Painting with Pastels Zen Garden

One of the things I love the most about doing this show is the feedback that I get from the fans.

This one in particular is in a nursing home in Saint Thomas, and she told me how to like this show is for her.

So I thought for today's show, why not paint this serene, relaxing scene?

We landed some tree, some flowers, leave a stream.

While we let our imagination go wild.

Are you game?

Grab your supplies.

Because when we come back, we'll be painting with pastels.

Hello, friends, and welcome to our studio.

And the second season of painting of pastel.

Do you have a green thumb?

Do you like to plant things?

Beautiful plants in your garden?

Well, if you do, you know how nice it is to arrange everything and put them in a place where they belong.

So how do you translate that on paper?

Well, today we're going to build a nice relaxation garden, a nice little Zen relaxation in garden.

Let's step to the board here, and I'll explain what we're going to do first here.

Are we going to have a nice little pond, a manmade pond here?

We're going to do a little waterfall.

And then tenders can be built easily and we're going to put a couple of nice bamboo trees here and we'll see how we can arrange the forefront and everything.

So first, we've everything we going to start with our sky here.

And I am sure that by now you are already masters at making this happen.

So this again is a pastel stick that I'm using and it's a very light blue pastel.

I'm using the big stick here, using the side of the pastel to cover large areas.

I'm just going to cover this here, although this is going to be covered by plants here, but still, the sky is going to filter through somehow.

So I'm just putting this here.

And even though my little pond is going to be right here, that's fine.

I'm just putting the little blue there as well.

So we even use the light blue here very sparingly.

I'm going to add a little bit of the darker blue, just as we've used before for some textures.

There we go.

We're using the dark blue and we have the side of the pastel to cover this area here.

So that works just fine for us.

Great.

Now, for garden to take shape and first to know exactly what we're going to do here.

I'm going to have some nice flowers right here.

I think I'll put a little piece of a stone wall coming right here.

I think a nice little piece of architecture would work great right here.

And we'll have a little waterfall right here.

So the different kind of plants.

Now, right here on this side.

I am going to have a nice bamboo tree coming down like this.

And I think I'll put another one right behind it right here.

But as we know, a bamboo tree is not really straight like this.

You have to sections of it and we want to make those come out.

So basically going over the line and going in and out so that the side matches, I'll just do the turn right here and you can already see it taking shape.

So what I'll do, I can using the black pastel stick, I'm going to fill this and now it's supposed to be this nice green, but I want one side of it to be dark, darker, like this.

And right here we're going to have some plant over the water.

But now there are several ways to make still water.

You could have the blue reflecting the sky.

But what I'll do here, since we have so many nice, beautiful flowers, it's going to be a nice little reflection of what we have on the other side.

So whatever I have up here, it's going to be down here as well.

Divided by this little section here.

Of course, it's not going to be the exact image.

As you know, the water will have its reflection.

So we'll have that here and then we'll put several beautiful, nice plants in the front here.

And of course, we'll do some bamboo leaves here.

So now that we have all this ready, we can get ready to play.

First, I would like some of the white pastels here.

As I mentioned, I would like to have all right here for some reason, I love the stucco walls that you see in places like Greece.

When you see the nice white against the blue Mediterranean Sea.

It's such a nice contract.

You just have a bit of a wall here and we'll play with it afterwards.

But as for here, we have applied the black and we haven't done anything with it yet.

So basically I'm using that as my background to put all my plants in.

So and again, just playing with it here, that suggests to me what type of plants I'm going to put down and you so when you start a painting and you don't know where you're going with it, it's just like planting in your garden again.

So this should be a really nice, exciting, yet relaxing exercise for you.

Just like planting trees because you want to be relaxed doing this.

Play a little music in here.

If I'm a Kennedy Norah Jones, I love those nice old Norwegian music that will take you there.

So I have my blue sky, so a little bit to change.

I can quickly add just a little bit of clouds to it.

Some milk in your coffee.

There we go.

Okay.

Now, since this is a very exciting composition that we're doing here, I'm going to blend this just like a blend.

The top part do not pay attention, because the way we're blending this on the code, this is not the way that we are going to blend the top parts.

Once we're done with it, because it's going to have to be the reflection of what we have on top.

Okay, now that I have this here, just quickly going to add my darker green to the bamboo there using the pastel stick.

I'm using the dark green and I'm going over the dark that I have placed there.

And I'm following the same pattern because I want it to be that smooth skin that we have on this tree.

This notice I'm respecting that midsection that I have on on it for the division is made now using the side of the green.

I'm bringing it in from this side here just to cover that large area here.

And I'm doing the same for here.

Now, we'll find a way to separate this from this.

