Painting with Pastels: Paint Cans

In art, as in life, light affects everything we see.

Colors are more vibrant and details are more visible.

Take away the light and objects become more difficult to paint.

Today's show is a lesson in capturing the essence of night.

No, we're not painting in the dark, but we will create a nighttime scene.

You will see how using dark colors and shadows can generate beautiful piece of artwork.

So stay right where you are.

Painting with pastel starts now.

Hello, friends, and welcome back to our studio.

This is the last show of the second season and we thank you so much for being here with us every week.

We've learned so much during the season.

We did fog.

We found how to put objects together to get on different arrangement, different colors.

We did a dog ride.

We did waterfall.

We had a Zen garden.

It was so much more fun.

And we thank you so much for your support on this show.

Now, this being our final show, we just going to have a little bit of fun.

We did a sunset before.

Are we going to take it a step into nighttime, a step darker?

So if you step back to the board with me and you remember, as I mentioned before, always have all your supplies handy.

That way you could work.

Whenever you think of painting.

We have a hot board.

We have the parcel paper, and then you have all your pastels arranged here.

So this being nighttime, I'm going to start with the black.

Okay.

And what do I want to do here?

Well, are we going to do a street scene again?

And I think I'll have a wall here that comes up this way.

But I want the house is so basically come up this way.

So you will have a nice perspective of the houses phased, fading into nothingness there.

Okay.

So this being night time, I'm just going to start out really dark here.

I don't want it to be to that point where you see nothing at all outside.

Still want a little bit of light left outside.

So I leave this part here.

There you go.

Now, this.

I want to be as dark as possible.

And then what we'll do from here, we'll just have our street this way.

We'll have the street.

And then we'll have the sidewalk.

Remember what we mentioned?

You start out small, and as you get closer, you make it bigger.

So this will be the side size of the homes.

There.

Reminds me of the houses in New York where you have them right side by side there.

And people just sit on the sidewalk and they play.

So I have this background here and we're going to move forward with it.

And I'm trying to make it as dark as I can.

And again, it all depends on the pastel paper that you get, because some would already take this and you would have the full effect already.

But this one will require some blending.

So I'm going to put this down.

I still need the dark blue that I have, and I'm going to put a little bit of that right here.

There we go.

Before I start blending this, I'm just going to do some textures on the houses.

I'll use this brown here and I could go over it.

Of course, we'll do some Ray Combs there and we could go back and play with this afterwards.

Now what I'll do for the street, adding a little bit of white so that I could still get my spots.

Look, my sidewalk here.

And we're going to do it all with lights.

This one here, I think I'll have part of a wall and we'll do a big door right here.

Same with color.

That would work fine for me using the side of the pastel stick displaying this brown here, and then we'll come back and work it just afterwards.

Now, some bindings are required here in order for me to continue and just before I do anything, I'm just going to start right here so I could take the dark out of my fingers and I'm just going to move up with the whites that I have here just to cover this area here, just and I'll do just a little bit of white textures right here in the sky.

Then we start blending.

I'm going to start at the bottom right here, where I have the blue moving up and blending into the black as we go up.

So it's going to start from the light blue, from the dark blue, and it's going to get darker and darker until I have that nighttime feel that I'm looking for just like this.

And you remember, as I mentioned to you before, please do this in a room where there's ventilation or do it outside so you do not breathe all that dust that's coming from the pastels.

Very, very important.

So I'm blending this because I want total black here, and I'm keeping off of that frame that I have with the White.

I want a solid black just like that.

Okay, Now I can have some fun with these homes that I have here.

What we use, we use a brown and we're going to need to separate them.

And just like at night, the further you look, the darker it is.

So you have like different perspective going at once here.

Not only you have the distance, the size you're going to use, also color to suggest that it is far away.

So what we'll do here at the scene.

Black I'm just going to go over these a little bit.

And as we come up to here, we'll work on that.

So some blending in our in order here.

And just like we did the boats in one of those painting, we're going to go back and give each one of them.

And one characteristic after we're done with the blending, I have my sidewalk and I have my street just just so we have time basically to make it all come together, just same thing we did for the homes.

We're going to have the darker part here coming this way from this vanishing point here we have our street now.

We just kind of blend this door right here, just use two fingers.

If you want to cover more space, just like you use the side of the pastel stick when you want to do more and give it some texture.

Of course, I can use this part.

Amber right here.

Go for it.

With a black.

There you go.

One thing on the wall, very down right now.

What I'll do.

I'm gonna work on the roof of the house one at a time.

Same principle.

Basically, following that pattern that I set in the beginning as distance.

And of course, the side of each going into the little street corner, you can separate each one of them just like that.

They still look like boxes.

That's okay.

Because when you start, it's not where you end up.

Now we're going to have a door.

And as I get further and further in, the doors get smaller.

Of course, this is or somewhat similar to that sunset that we did in the first season, but here we just making it darker and you can feel free to play with the light.

Of course, and we'll put a window here and we'll have some fun with the windows and just a little bit at this being nighttime, you could have some lights coming from them.

It's even to the doors reflection in the street.

Great.

Now for Sky, you can do so much with it because you already have the texture, but we're going to add some stars, not all the same size, of course.

You just some small dots, some more distinguished.

And it's amazing because before I move to the Virgin Islands, I haven't seen so many stars before.

They grew up in Massachusetts, in there with all the city lights.

You have not such a good visibility of the sky at night.

So it's But here I looked up and wow, all the beautiful stars.

And of course you can do some nights clouds, give it some textures, not too much and blend that in And then the rest of this wall and a sidewalk that comes right here just you go out and you see all the textures at night.

What can you see to the lights?

What's hidden?

All that can make for such a nice painting.

Try and capture everything that you see on paper.

You can take the same painting and try it at different time of the early morning sunset.

Nighttime, and every one of them can be a completely different painting, even if it's the same location that you're looking at.

It's just pastel is so much fun, isn't it?

Just.

Just what I can do here.

Good.

There's some top posts on the sidewalk starting here.

I'm using my black pastels stick using the corner of it, pushing that straight up.

I notice the difference in size, although there's only three, but you could see the poles there that they are receding as you're going further and cannot touch that up with a little bit of brown.

And again, using my finger, I'm going to push that all the way down.

Same for here and for here.

It's going to be fine.

Putting the wires on those.

There you go.

Now, using the blacks corner here, the black tip, very tip there.

Of course, there's two end to this that's going to put my wires basically.

And they don't go straight.

Make a little bit on this one.

In this one and this one into this one under starting here curve to this.

I always know what you're going to end up under at the pole and under.

And of course, this comes here and it's going to get to the next fall that you don't see if it's too dark for you.

Feel free to even, like touch up some section of it.

See, I can give it the excuse that the light is reflecting on.

It does a light here.

There we go.

Great friends.

This is the nighttime and I'll just put my name right here.

Great.

This is it.

And of a second season.

So thank you so much for joining us.

And we hope that you've had a chance to participate and do all that.

So hopefully we'll get to see you again for a third season.

Have your pencil handy because next time we'll be able to paint with pastel again and see your friends.

Goodbye.

Hi, friends.

I'm France Glass and I hope you had as much fun as I did with that last painting.

If you want to see the show again, you can go to iTunes and download a free podcast of this episode.

Again, it's free and you can watch the show anytime and as many times as you need to in order to get your painting just right.