The Secret to Vibrant Reds in Soft Pastel | My Favorite Colors for Painting Poppies

[music] >> Welcome into the studio artists for this rather intimate little session where I paint a field of poppies and I'd love for [music] you to step into the studio with me as I share my secrets for painting glorious reds in soft pastel. Hello artist, welcome into the studio and this new painting adventure and this is a time during the month that I really love. It's when I've gotten most of the lessons or all of them, I think in this case, done for the monthly theme. I think I've done three lessons already this month and if I have a little bit of time left at the end of the month, I like to paint something just for me. But you guys know I always film everything so why not bring you guys along with me. Oh, and I got my hair cut. Thank you for the comments about that. This is the shortest I've had my hair I don't know, maybe since I was a little girl, but many years, at least 40 years and oh, it feels so good. It'll it grows like a weed so it'll be back long again soon. Okay, enough of that. So I really wanted to paint a field of poppies. Every so often I just get a hankering to paint some poppies. That's a southern word. And in this lesson I'm going to take you behind the scenes a bit to explore some of my soft pastel sets and favorite reds. There are so many different brands of pastels that have luscious and gorgeous reds. I have some of my own personal favorites of course and I'm also going to share the most expensive red pastel that I have. But my challenge was I didn't have any images of poppy fields and I really wanted to use my own reference image. This is one of my own photos and I don't live near poppy fields and I was happy to discover by accident a way that I can take my own reference images and turn them into a poppy field like I did with this one. If you're a patron of mine on my Patreon page, head over to that full lesson. It has real time, full commentary and all the goodies. I'll share how to become a patron later in this video. The surface that I'm working on is Canson Velvet and I've got a whole sheet here. I'll probably do this in about an 11 by 14 or 14 by 11 size and I've already put some sets of pastels next to me. I was specifically looking for some little sets that have nice reds and greens in them since it's a poppy field and I wanted to brag on this little set. It's a Unison set. I forget to talk about Unison sets very much. I use them all the time but look at these reds and even golden colors and rusty colors and even some nice greens. It's got some cool greens in here, not many warm greens. Well, there's that bright little warm green there and I love half sticks. This is what the box cover looks like. I love half sticks because you kind of get double the color for your money and this is called a Unison starter half stick 30. A great set of pastels and this is another beautiful set of pastels by Sennelier. This is a half stick set. It's their half stick 40 set and I use this set all the time. Beautiful colors in here and just look at some of these gorgeous reds in here. Now, I wanted to point something out. This is another Unison set. It's not a half stick set but I often break my sticks and I've recently been sharing I learned this from another artist. Instead of breaking your sticks in half like I did here, if you break them into thirds, you end up with one that's a little shorter and one that's a little longer. So, it gives you two sizes to work with. Wanted to show you the difference too in in these reds. I've got this 30 set here, 30 half stick set. Oh, and this set here, let me show you what it is. I usually keep the uh the name of the set. Here I have it. I made my own little color chart. That's really great to do if you're working with a or you have a set that is a brand that offers open stock. You can buy these sticks individually. So, I go ahead usually and make the uh little color chart like this. And uh this is the Unison Pastel set by Lucy Pittaway. She's just a lovely artist. And it's just 18 colors, but again, they're full sticks. Many of you are probably aware that Terry Ludwig has just some gorgeous reds. I don't think this red goes in this set. This is the Terry Ludwig darks. I bought one and two. It's their their dark colors. And I think that this one got stuck in here somehow. Sorry, I don't have the color number for this, but isn't that a gorgeous red? And uh and you need some neutral or ones that aren't quite so punchy, too. They're very deep in the shadows. Um you need dark reds and neutral reds and cool reds and warm reds, um along with the bright brights that will be in the sunshine. And if you're a beginner artist, don't worry. If you just have three or four reds, um you can make that work, too. I did for years. That's how I had to work. I couldn't afford all these. Um this is another Terry Ludwig red. Um this one's kind of dirty. I don't know what happened to this guy here. Um