🌻 Turn Your Pastels into Paint | A Rediscovered Technique for Luminous Sunflowers
Watch on YouTubeVideo summary
In this instructional video, an artist shares her favorite technique for transforming soft pastels into something resembling wet paint using airbrush medium. After experimenting with various blending agents like water, alcohol, Gamsol, and matte medium over the years, she discovered that airbrush medium offers a unique advantage by liquefying pastel pigments in a creamy yet translucent manner. This specific product allows artists to layer colors while maintaining visibility of underlying hues, effectively creating new tones similar to traditional wet painting without sacrificing the luminosity often associated with dry media. The artist demonstrates this on Canson Velour paper using Sennelier and Mammut pastels, highlighting how the medium moves smoothly across the surface to create vibrant, blended effects that other solvents fail to achieve as naturally.
The tutorial begins with a loose underpainting phase where the artist captures energy and movement through gestural marks rather than precise lines, emphasizing that pastel work is indeed painting when applied broadly. She sketches initial forms of mountains, trees, and sunflowers using Prismacolor pencils for detail before blocking in broad areas of color. A key decision made during this stage involves applying a complementary underpainting specifically to the flower petals using pinks and purples against a blue background; this strategy ensures that when yellow ochre and golden tones are added later, they will appear more vibrant by contrast rather than dull or muddy. The artist also discusses her brush choices, preferring soft brushes for blending over stiff ones used primarily for texture, while noting that the amount of medium applied is crucial to avoid darkening the final dried result too much.
As the painting progresses, the focus shifts entirely to the sunflowers where the airbrush medium is liberally applied to blend golden yellows and oranges into rich shadows and highlights. The artist intentionally avoids over-layering these wet areas so that glimpses of the pink and purple underpainting continue to shine through, adding depth and a "pop" of color to the composition. She adds small details like grasses and touches of turquoise from the mountains using a technique called color echoing, which ties different elements of the landscape together visually. The final result is a luminous field of sunflowers that retains the texture of pastel while possessing the fluidity and depth of oil or acrylic paint, proving that with the right medium and approach, soft pastels can be turned into true painting tools.
Read the full video transcript
Welcome artists to this soft pastel
lesson where I'll share with you one of
my favorite ways to blend soft pastels
[music]
and a few new discoveries that I made in
this pastel painting tutorial. Come on
into the studio and here [music] we go.
If you've been painting for a while like
I have, you may have looked back on some
of your artwork and thought, "Hmm, that
was pretty good." or "I'd like to try
that technique again." And if you know
my channel, I have a lot of videos that
I can resource and go back and look at.
I have over a thousand videos on my
YouTube channel and 800 on my Patreon
page. So I've made a lot of discoveries
along the way and one of them was in
this video. It's from four years ago.
It's called I just discovered the best
product for blending soft pastels. And
in that video, I experimented with many
of the different products that I have
used for blending. And this was a new
one though. I had never tried it before
and I'm going to share with you why I
love it. So in today's lesson, I'll be
using this product with some beautiful
pastels that I love by Sennelier
pastels. These pastels are from Spain
and I just love the company and the
colors are so gorgeous and they blend
beautifully with this product. The
surface I will use is Canson Velour.
This is the cream color. It comes in a
dark as well and I needed to use this
lighter surface for this technique. It's
a mixed media pad. You can use it for
pastels and really anything that is kind
of a wet medium. If you haven't heard of
it before, it's called airbrush medium.
I get mine from the Golden Company. And
let me know if you're an airbrush artist
and you know how to use this with
airbrush painting, that would be cool
information to know. But I use it for
blending pastels. Now I'm giving you a
quick little recap so you'll just kind
of have the idea before we get started
with the painting tutorial. I have used
all of these products over the years and
in the video, I will have the link to
that my former video in the description
of this video, so you can check out the
full tutorial. But, this is one I had
tried airbrush medium for the first
time. So, I had applied little swatches
of blue pastels and tried each one. The
first one's water, second one's alcohol,
and those are probably the two products
I use the most for blending soft pastels
until I tried the airbrush medium. But,
this third one is called matte medium.
The fourth one is Gamsol odorless
mineral spirits. That's not my favorite.
But, this is the airbrush medium. The
consistency is a little bit like milk.
And boy, was I surprised. I could even
see a color difference. Can you see that
here? It really um liquefied the pastels
in such a a creamy way, but it was still
quite translucent with the paper. And
here I am just showing uh some other
colors, but I want to specifically show
you I did this one first how this color
blends on top of another color. And I
think you can see the translucent effect
I was talking about. It sort of creates
a new color, almost like painting with a
wet medium. And you can see the other
ones, they just kind of look muted and
dull. But, the airbrush medium layered
in such a way that you can see through
to the color underneath and thus sort of
making a new color. It's really fun, and
it it moves on the surface so nicely.
All right, so I did use some different
brushes. I think I only used two of
these, but I have a a stiff bristle I
use this one a lot just for texture. And
I decided to use a mostly this softer
brush. I thought, well, let me not get
too carried away with the texture and
just focus on the blending of the soft
pastels. And this is a fan brush. I
think I might have used that on some of
the upper trees, but not much.
