanded pastel paper in it or the paper that could take a lot of layers. But I love to have a journal and have pastel paintings. But sometimes journals don't have sanded paper in it like these journals. This is one I love. It's called uh Dilusions Creative Journal. And what do you do in that case? Well, you DIY it. You make your own pastel surface. And uh this one was a lot of fun. This surface is on a I would say it's a a heavy stock mixed media paper. And I like that it lays so nice and flat. You see how this cover is? And uh I can just keep my paintings within this journal. Uh this is one it is because it's a mixed media type of paper and it's heavy duty. I added um I think I I added my own tone to the background. Then I added some clear gesso to it and I made my own pastel painting because I got a lot of texture from that clear gesso. So this one was a lot of fun. Very fun and free. And I love the fact that just like I shared with some of the other sketch pads, um I like the freedom of it. I like the fact that I don't feel so uh serious when I'm painting in a journal like this and I end up kind of having more fun. This is another little journal. It's a watercolor journal that was gifted to me by the company Artics. Uh they gave me two. One's a different size, a square format. And again, I decided I wanted to make this a DIY pastel journal. It's kind of like the other one. I love how it lays nice and flat. So, I have a tutorial on this one. And by the way, any other lefties out there, you may have noticed if you've followed my channel, uh I'm left-handed. I I do paint right-handed sometimes, but if you're majority of a lefty that you paint, um you might find that it's helpful to turn your journals upside down because then I'm not wrestling with uh this edge, you know, so I paint upside down typically. But this is um a surface that I literally just toned it with clear gesso. And uh and voila, I have a sanded surface. I can create a pastel painting. And I just taped me a piece of tracing paper to the opposite side. Now for that bonus content [music] I promised and such a common concern for pastel artist. How do we store these paintings? And can we fix them or seal [music] them? Let's find out. By far the question I get the most on my YouTube channel is how do you seal or protect these pastel paintings? And the answer is I don't. That is for a final painting anyway. A final painting in pastel. If you spray any type of fixitive, there's one I'll share with you that I recommend that's my favorite out of these. It will always darken the piece. It will alter it even if just a little bit. And I just decided I don't want to alter. I don't want to risk it. So, I don't spray a fixitive on my final piece. I've done some experimenting. I have a video on doing a little uh fixitive showdown, I think it's called. And uh I'll share with you that my favorite is one by Selier. Sellier Lour. And I found that it seemed to uh give less changes to the final painting. But I still prefer just to not seal them with a fixative, but protect them with my storage methods. Now, this was a fixitive that I really liked. Uh it is not available anymore, but I still will use this. I had a couple of cans left. Blair, very low odor fixitive, and it's great to use during the working stages. If you've run out of layering ability and you want to get a little bit of texture back to your painting while you're working on it, you can spray this and uh get a a neat texture and continue to work on your painting. So, that's a neat product. And many of the other fixitives you could use during the working stages of your painting. Now, I'll share a couple of my methods for storing pastel paintings to keep them safe prior to shipping or framing. One of the methods that I recommend for storing pastel paintings is clear storage bags. These are some of my paintings I already have in these bags, and this was the method that I used for years. I still will do this occasionally. Uh, but it's a little more timeconuming than my method of just putting them into a pad until I get them in my Etsy shop. But, uh, this method works great. It's also great if you want to show your work. I'm trying to turn this so my light doesn't show on it. If you want to show your work, take it to a, um, a little market to sell. These are nice because you can handle them. Uh, it's not going to damage the painting. And what I do is I buy these from clearbags.com. I buy the type. It's called protective closure. I thought I'd pop here on the site to show you. Here is the site. And I go to the crystalclear tab at the top left. And that right there, protective closure. And they've added a bunch of categories since I've bought these, but I think I'd prefer now, they didn't used to have these, to get the high clarity. That means you're going to see your painting a lot better. And then they have all of these sizes and choices. And I'm going to explain to you in a minute that I like to