Painting with Pastels: Underwater World

In many of our past shows, oceans and beach scenes like these have been the main focus of our show.

While I like painting them, I thought we would try something a bit different today.

So just staying on the surface.

Let's imagine the world below and finds a beautiful scene of coral and fish.

Excited.

Well, so am I.

Let's head back to the studio because it's time to paint with pastel.

Hello friends and I'll come back to our studio.

And welcome to the show.

Painting With Pastels.

I notice with all the paintings that we've done in the past, there's a world that we have not explored yet, and that is what we're going to do today.

By going underwater, you have your oxygen tank on and we're going to dive right in.

As you can see here, we have the 18 by 24.

We've secured it really nice against this easel back and it's solid.

And when I'm touching it, I don't feel anything against it back.

That means when I applied to pastel, it should be nice and smooth.

So since we farmers in an underwater world, we are going to start here.

And it's the same principle as the regular world that we've done outside.

You have your sky, you have your sea and you have the sand.

But except this time we're going to start with the sea.

And then we'll have the ocean floor right here and some of the marine life.

What we'll do, we're going to start with a layer of blue from the top.

So this right here.

And as I'm going to show you, you can not really go wrong with this.

Okay.

So that's nice.

And feel free to just which are blue over that.

As we are playing this, you notice the dust are falling down.

That is why I suggest please, please, please do this in the great outdoors or in a room that turns on free air flowing.

That way you're not stuck in a room or in a closet breathing all that dust.

Now we are going to take a deeper blue, and we'll start right here with it.

Going over the same areas that we went before.

And again, if that's the only color that you do have, that's quite all right.

You can fill up the whole thing with that same blue and just go over the top of a little white.

That should have you all set up.

Simple enough.

Great.

Now, I'd like a little texture.

So here I would just add some green, just like so I mentioned before.

You can not go wrong with this.

So feel free to experiment on.

Okay, Now we have the blue.

We added some green, and then we have a darker blue at the bottom.

That's quite all right.

We will then use some of the black for the bottom and this will be where we'll have our coal leafs and all of the interesting fun things that makes the sea bed here.

All right.

Liking it already.

Some white in the top there so I could have it lighter.

Now I'm going to start blaming from the top going down.

So with the lighter spot of the board mixing the white with the blue, slowly taking in the green.

And this is where the darker green starts.

Just kind of blend this in to a smooth transition and it'll give me a nice flow.

No textures needed there.

You can just to please avoid the black that we did here because we don't want to mix that into the composition.

It.

So right here, all the way down to here, it's nice.

The difference with the paper is that you will find and consent paper does not have these lines here that's you can see here it's nice and even spread it also have the sharper teeth that will hold the pastel sticks for you.

So these are highly recommended that in this draft most and you can use those for all your pastel linens.

And there's a whole industry that caters to pastel artists.

So you'll find even the little cuts to protect your fingers, like little gloves, but just for your fingers so that you can do your blending without having dirty fingers.

If that is a problem for you, I don't want you walking around and say, Hey, look, when this shop has this painting of pastel did to me, I have dirty fingers.

Great.

Now what we'll do, we'll just play in the same.

Do you notice how it's separated?

Same principle.

That's always.

We have this as the backdrop and we can add other things on top of it.

So this marks the space where I'm going to have my coral reefs.

It's home to the marine life that I'm going to add on later.

Great.

This is a good base.

So I have this and I can start building to it.

Now what do I want?

As I mentioned, you cannot go wrong with this.

So I will start with some colors and crochet.

So you are the larger the objects.

So if I have, I can do this here, just like that.

Let me put a little here.

So I like the red.

Then you also have a few of these things that de told you.

You see at the bottom of the ocean.

Don't step on it.

It's not going to be fun for you.

Once one on a trip once and we were diving and swimming and this pool man, I don't know if it was a jellyfish or whatever, it wasn't that fun for the rest of the trip for him because he was in pain.

So you cannot go wrong of this again.

Do your calls in all of the fun underwater life, the housing that supports all marine life, there, these are almost cylindrical form, the ones that I've seen.