so, anyway, these are just a few of those sets. Now, I have a tutorial that you'll probably see after this one, the first week of August. This is uh the Mammut set of pastels. I'm going to see if I can say the name right. It's like Teide, t e i d e d e. It's like a a Spanish word. It's These are from Spain. But when I was using this set, I did not use the reds in my tutorial. It was a sunflower painting. But I my eyes just couldn't stop going uh to this gorgeous red that's in this set. So, I absolutely love Mammut pastels. They're a nice size, too. A lot of pastel for your money. And I'm going to come down here and just show you a few more reds. Sennelier, this is the Oh, and this this uh inspired me. This is one of my poppy field paintings. Really loose, impressionistic. And this one has a little bit of a cooler green palette going with it. And the Sennelier Paris Collection half sticks set has some great reds. This is what I was saying that you're going to have some darker reds, then some more punchy, and then finally some that are you can start going into some of the orange colors, even golden colors here. So, that has some beautiful reds and gorgeous greens. Look at all these pretty colors. Now, I've gotten some of them misplaced, obviously, but this is Jack Richeson set. It does not have any reds in this set. This is I think it's the basic landscape set, something like that. These are I did a video on this called the most expensive pastels in the world. That's what I call them, and I think they are. They're Henri Roché. I think I'm saying his name right. It's French. And this is truly one of the most vibrant reds in the world. But hey, I tell you what, it it's really close to some of the Terry Ludwigs and Unisons, and even some of these other ones. Here's a Unison red right here. So, this is the Unison What is it? 120 half stick set. And oh my goodness, it's a fantastic set. It's even got some of these little This would be great in a distant field with some poppies that are getting a little cooler in the distance. And look at just how colorful all of these are. So anyway, like I said, this this Henri Roché pastel Oh, it even has the number on it. Hang on 1 second. If we can see that. What does that say? Oh, maybe this way. I don't know. You guys are going to have to guess at that. I can't tell. And some more beautiful reds. I ordered the set that is called reds. It's the Jack Richeson set. Now, it has reds and pinks in it, and beautiful kind of magenta colors as well. And it has some some nice reds, too. And this is the regular size of Richeson pastels. It's not a half stick or a full stick. I don't think they sell half sticks because it's just such a nice little size. It's almost already a half stick. So, those are some of the reds that I love, and there's more, but I'm not digging them all out right now. >> [laughter] >> But, I think I've got enough to get started, and here we go. Now, I'm going to share with you how I paint my red poppies and some of my colors and values of reds that I choose. But, again, my Patreon version has the full, almost all real-time version of this lesson. It's I think it's almost 2 hours long, maybe an hour and 45 minutes, and I go over all of these techniques. But, we're going to jump ahead to where I actually start painting the poppies. Now, I do like to share before we get started, in case you would like to become a patron [music] of mine and unlock hundreds of lessons that have full-time content, lots of goodies. We have games, prizes, a monthly review of your work, and [music] it's only $5 a month. I do have a coupon code this month until July 31st, when you're probably seeing this, >> [music] >> for half off the first month. I know that's not a lot, but every little bit helps. I'll have that in the description of [music] this video. I'd love for you to join my Patreon family. And while I've got you here, real quick, would you go ahead and like this video? It really does help YouTube to share it more often. [music] Of course, subscribe, become part of my YouTube family, and leave me a comment. Let me know what you thought about this video and perhaps [music] other content you might like to see. I really do read your comments. All right, here we go with those poppies. I started with my Unison 120 half stick set. I mentioned how many gorgeous reds there are in there, and I'm going to begin with some reds that are a little deeper, perhaps a little more rusty. I actually will add some that are even a little darker after this. And you may be wondering, why are there yellow flowers in the field? Well, I did this technique with my previous painting, where I decided to leave my flowers shapes, my my main focal point flowers. I don't have every flower in yellow that will be in this painting, but I decided to leave them lighter. In the underpainting, I made them a bright yellow so that they would glow a little bit more, rather than just covering all of this up with the green and then