make my bags a little bit larger than what my painting sizes are to give me room for my little foam core board. Uh, but one thing I do like to check, I scroll down a little bit and closure type. Now, we already chose protective closure, but I just want to make sure that's the only options that it's giving me. So, then you choose your sizes and uh you're good to go, and they're pretty affordable. And I cut a piece of foam core board just a little bit smaller than the painting, and uh it keeps it nice and sturdy. Again, you can just handle these. And when you're ready to sell them or ship them, uh they're great. You can just uh sandwich them between some foam core board and uh ship them to the buyer. So, these bags come in different sizes, and I typically buy sizes that are a little bit bigger than standard sizes. Uh, it gives you room to put your painting, if you paint in standard sizes, your painting, and a piece of foam core board in it to give you enough room so you're not smooshing the painting down in in a tight bag. Here's another painting in a clear bag. Again, nice and sturdy, safe to hold, and your painting is nice and protected. Now, I'd like to share with you why the protective closure type of bag is important. Here's an example of the bags. I have various sizes. And this is what I meant by protective closure. It is where the adhesive is on the bag portion, not the flap portion. And the reason for that is if you insert a pastel painting and you seal up your bag like this, when you open the bag, if the closure is on the top part here and you go to pull your painting out, you've got this adhesive. You've got to pull it across. So, it's better to have this adhesive strip on this portion because then you can place and remove your painting without dragging it across the adhesive. This is the storage method that I use the most. Now, now this is kind of my quick storage method, but this one is actually a pad of tracing paper. So, it saves me time. It's fast. When I'm done with a painting, I can just bring it in here to my add to Etsy tracing paper pad and literally just put the paintings in between the sheets. Again, I don't have to add tracing paper. It is a tracing paper pad. So, uh, I keep binder clips at the top of this because tracing paper kind of pulls out real easy and if you're moving these pages or opening this a lot, the pages will eventually kind of slip out. So, this keeps my binding nice and tight. This is a painting that I'm fairly certain is on watercolor paper and a homemade surface. Again, I have a video on this one. I can go back and check, but just by looking at it, I'm pretty sure it's a homemade surface. And look at the texture you can get. So, you can save a lot of money making these surfaces yourselves. I think this painting may have been done on Luxe Archival. Again, a nice sanded surface that takes lots of layers. Another example of a homemade surface. I'm pretty certain this one is on watercolor paper and I gave it a nice beautiful uh kind of magenta underpainting. But look at the results. Not even a professional surface. This is pastel matte and it's an example of where I used a white surface. I mentioned before that often I like to buy pastel matte in white so that I can tone it a color to complement or enhance a painting I'm working on. I thought this bright pink would really look nice with these bright green apples. And this is a homemade surface that I did on a piece of matte board. It's nice and sturdy. I gave it a teal or turquoise underpainting. And for texture, I just added clear gesso. All of these studies were done on Canson velvet. And the goal of this one was just to keep fresh, lively mark making and to show the different color palettes you can use with the same subject matter. This is a pastel painting on a DIY surface where I used pummus gel to give the surface texture. I can't remember the actual surface. I don't think it's watercolor paper, but I saved a lot of money by using just the pummus gel to get the texture. And the results are really fun. Now, that was my temporary storage method. This is a method I came up with to inventory my paintings that I put in my Etsy shop. And just so you know, as of the making of this video, my Etsy shop is in vacation mode because I have so much artwork I need to add to it. I hope to have lots of artwork available soon. But I came up with this method. I kept trying to rack my brain about what is the easiest way for me to find my paintings once they're in the Etsy shop. So, what I do is I use these sketch pads. I have one that's for my small paintings, one for medium, one for large, and one for extra large. And the way I do the system is you can see the little post-it notes kind of sticking out from the side. And the code that's on them is basically S is for small, M is for medium, L is for large, and then the paintings 1 2 3 4 5 in chronological order. By the way, my Etsy description for a particular painting has