😳 I Put Down My Pastels… and Tried Acrylic Painting (Watch What Happened)

I've spent years painting with soft pastels, but today I'm putting them down and trying acrylic painting. So won't you join me as I explore the differences, advantages, and challenges of both mediums while creating this impressionistic piece. And just what was it that inspired my departure from pastels to acrylic painting? Well, it was this sketchbook called Lucchetti True Flat Sketchbooks. Let me show it to you and share with you my reasoning for why I think it's great for acrylic painting. The owner and creator of the sketchbook was kind enough to gift me one of these, and I've been seeing them all over Instagram. I have a pet peeve when sketchbooks don't lie flat. I like to paint the entire surface, and I'm gonna show you how amazingly flat this will lie. Look at this. It just barely has a gutter there. And just look how thick these pages are. This is 300-pound, 100% cotton paper. I mean, this can take a lot of liquid, and that's one of the reasons I decided to try a wet medium. As a comparison, I wanted to show you this notebook that I do really love. It's the Creative Journal by Dilusions, but I did a pastel painting in this, and I wanna show you here. Can you see how it warped, the pages warped? I still love it. It's great, but with a pastel painting, you have to protect the pages. You can't just close it up. I have to put a piece of tracing paper between. And you can see how the pages warped. I used a lot of gesso to prep this, so I'm excited about these thick pages from the Lucchetti sketchbook. And I'm going to prep this surface, just like I did with the other sketchbook, with some regular gesso. You guys know on my channel, I'm always talking about clear gesso. This is going to be regular gesso. I'm just using a little binder clip to hold that left side down since it's not very weighted with only one page there. And I'm applying the gesso just to prep the watercolor paper surface. And also it kind of reduces a little bit of that texture of the watercolor paper. So I just have a little dish, give myself a good dose of gesso and some old kind of paintbrush I use. I use a lot of old paintbrushes in my studio. So I just created a good application, let it dry, and then I'm ready to paint. And I don't wanna give the impression I've never painted with acrylic paints, but it has been years. Now we're gonna jump right into the acrylic painting process. But just so you know, if you're a patron of mine on my Patreon page, you're gonna get this whole content of me talking about my acrylic paints, why so many of them had actually dried up. I had to get rid of more than half of them and my actual color palette. So again, patrons head over to your all real-time version of this lesson over on the Patreon page. And guys, you know, I gotta share it. If you would like to become a patron and get all of the content, let me tell you how right now, and then don't go anywhere. We're gonna jump into this acrylic painting. So it's super easy and super affordable. And I've had my Patreon page for years. So there's hundreds of lessons that you will not find here on the main YouTube channel, Monet Cafe Studio. And it's a beautiful family. You get to share your work. We have contests. I love seeing your work in the Patreon family and all that for only $5 a month. Now there is a coupon code that's valid until March 31st, 2026, and it's 50% off the first month. So that's not a huge savings, but every little bit counts these days, right? And while I got you here, could I get you to go ahead and click that like button? You can't believe how that helps this video get shared by YouTube's algorithm. Also comment, tell me where you're from or any questions about this video. I love to hear from you. Okay, here we go. I love this reference image that was from unsplash.com. Oh my goodness, look at that just gentle field, glazed and layered with sunlight. And it's like some Queen Anne's lace flowers. There's actually a weed that mimics Queen Anne's lace flowers. I bet some of you flower experts know that. I love these seed pods or some of the flowers that haven't opened yet too. Just beautiful, I love it. And I already used this image for another painting. This is actually a tutorial that I had where you paint on wood. Yes, I painted on wood. You guys, if you know my channel, I will try anything just because I'm got that kind of a brain, but it actually worked. I have yet to frame it because I gotta come up with a way to frame this on this wood. I thought about like a shadow box would be neat to put this in and have the glass out away from it a little bit. Now, during this tutorial, while I'm painting, I'm going to share with you my discoveries about the differences, advantages, disadvantages, what I love about pastel painting and acrylic painting. And I wanted to show you this product. It is called a Stay Wet Palette, and it is great for keeping acrylic paints moist. If you have used acrylic paints, you know they dry quickly, and especially if you're plein air painting on location and it's kind of hot outside. So this palette literally has a sponge in the bottom of it that's wet, and you put this special type of paper on top of it that has the same moisture. I think I was showing how I sprayed it with my faucet there. And this paper stays moist because it's on top of the sponge, and it really does help. It also has a top you can put on it. So when you're done painting, you can just put it away and they're fresh when you come back. And now you'll be able to see just how long it's been since I've used these paints. I needed pliers to actually get the top open. And fortunately, the paint inside was still pretty pliable. And I'm just gonna use a decent amount of paint with these. These are pretty much the colors I already talked about before. And I'm typically a little scrimpy. I've had times in my life and I still do have to be thrifty. And so I'm usually pretty timid, but because I don't paint with acrylic much and these paints are getting old anyway, I'm just squeezing out a whole bunch of this paint. And that's the green gold one. And I have a couple of the other greens there. I think that's the Payne's gray and the white. And I didn't show here, but I did put down one of those burnt umber or whatever the brown color was I had. I often like to do my sketch with a marker. It helps to keep the sketch in place in case I'm adding any type of a liquid medium on top, which I will be in this case. And it's a pretty easy sketch. I got my horizon line. I didn't put it quite in the middle. It's almost in the middle in the photo. I brought it a little bit lower and I'm just creating an idea of a tree line. I wanted to bring these trees up a little bit more on the edges and not have it drooping off the side there. So that's pretty