The Blue Underpainting Technique Every Pastel Artist Should Try!

Sometimes [music] revisiting an old painting reminds us why something worked. [music] Join me in this lesson where I not only revisit an old reference image, but also rediscover a forgotten technique that I really loved. This tutorial was from 6 years [music] ago and I had forgotten about the beautiful impact of a blue under painting. If [music] you followed many of my lessons, you probably know I often like to begin with a complimentary or warm under [music] painting. But this older lesson of mine reminded me the amazing, calming, [music] and beautiful influence of applying a blue or turquoise in this case under painting at the start. I'm glad you've joined me today in the studio and [music] here we go. Let me share with you the products that I'll be using for this tutorial. They're very similar to the ones that I used in the other lesson. I'm going to be using a surface called Pastel Mat. I like this pastel painting surface for many reasons. One is that it takes a lot of layering. If you've gotten familiar with pastel painting, you know layering is pretty important if you want to build those colors the way that I like to with my style of painting. Another thing I love about Pastel Mat is it's water friendly and that was important for me because I'm going to be using a wet medium for an under painting. This is acrylic ink. It's the same color that I used in the first video. It's turquoise. It's made by Daler-Rowney and I think that's one of the reasons I liked the final painting. I hardly ever use a blue or cooler tone like this for an under painting. I think another reason I was happy with the final painting from the previous painting I did is because I used my own reference image. This is back when I was living in a temporary house that ended up being a long-term house, but I just loved the field behind my house and some of these lovely flowers. So I decided with this one to do it in a vertical format rather than horizontal. Another thing I'll be repeating from the former lesson is creating a value study, a little sketch. It's often called a notan. And I was reminded of the importance of this. I preach about it all the time, but sometimes I forget or I'm too busy and I don't do this little value study sketch. So, I'm going to be resharing that in this video as well. I'd like to show you how I save my little sketches. I just have a little I think this is like a 3x5 little folder for these cards and I have them categorized inside. I have these little tabs with just some general descriptions of different compositions, landscapes, water, mountains, flowers. And I find these often inspire me. I go back through them sometimes and use them just to create a spontaneous painting. Here's one with the road theme. I used this for a previous tutorial. Uh this is one that was water. It was a marsh uh area behind my parents' home. Uh this one was a beautiful like Monet-esque uh kind of marshy scene. And I just use grayscale markers. I typically use markers called Tombow markers. Those are my favorites. So, I'll share that link in the description of this tutorial. And we're basically just going to choose three values, a dark, a middle, and a light value. You could even do this with different mediums. I've even done it with a charcoal pencil just kind of varying my pressure. So, all I'm trying to do is capture the gesture of this. Now, this video is sped up substantially from my Patreon version of this video. I'll tell you guys about how to get the real-time video. Uh it's really easy and really affordable. I'll talk about that later. So, a value study, again, it's just three values or four if you count the white of the paper, but all we're doing is capturing a value sketch. And you can't believe how much this will help you if you do this before beginning a painting. And I will provide a link in this video of my video from 6 years ago where I did the same technique. So again, I was reminded how great this worked and I'm showing you here a little plastic tray that I just used to put my acrylic ink in. It's obviously very used. I typically put some ink into one of the wells if I'm just using one color and water in another one of the wells. I'm going to be diluting this. I love to have some paper towels handy. And this brush is so tattered and crazy. Someone told me it looks kind of like a basting brush for turkey. It might be. I didn't use it for turkey though. Um but I just love that it's wide and it's textural. So here I am just dipping it into the acrylic ink. You'll see how when you first put it on, it was rather thick. So you can see now how I'm adding water to it. You could also um just coat the whole surface with water and then it would blend a lot easier than you're seeing me doing here. But I'm just toning the whole thing with this turquoise color. You know, often I'll do kind of a value study underpainting and this one is easy. You're just toning the surface. And this month's theme has been about reflecting and rediscovering some things we may have tried before and this one painting that I've been talking about just keeps popping up and I I often think, why do I like this painting? And I really do believe it was the calming influence of this blue underpainting. So I'm just getting in really the same kind of little sketch, kind of like I did in the value study and uh the gesture of it capturing some of my uh main focal point flowers. This field obviously has a lot of flowers, but I was just getting in the main flowers. I wanted to show you a layout of some of my pastels. I did not use all of these. I just wanted to grab some colors to get started. These are my darks up in the top left corner. A lot of Terry Ludwigs there. I love Terry Ludwigs. I wanted to have some purple, but I actually ended up not using much purple, maybe some lavender in the sky. And even though the background was turquoise, I end up adding pops of brighter turquoise on the top of the grasses. There you saw some