trying to lighten them back up again. So, this is actually I showed the Unisons to begin with, but I'm actually using a Terry Ludwig pastel right here. Terry Ludwig pastels have some of the most gorgeous reds. And again, this is kind of a rusty red. Uh sometimes I switch from my right hand to my left hand, and I recommend that. Um it will change the shapes and variety of your little flower shapes and petals and give it more spontaneity. So, I'm basically just using this red rusty color for some of my flower shadows. I'm just showing my directional energy there. And this is the way I typically work with flowers. I get my darker values down first, like the shadowy parts of the petals. Then I start adding the light on top. This is a Oh, which one is this? Oh, that's actually another Terry Ludwig. You can tell they're kind of uh or they are rectangular in shape. And so, now I'm using this one. It's just a tad brighter than that rusty one I had down. I put a little bit of it on top of some of the existing poppies I already did with the rusty color. And uh now I'm just getting in a little bit more of this red on some of the other poppy flowers. And now let's add a little brightness. This is that uh Unison pastel that I broke in half from the Unison Lucy Pittaway set. Can you see how that gave that such vibrancy to the petal? And I loved it, but I realized that some of my flowers uh these are ones that I want to feel like they're more buried under the grasses. So, I got another Terry Ludwig pastel. I told you Terry Ludwig has some great reds. And this one is uh it leans a little I don't know, a little cooler in color temperature, but it's darker in value. And it really is going to give me some nice shadows um to some of the centers of the poppies and some darker values to those that are uh buried or hidden or will be hidden beneath some of the grasses I'll add later. So, I'm just looking, kind of dancing around the painting, seeing where I might have some deeper values. And now I'm using I believe this was the same Terry Ludwig I had before, the second one that I used, and I'm just popping in a little bit of it. This area of poppies behind that large tree, they're going to be a little bit more in shadow unless one's peaking up really high in the scene, then it will get brighter with some of the sunlight that I'll add later. And the yellow color for the poppies I had left in the underpainting and kind of worked around worked the grasses around them. They were basically what I had envisioned or imagined as some of my focal point flowers, but I always have the flexibility pastel painting is very flexible and versatile to kind of alter things as I go and I realized I didn't want a whole lot of large flowers just peaking up really high. I thought I'd make them more of a transition with smaller poppies in the distance. I find my paintings evolve as I'm painting it. I sort of start to feel um just where it's telling me to go. I don't know if that makes sense. All right, I'm jumping ahead here and I've obviously added some deeper values and depth to some of these grasses and I use my little blending tool again, which is just a piece of packing foam by the way. Now I'm going to keep this next section real time and go over how I'm going to work on this flower that I'm considering my focal point flower. It's going to have more detail and uh a bit more definition. I'm using this Terry Ludwig. I wanted to get a little bit more um value darker value uh kind of into the center of the flower and I'm just slowing down to take my time to think about uh how these petals are going to be arranged. So again, like I've said before, lighter values are going to be where you're catching the sunlight and I decided I wanted to bring one petal up. You're going to see this develop right here. This is that Lucy Pittaway uh red and this is the Andre Roche red. Look how close they are. The one that's the most expensive is in my right hand and the Unison Lucy Pittaway is in my left hand. They're very close. And I decided to use the Roche here just to show you that beautiful vibrancy. It's a very warm red, almost leans a little bit orange. And I'm just glazing it over on the side to capture some of the sunlight. And this will make sense more when you see me add the center of the flower here. And by the way, I don't add centers to every single poppy. It becomes just monotonous. So, choose a few focal point flowers for the center. And I noticed in the field of flowers that there were some poppies that just had these little the filament or whatever the center of the flower is with some dark and then some little yellow pops of yellow. But I always love to add some purple to certain centers of my poppy flowers. The purple just really pops with the red petals. So, this is the little petal right here. I'm giving a little pop of sunshine just on the rim, on the edge of this petal. And it's a petal that's kind of lifted up just kind of over the center of that. So, now