And I didn't exclusively use the Maimeri
pastels. This is a little appetizer
tray. I love it because you can arrange
your colors like the color wheel, and I
usually take my remnant pastels from
previous paintings and just loosely
arrange them. And I've put some extra
Maimout pastels in the middle here. Look
at those gorgeous greens. I'm going to
walk over in my studio here and show you
the set that I got those from. But these
are products that I have to do product
reviews on. Very blessed that some
companies like Earthberry sent me this
set of greens. You'll be seeing a
tutorial with that soon. But speaking of
greens, this was the Maimout set. I
think it's basic landscape is where I
got those greens from. The reference
image is a beautiful field of sunflowers
that I got from unsplash.com, a great
resource for copyright free reference
images. I just love the the blues of the
mountains and the yellows of the
flowers. So I'm starting on my Canson
velvet surface with just a Prismacolor
new pastel. They're long thin sticks of
pastels that are great for sketching
with like I'm doing here. And my surface
size, I've kind of marked it off to be
approximately
um 14 in by 11 in.
And I'm trying to capture some of the
energy of this field, and I felt like
things were kind of sweeping and had a
motion of
kind of converging towards the
mountains. And often in my sketches and
under paintings, I try to capture that
energy, some sense of movement and life
and gestural mark making. And it sort of
sets the stage for your painting to have
a more impressionistic feel. So now I'm
just getting in some of the trees
and now some of the flowers. I typically
just like to make some marks for
primarily my focal point flowers. And
there were definitely some in the
foreground that felt like they were
blowing in the wind and had a movement.
Now a lot of them are turned
to the right side and
not facing the viewer, kind of at a
diagonal the way the flowers are facing.
I think of them as as faces.
And they also are turned in all kinds of
different directions. So, I try to
resist the urge to have a pattern. I'm
almost doing it here. I kind of have
some of my flowers too much in a row.
So, I try to randomize that a bit and as
I did here. And I noticed in the
reference image the flowers, a lot of
them have that out of focus effect that
you can get in photography with uh uh
aperture settings on your camera. And as
I often say, I'm not trying to copy the
reference image. I'm trying to use it as
inspiration. And now I'm going to go
ahead and block in. This is the block-in
stage for the underpainting. Remember,
I'm going to be liquefying
my first layers of pastel. And by the
way, you can do this dry. I have all
kinds of different methods that I use
for underpainting. Some with wet medium,
some with dry mediums. You'll see me do
um use a product uh to blend uh once
some of these pastels are dry after I do
the underpainting. So, I'll talk about
that in a minute, too. So, I just get a
few loose strokes of some of the pretty
blues in the sky. Now, I'm going to work
on the mountain. And I'm using a nice
easy middle value blue. I don't want it
too punchy in color. And I noticed it
was a pastel that wasn't blending great.
Sometimes the edges are uh more
pronounced than the center. So, I had to
blend it a little bit to smooth it out.
And I decided to go a little bit
lighter. That's that's doing the same
thing. Sometimes it's good if you have a
pastel, you haven't used it in a certain
area to sand it off on a separate paper
to get a nice smooth application. And if
you're brand new to pastel painting and
you're like, I have no idea what's going
on here. Um a lot of times people ask
me, isn't this considered drawing and
not painting? But no, it's not because
I'm literally just applying broad
strokes of color just like you would
with a paintbrush. The difference
between drawing and painting is drawing
is usually more linear and finer lines,
and painting is indeed pastels can be
used for painting. And often I liquefy
them and turn them into paint anyway.
So, yes, pastels are a painting medium
as well as a sketching medium. This is a
portion of the video where it will be
sped up for the YouTube version, but
over on my Patreon page my patrons have
much slower speeds, full commentary, but
like I say, don't worry, YouTube
subscribers. You guys always get plenty
of content. And I'm just speeding this
up to show you basically the pastel
application. And I'm using lots of these
beautiful Mammut pastels. So, here I'm
adding the centers with this gorgeous
rusty color. I haven't even taken the
labels off of many of these Mammut
pastels.
Um but now I'm carving in some of the
greens. I absolutely love that green
from that Mammut set I've been uh
bragging on. And I added some warmer
greens in the background, some cooler
blues in the grasses. Look at these
gorgeous two colors, this pink and
purple Mammut. And I am going to add
those to the sunflower petals. I'm
putting the purple in the shadowy area
and the pink in the area of the light.
Now, I'm imagining the light is being
kind of in the upper left um or right I
should say, upper right. And so, there
is going to be the pink kind of glow on
the right side. Now, why am I using
pink? I've used local color for almost
the whole background to this, the
underpainting um pastel application. But
I really wanted this yellow to pop on
the sunflowers, this golden and these
ochre colors I'm going to be adding. And
I decided, first time I think I've ever
done this, to do a complimentary
painting or underpainting for just the
flowers and not the whole painting. So,
I was happy with the results, too. All
right, so now here we go with the
airbrush medium. I'm using a fairly
large dish because I'm
I've got kind of a large painting and
I'm using basically I think I just ended
up using the two brushes. I used that
that blue brush there and then this uh
very coarse textured brush.