So you don't think that it's coming from the same tree?

And again, here I could sparingly add some of the green there and we going to play with that afterwards.

And while I have the green, I could do some of the background here, not too much because again, this is a nice little garden and we going to have some beautiful colored trees, flowers and other type of plants in there.

Just enough for me.

Great.

Now, before I blend, I would like a lighter type of green here.

Well, my light will hate.

Now, if this is behind this, I'm going to have some shadows here.

Now I'm just going to blend this, starting with the lighter green.

First, my finger pushed down really hard on it and following the curve there, just like that down to this section here and down to here.

Now I'm just going to from the green.

I'm just going to follow the contours of the tree just to suggest the roundness of it doing the same here.

And then again, this side.

Now I have some shadows here that I want to respect.

So I'm putting that here Now, quickly, I'm blending the top part of this right here, pushing up upward for the top of the plant.

Wonderful.

Now that I have the green here, remember that I mention whatever we have up here, we're going to have down here.

So we're building this layers by layers.

Then I am applying the same type of green right here.

Okay.

Now, since we mentioned that we were going to have a nice little waterfall, again, manmade because that's our garden we're building it, I can do this.

And again, using the yellow ocher, I could add a little touch stuff to it using the just the edge of it.

There.

I'm blending the black and the yellow all put together.

Great.

Now that gives me the sections where I can put the water falling into this nice little pond that we've built here.

Well, we're not quite done yet.

Using the dark green.

I want to suggest some backdrop here for some of the plants in my garden here in the Caribbean islands, we have lots of bougainvillea as they're nice and colorful, so beautiful even from a distance, using the smallest stick of pastel there.

I just want some detail on that before I add my flowers.

Remember, everything under the light will give you some sort of a shadow and you don't have to go into every one of them.

Now, adding some white because I would love a garden with all different type of flowers, all the different colors.

And again, when you're painting, it's not a task.

It's something that you should enjoy doing.

So yeah, go right ahead and get a glass of wine.

If you're under age, make it fruit punch.

That's fine.

Milk, whatever.

Relax and do it.

And from there some nice yellow.

And remember what we talked about.

We said that whatever we're doing up here, we need to do down here as well.

So I will have that here.

And we're just leaving it there for now because we have to play with it afterwards and make it.

And now I'd like some red.

I'm making some tall branches with the red and again I'll go out and extend all the way over here and remember the reflection on the water.

Okay, You have all this as a backdrop and then we'll go back and give shape to our beautiful garden.

And afterwards.

But before we move on, we have this water falling down here.

So we just blending this down and using the white.

We're putting it right down to our little pond here.

Okay.

Now I can touch up some of the white on the flowers because we've blended.

Okay, Now we have to step up a little bit because it's starting to take shape.

We have the water here.

So now that we have the background to our plants here, we just going to move upon a little bit.

Now, you're not going to blend this way.

You're going to make it as if the water has some ripples in it.

So we're doing like as is, we have a finger pushing down left to right as you move it forward.

Great.

Now I'm touching up some of the background of the plants that I do have here.

Okay, Now for my foreground mention, we are going to put some plants here right over to the dog Green.

And as you know, just like gardening, the larger plants takes up a lot of space and that gives you the option to cover all this.

Now, I started this with the Green Dog.

Green going over it with my yellow push down hard and go over the leaves and every leaf that you make, every leaf that you make, though it in a way so that it doesn't blend into the previous one that you've done and the yellow in the forefront make it so nice.

Add it to the green, still give you a lot of green.

Once you blend a color, you can go over it.

And the second layer being more pure is definitely going to stand out.

Now that you've done that, you have options.

Remember, keep building, keep building your pastel collection.

You can keep buying more and more.

They have the professional set, they have the amateur set, they have in between.

And just because you are poor doesn't mean you cannot use the amateur, the all colors.

So build your collection.

And just because the stick is almost fully use does not mean that you need to throw it away just because of that.

Now I'm adding a little bit of texture to the front of my garden in here.

Remember, whatever you do on this side, the reflection on the water, also all the subdued is still there.

A little ripple here and there brushing it.

There you go.

There we have it now.

Looking for sections to put my name as the artists.

And you also should put your name as the artist in them.

So what I'll do, I'll put them in a color that I have not used already.

I would from this.

There you have it.

A nice little garden.

Are you happy with it?

We hope so.

If not to remember, you can always tune in next time.

In the last issue painting with pastel.

See you then, my friends.

My 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.

You can ask questions about what we've painted.

Post comments, or even suggest what you would like me to paint.

I would love to hear from you.

Just log onto w w w dot facebook.com slash painting with pastels.