I'm going to develop that a little bit. And I'm spending way more time on this poppy flower than I normally do, but it's a focal point flower. Now, I'm using this little yellow. It is a Unison. I think that one may be from the 30 basic set and I thought it was a little bit too bright. So, I went to this little ochre color. I think that one's also a Unison. It wasn't quite as light in value and as saturated in color. I liked it better. So, I'm just as smoothing this a little with my finger to give that three-dimensional feeling of that one petal lifted up in front of the center. And I decided I wanted a little bit more dark value to really bring that home. So, I added a little bit of a purple. That was a Terry Ludwig, by the way, too. I noticed lots of Terry Ludwigs and Unisons that I'm using in this painting specifically for the reds. But, Terry Ludwig also has some gorgeous purples as well. And now I'm going to do more of the same throughout the painting, but I'm trying to keep spontaneity and randomness. I find that well, I've actually learned this from other pastel artists that our brain we have a tendency to want to order things. That's a good thing, you know, with housekeeping and things like that. But, with painting flowers, if everything has consistency and similarity, it's going to become very boring and amateurish looking. Because if you study nature, which I highly encourage you to do in life in general, even if you're not an artist, you will find there is such a spontaneous beauty to things. While there is still order, and I find that it's great to have your flowers almost in little communities, little clusters here and there. And think about your negative spacing between your flowers as well. So, you can see more of the same. I'm keeping in mind, of course, the source of the light. Oh, and here I'm adding a bit of orange. So, I decided to add that orange also to that distant sunset. This is called color echoing, where I like to have consistent colors throughout my painting. It makes it feel more believable, but also more painterly and um and impressionistic. So, that just that little bit of orange on that flower really helped. And so, now I'm I'm thinking about the light. That's what I was going to say before. Where is the light? The sunset is a low setting sun in the distance on the left side. Therefore, it's going to cast light in that path on the left side. And the flowers that are taller are going to catch that light. Buried flowers or if they've, you know, got grasses all around them, they're going to be cooler reds. They're not going to have and darker in value. They're not going to have this pop of light. And my flowers that get closer to the sun and further away are typically going to get lighter in value as well. And of course, perspectively, they're going to get smaller, they're going to get closer together, and eventually, things in the distance like flowers, they almost become horizontal like a blanket. Uh think of it like blades of grass too. They're individualized and vertical in the foreground, but they're flat. It's like a flat field in the distance, and flowers do the same thing. Um you'll see in the final painting how I have glazed some red even in the distance. And I had one red poppy I added up there kind of where my hand is near now. Here I'm glazing some of it, you know, just little bits of of the same uh deep red in the shadowy area. Uh it just adds some some interest to the painting. Um but yeah, I wanted to add that one poppy up higher. I always like to add one that's kind of uh random saying, "Hey, look at me." So, here I'm giving a a bit more of the uh interest with the flower centers. Again, I'm not putting it everywhere, but just in some areas that I feel is uh harmonious. There I added some of that purple, and I'm calling this one done. I'm giving it my little signature, which is just my initials, but I've recently started adding a little Christian fish symbol. I always felt like I needed something else in my [music] signature, and that's it. So, my newer paintings will have that. I'm zooming in here so you can see the texture. [music] I really did enjoy this experience, and I brought the painting outside to film. [music] I think you can see just being in the sunshine that there's a warmth to it, a glow from the sun. It's a bit out of focus because it was uh windy, and I was struggling to hold the painting still, [music] but I'll zoom back here so you can see. But this was a joyous experience. I just really wanted to paint something for me. So, again, I brought you along for the journey. I hope you learned a lot about red, some of the different brands, [music] some of the techniques of how to paint a poppy field, and I would love for you to subscribe to this channel, join my YouTube family, my Patreon family, if you haven't already, and [music] I just pray God's blessings over you in your artistic journeys and life in general. All right, everyone. God bless and happy painting.