Welcome to Artist Palette Productions at Cheap Joe's Art Stuff

We have this waterfall reserver that's happening there and it's a little brighter in the center. You'll notice I'm starting to go a little bit thicker now with the pastels. Because I'm using professional pastels, I want to be very careful with the pastel dust.

Some of these have cadmium pigments and they're not good to breathe. One of the things that I like to do is once it starts to get thick I'll tap it like this. That lets my pastel dust run down. I have something down here with to catch the dust and then you don't have to worry about the pastel dust getting everywhere. I don't like to use a lot of black but it's important to me to show the darks at this point and for the sake of the video and the quick impression.

It's not quite black - it's actually a deep dark brown. The main reason is that I want to really define where my darks are. When I do my paintings, I go back and forth from the lights and the darks and that usually helps. I'm playing light against dark and defining my edges. Again, I'm not outlining anything because you don't want to do that. Try to do edges instead or just barely suggest with a little pastel.

In the event you end up messing something up, you can use a shami cloth and try to pick up carefully the pastel underneath. If I'm using the Richeson Gatorform, I've actually rinsed off all of the pastel before. Baby wipes work great, too. I don't want it to all look the same, but I like having the balance here. Remember to vary your marks, and I'm actually trying to suggest some of these plants.

It's important to learn about your color theory because once you have a strong understanding, your painting will be better. I'm not worried about showing everything in that wall, but I do want a basic understanding so it looks more convincing to the viewer.

This gray color almost obliterated the white wall here, but that's ok, because it also brings your focus toward the center of the painting. I like the pastel paper to show through, but there are two times I prefer there not to be any paper showing.

One of those is when I'm doing sky and the other is when I'm doing skin because you don't want it to look so splotchy. I want to make sure there's a really thick layer of pastel on this. If I were to do any blending, some people use a stump, some people use their finger, you want to make sure before you blend, that your hands are clean and dry and that you keep them clean and dry.

Otherwise you'll just muddy your colors up.

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