Um not sure if I used the fan brush.
This one just really gave me some soft
effects and uh I might have used this
one um but not much. A little fan brush.
That can give you some nice mark making,
too. So, I started applying it. I wanted
to show you real time at first here and
usually I'm a little timid when I first
start applying a liquid product. Like,
how much I couldn't remember how much of
this do I use? And I realized quickly I
needed more on my brush. Usually it's
the opposite. I have too much on my
brush. So, I you could see it's kind of
uh not applying. That's where I started
to really uh add some of the airbrush
medium to my uh my paintbrush. And uh
this was so fun. Like I said, you could
Well, you could totally use water or
alcohol like I often do and I'm don't
want to be a product pusher. They really
have a similar effect, but I do think
there's something about this airbrush
medium that I don't know, it changes the
consistency of the pastel and it really
feels like paint.
So, I'm just carving uh into the
grasses. I'm trying to avoid the
sunflower, the pink and purple on the
sunflower petals for now and I'm so glad
in hindsight that I did. You'll see why
in a minute. Um so, I'm just carving in.
I got my bigger brush here to get into
some of these bigger areas. And uh this
looks like a royal mess, right? But
don't worry, that's the way under
paintings are supposed to look. So, I
got a smaller brush and uh some fresh
airbrush medium. I didn't want to
contaminate it with the other colors and
I very quickly noticed that this was
really darkening the um and then it's
going to dry lighter when it dries, but
I thought I don't want this to be this
dark. So, I opted out of adding the
airbrush medium to any more of the
sunflowers. So, I just use my little
packing peanut blending
tool that I use so often. It's great for
blending soft pastels. And now I'm ready
to start painting. Now, it's going to be
a little while before I get to these
sunflowers. So, again, the Patreon
version has all of that footage. But,
I'm going to jump ahead just to show you
guys the application of the beautiful
golden colors on these sunflowers. I
don't like to wear you guys out with
Patreon advertisements, but I do like to
let you know how you can become a
patron. It's super easy and affordable,
only $5 a [music] month. I get to see
your work. I love that part. We have
monthly reviews. We have games, [music]
challenges, and it's so fun. It's a
great family. All right, let's get back
to this [music] painting. Oh, and please
like this video and do all that stuff,
subscribe and everything. All right, so,
I'm going to now apply some of these
golden colors. I mean, these are
sunflowers. And I'm using this orange
color to be kind of It's not my
brightest. It's more It's a little bit
in the shadowy area. And my bright
golden color here, again, these are
Maimeri pastels for my sunflowers that
are going to be in the sunshine. Now, I
have this beautiful little ochre color
for that's It's the shadow side. It's
not going to be as yellow. It's not as
warm. And so, I'm using my warmer colors
and my brightest colors where the sun is
and ochre colors
where it's going to be a little more
neutral and the values just a tad
darker. And am I trying to cover cover
up all of this pink and purple? No. I'm
just making little gestural marks
and letting that pink and purple
underpainting show through. That's what
makes it so vibrant. Sorry, I'm talking
fast, guys. I'm trying to upload this
content. It's actually before August
that I'm doing this. I'm going on a
trip. My husband and I are helping my
son and daughter-in-law move. I'm so
glad they're moving to Florida. They've
been in Kansas for 3 years for her
doctorate degree and they're moving to
Florida. She got a job as a professor at
Florida State University. Sorry guys, I
like to brag on my kids and that was a
tangent. So, thank you for that. So,
here I'm doing the same thing over and
over again though. So, same idea, but I
wanted to stress and again I'm keeping
this is sped up just slightly. But I
think you can see
I'm keeping my marks very gestural and a
lot of these sunflowers in the reference
image were turned the same way.
Sunflowers have a tendency to do that,
but I like to give them some variety.
Try to take some and let them be turned
down like they're getting old like me.
Turn their head down. Of course, I try
to hold my head up. I don't do that. But
some of them you want to give some
variety and it will make your painting
feel more exciting and enjoyable and
more like a story. So, again, this is
the same technique over and over again.
Also, I add a little bit of warmth. I
think I've already added that to some of
the centers of the sunflower and
sunflowers plural and
it's it's gets kind of monotonous. So,
I'm going to move ahead a little bit.
can see where I'm adding all of my
little tidbits of grasses on top of that
beautifully liquefied underpainting
using the airbrush medium. You can still
see the background peeking through. I'm
not over layering this and here's the
final. So, I hope you can still see that
pretty little pink and purple shining
[music] through. It really gives that
pop of color. I also added some of the
turquoise from the mountain [music]
into some of the grasses. That's called
color echoing. So, I hope you enjoyed
this. Please leave me a comment. Let me
know if you [music] liked this, if
you've ever tried airbrush medium and I
am so happy to bring [music] you these
lessons. I always like to bring these
free lessons to YouTube even if the
content is a little condensed. I think
you can still learn a a All right,
everyone. As always, God bless and happy
[music] painting.