So I'm just treating them like the trunk of a tree.

And it did come in all colors, which is why I told you, you cannot go wrong.

Yeah.

And I did see also some that look like some paper will do the texture for it and just a little bit because we've got time time he's almost side.

I'm building two houses for the fish.

If you build it they will come.

Just be free.

Remember I told you you cannot go wrong here.

You by being as many interesting colors as I can find.

Have you some red?

Have you some yellow?

Had some green There.

Had some orange adding a little bit more orange there.

So when I say you cannot go wrong, I mean for you to be free and experiment with all the colors that you want at the bottom there because this is your world.

Okay?

I have the blue in my hand mining just a little bit of that here.

Great.

I'd like to highlight a yellow a little bit more different yellow.

And I'm using the side of the pastel stick here and does a yellow ocher that I'm just touching up this piece here with great.

I think I'm almost ready for the fish now.

I'm going to start with the red.

These very simple here.

Okay, we're going to do this almost like an eye opening.

And then in the end, we just going to cross it over Indian.

Okay, See, we just up, down and over and I just filled it in and I'm going to put some more right here, up, down and in the back.

We do the fence.

But we going back to this one, we just going to put this in here doing some more here.

So we're doing a little school of fish up, down, and then the tail there and the fence.

Now that would look like it's over for it, but it's not quite yet what we want to do.

We're just going to run our hand over it and push it down so that the pastel stays on the paper.

And we're going to do this here and then put the big over it.

There we go.

We just highlighting them and then we have different type that we can do.

You can put a couple here.

Well, this is the right for this one.

Just using two for this one here.

Same thing over and under.

And then we do the tail up and down and use a finger that is clean still and you can just go ahead and push down on it.

And I'm just going to add a little lime green for the fan right here and right on the underbelly, slightly that right there.

And I'm looking for some gray.

Basically.

Want to put a touch of gray on the over there we go back to my whites so I can accentuate the way I want the to be this circle run.

Remember once you put your light reflection on each eye, gives it so much nice, so much of a nice touch to it, and you can still use that same white and highlight.

There we go.

Okay.

We still have more things that we can add here.

We could do on here using the black almost same shape, except a bit bigger, pushing down on a bit of yellow.

I think I like the yellow, so I'm just going to add a few more yellow ones coming this way.

You can make them as small as you want and as they come closer they can get bigger.

So this is going to be another school of fish.

Maybe they can help find Little Nemo and you can add as many colors as you want and feed your own fish.

Why not show world?

And I hope they all get along so nicely.

None of I'm eating the other or west side.

It's there we go.

Nice little formations and we're building them.

So remember over and under.

And then it tells.

That's basically all there is to it.

And then of course, you can go back with the black hard pastel stick and give them some structure and the eyes very important on each of them.

This see, I mean, the distance there, you could even add an anchor.

I'm using the black pastel stick here.

We're going to work on that to give it that rusted appearance, because if it's rusted, it will not be all together like this.

We looking for us.

So we using the brown, the sienna, and we adding some rust to it, very rusted, almost falling apart here.

And by blending it in I'm not bringing it down a small VLAN, I'm giving it this appearance of frailty by moving side to side and you could see that it looks rusted good.

Now all that is left for me to do.

Now I can just add the light reflection.

This is not too deep.

Light still comes through and you have time.

You highlight everything.

The way it always works when you're highlighting just right effect.

I'm liking my underwater scene.

What's left for me to do here?

Perfect place for me to write my name.

Great.

Are you happy with your painting friends?

Well, we certainly hope that you are.

If you're not interning next week and next week, we're going to take on even bigger challenge.

And we hope you did with us.

Still in hand, ready to paint.

See you next time.

Hi friends.

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

Although the show is over, the fun doesn't have to stop.

Join the conversation and connect with me and other fans of the show by visiting us on Facebook.

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Just log on to w w w dot facebook.com slash painting with pastels.

Oh yeah.

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So tell a friend and share the joy of painting with pastels.