warm greens to the left and some neutrals, and here we go. Again, this is a speed version, not as fast as some speed versions you see, but I just got in some dark values for the trees, some a little bit lighter values for the distant trees. Now I'm getting in some grays, and there's those kind of lavenders and a little bit of warmth for the sky, and I end up blending it with a chamois cloth. I love using the chamois cloths for blending when you're working on a surface like Pastelmat. I added a little warm green, typically just use a little corner, and um it really blends nicely. If you're working on a pastel surface that's very gritty, I recommend another blending tool. Um but now I'm adding some warm green to the trees, and this is the phase that's often called the block-in phase. I'm not focusing on detail individual things, I'm blocking in big shapes and values. I want to make those trees a little bit closer to the viewer, that's why I brought those down. And now I'm going to just get in the value of the distant field a little bit lighter and the dark values down kind of carved around some of my main focal point flowers. And what you see me doing here is I'm working a gradation of value from the from dark in the foreground to middle value in the middle ground to a little bit lighter green in the background. Can you see that transition? Sometimes a speed version actually helps you see it faster and better. And I did decide to blend the trees in the distance. I wanted that soft moody feel. I also wanted to point out that I am not trying to recreate the painting from my former tutorial from 6 years ago. I'm trying to remember and uh something I liked, a technique I liked. And again, I'm using the same reference, but I'm changing this one up. Again, I chose to do it vertically. I wanted this one to be a bit more loose and fresh. Uh the first tutorial, if you go back and watch that one, I really worked that one to death. It was 6 years ago. I've since gotten to where my I think my style is a bit more fresh. Um I loved the final result, but I really I blended it, I scrubbed out, and uh this one I wanted to keep it um just really fresh with my flowers a bit larger and gestural. Now, we're going to get back to this, but I want to take a quick little break and let you guys know if you would like the real-time version of this lesson and to unlock hundreds of more lessons I have over my Patreon page. It's real easy to become part of my Patreon family. It's only $5 a month, and one of my favorite parts is it's a family. I get to see your work. We [music] have contests, games, and so much more. And right now, it's only $5 a month, but I have a coupon code that if you choose to do the annual membership, still very affordable, it's 20% [music] off if you use that coupon code only during the month of August until August [music] 31st. And I'll have all of that information, including the link, down in the description below. And I set this little clip to real-time just so you can see what it's like when I do the real-time footage. I just go over very uh meticulously my mark making often talking about the types of pastels I'm using and so much more. But I love it when my patrons recreate from my tutorials and I get to see your work and we have homework album reviews and it's so much fun. All right, so I added a little bit of warmth to the center. These flowers were actually pretty much just weeds, and I loved them though. They were sweet and they did have a little bit of yellow to their centers. Notice I'm using a lot of neutral colors in this. I'm finally now adding some of my lightest mark making to the flower petals. I've also started to add some of the smaller flowers in the distant field, a few grasses here, and now you can see I'm using a very neutral green to bring a little bit of warmth to these trees that are closest to the viewer. Now, the background still was pretty textural showing a lot of that blue underpainting. I liked it, uh but I decided to go ahead and blend it some with the chamois cloth. I'm not over blending it. You still feel the coolness underneath. And this is where I'm working on the grasses, and I'm going to be burying some of these flowers. I don't want them all to feel like they're just pasted on top. So, I'll be adding grass strokes on the tops of the flowers, and adding a little bit more warmth to the centers, and bringing in some of those pretty little cool colors. I love that blue cool color I just added. Even a pop of uh more saturated turquoise. I mentioned that beginning of the video. Lightening up some of the grasses, little tidbits of shapes and marks that make this feel alive, adding a bit of light in the distant field. And this is the fun stage. I mean, everything is really developed, so I have to decide what is going to bring um pizzazz and life and gesture and sparkle to this painting. And of course, I needed to add some stems. I just used a Prismacolor new pastel. Those are the thin pastels. I'm using uh more of them in the grasses, and uh just giving a few more of these flower shapes to bring focal point attention, and making it a goal to not overwork this one like I did the first painting 6 years ago. So, let me show you the final. Like I said, it was not a reproduction of my first painting, but I did want to capture that coolness underneath. Here's the reference image. Even though I used quite a few neutrals, I did bring more life [music] and color to this painting. I took it outside and I want you to notice the grass, the real grass on the sides of the painting, how warm it is, >> [music] >> and how cool the painting is. And I think it's because of that turquoise under painting. So, I liked this one. It was happy, [music] fun, full of life. I hope you liked it, too. And I hope you'll give this video a thumbs up. [music] You can't imagine how much that helps YouTube to share my video. I'm so happy you were part of this painting [music] experience with me. And as always, God bless and happy painting. >> [music] [music]