that code in the description. So I can just go into this book and find it. And when a painting sells, I turn the little post-it notes sideways. You can see on the sides of this one, so I know I have a blank spot to add new artwork. So here you can see two that have not sold. And these paintings happen to be on pastel mat. It was a little marsh series I did. I think there were six paintings in total. But you can see it's a really nice protective way for me to store my paintings, save them, inventory them, and keep them safe. The pages of this sketch pad are rather thick and I just add a sheet of tracing paper to the top. So, it's a super easy way for me to place my paintings once I have them entered into my Etsy shop and give them a little inventory system. This is my medium painting book. And I love it when I can find a sketchbook that has a spiral binding. It just makes it lay flat much more easily. And I love it when I can find black paper. I searched so long to try to find all of these sketchbooks in black, but uh I couldn't get them all in the same brand or color. So, I have my medium paintings in this sketchbook. And here's an example of a painting I created on Selier Lart. It's the one that's not water friendly, but it has the nice soft effects. And this was of a field of Zenyas that was not far from my house. Now, let me show you my large book. Once again, I could not find sketchbooks of all the same brand and color and style. Uh for this one, I couldn't even find a spiral uh book that was this size. So, I'm using this brown craft paper book. It did not have a spiral binding, so I added the binder clips like you saw me uh do on the tracing paper pad. And this is a painting. I wanted to show this one because it was done on an unsanded surface. just some Canson mants and uh I think pretty affordable pastels. So I share these things just to encourage beginner artists that you really can accomplish um some pretty good artwork with just unsanded surfaces and affordable pastels. And this one is my extra-large book that is actually one of the Strathmore toned gray tablets or pads. And yes, it comes in a very large size like this. But I love that I found this one with a spiral binding. And I'll go ahead and show you a few of the paintings in this large book. This painting is on a surface called Pastel Premiere, and it's one I did not cover. I do have more of it left, so I forgot about that surface. I do like it. It's not my favorite, but I do like it. It gets a lot of layering, and it's from a tutorial of mine called Why I Use an Old Paint Brush with Soft Pastels. The next two are on unsanded paper. I believe this is oh just a sheet of drawing paper and I did it as a preliminary for a more serious uh pastel painting on a regular sanded surface. And I just did this painting on white, something I don't typically do, but I think you can see I was able to achieve some layering. But like you saw in my demonstration, if I continued the pastels will eventually start to muddy themselves and blend together. But I do sort of like the fresh and impressionistic feel of this one. I'm assuming this one was on an unsanded surface based from kind of what I can see on the corner. But that gives me a note to self that I wanted to share with you guys. I think it's a good idea for me in the future to start writing on the back of my paintings what the surface was, maybe some of the pastel brands that I used. So use the back of your painting if possible uh for a little note takingaking. Well, that was a lot of information and I wanted to thank you guys for giving such [music] great feedback to the first two parts of this course already and I feel like you guys are learning a lot. And remember, if you have purchased this lesson or you're a patron of mine on my Patreon page, [music] you have access to my companion guide with all of the extra supplemental content [music] I've been mentioning throughout this video. Also, here's a sneak peek. Part four is coming. Can you believe we're almost done with this course? Part four is called Beyond the Reference. It's where we're bringing all of these concepts together. And yes, we're finally painting, learning about composition, and so much more. Something else that will be fun in part four is where I share with you. You don't have to be afraid of making that first mark. Pastel surfaces are very forgiving. And you may or may not recognize this surface that I'm covering up. Yes, I'm creating a painting on top of all of that mark making. And that scrap paper was from our mark making portion of this course. It's where I did all of the experimenting with these sponges, brushes, stencils, and more. Oh, we're going to have so much fun. And until then, above [music] all, don't forget to enjoy the journey. Sometimes the greatest gift isn't the finished painting at all, but the peace and [music] joy God gives us while we're creating it. Until next time, God bless and happy painting. [music]