simple, right? I decided to make the right side a little bit higher than the left side. Now I'm just gonna get an idea of some of these flower shapes. Anything that's really large is what I'm sketching in. I end up making that flower a little larger. I'm just placing these in areas that I think are lyrical. And magical and full of life and gesture. So I got my larger flowers kind of reaching on the right and then some of my smaller flowers on the left. And this is where I felt like that flower, I need a better focal point here. So I'm gonna make that one quite a bit larger, like it's closer to you. And the same with that second one there. And a few other weeds and things like that. But that's a pretty simple sketch, right? Now I'm not gonna show you all of my color mixing during this tutorial, but you can see here how I kind of bring colors down underneath a particular color and either lighten it up with some white or darken it up with some Payne's gray or mix it with a little other color to change, make it more neutral. And it's a little thick. I can tell right now that my paints are a little bit old. So I've got a thicker application than I would have preferred. I'm gonna add more water in just a minute. Acrylic to me is kind of like, from what I remember, like I said, it's been years, is like watercolor painting in that you gotta get that balance of water to paint ratio. And again, mine's a little thick at this point, but I'm not that worried about it because this paper is so darn thick and durable itself that I'm good to go. And I treat the acrylics just like I do with pastel because they're an opaque medium, meaning you can layer color on top of each other. Unlike watercolor, you can layer color on top of each other, but you can't layer light over dark with watercolor, but you can with acrylic or oil or soft pastel. Now I'm starting to give in a little bit of warmth here. So I added a little yellow and I kind of instantly remembered, oh yeah, with wet mediums like this, if you add yellow and blue together in the same application, guess what it's gonna do? It's gonna turn green, right? So sometimes you wanna get your color down and let it dry or just mix the perfect yellow first before adding it onto your surface. So I'm adding a little more yellow here. And so that is one of the differences with acrylic versus soft pastel. That's an advantage is that you can mix colors. You can take these primary colors mostly that I have here, mostly primaries plus a few greens and a light and a dark and have so many colors from the rainbow. You don't have to buy as many colors with acrylic painting as you do with soft pastel, but hang tight. I'm gonna show you or tell you an advantage to soft pastels needing a lot of colors in just a minute. So I wanted to let you know what I'm doing here. I want these trees kind of in the middle and to the left here to feel further away. They're gonna be lighter in value and kind of cooler in color temperature. I am going to be adding some green to it, but right now this is the block-in stage. I talk about this all the time with pastel painting. You're blocking in the big shapes and values mostly and color. And I gradually will add more of the detail and more of the local color as the painting progresses. So now I'm getting darker. So much is the same as with pastel painting because I'm painting some tree elements that are closer to the viewer. When things are closer in life, they're typically, consider the subject matter like trees. They're typically darker and warmer in color temperature. Darker in value, warmer in color temperature. So that's why when you see trees or mountains or things in the distance, they cool off in temperature and they lighten in value. I can't tell you when I was first learning painting, pastel painting, that was like the biggest aha moment for me. I always tried to paint things the way I thought they were in my brain and not really look at how things do cool off and lighten up in value. And you can also improvise that. You could push that a bit in your paintings, even if you don't see it in the reference image or in life. I mean, look at how I've changed the colors in this painting. Now, this is the point where I am going to speed it up. I'm still gonna give full commentary here on the Monet Cafe channel for this portion because I still love bringing you guys the free content. I mean, I mentioned sometimes how $5 a month isn't much for my Patreon page. However, that is a lot for some people. So you can always slow this video down by going to the gear icon in the YouTube video, the little gear icon and slowing the playback speed. Make sure you turn my volume down though because it will sound funny. But I wanna encourage you to stay tuned to the end of this because this is going through the block-in stage right now. Very similar to pastel painting. That's one thing that's really great is both mediums use the same painting principles, layering dark to light, it's an opaque medium. But like I said, there's a lot of differences too. Oh, and stay tuned to the end just to see the final and also to get my thoughts on whether or not I'm gonna do much more acrylic painting or not after this. But like I said, I wanna share with you while I'm painting here, I'm not doing as much of the process or what I'm doing, but I want to tell you what the difference is for me between pastel painting and acrylic painting. Some of the advantages of both and disadvantages of both. So one of the things I absolutely love about pastel painting is the earthy organic quality. I mean, we are literally holding the color in our hands versus using another tool like a brush here. And I don't know, there's just something I love about that. And I also love the fact that you have so many colors at your disposal, you don't have to worry about mixing them. I was reminded with this painting after not painting with acrylics for so long, that it really does take some time to mix and get the right color that you want. So pastels are just, their color is just sitting there ready for you to use. Now that comes to a disadvantage of soft pastels is you have to have more colors. Acrylic and oil paints and watercolor are mixable. You don't have to have as many colors, thus you can spend a little bit less money on those types of mediums. So you gotta weigh those things out. Also too, one thing I love about pastel painting is its matte finish. There's just something so soft in appearance about pastels versus acrylic or oil, because acrylic and oil are a little more glossy. Watercolor, not so much, but acrylic and oil are. Before I move on to more advantages and disadvantages, I wanted to share with you that this painting went through a color palette evolution. And I realized why later. I had the reference image to my right on an iPad and I had my actual pastel painting in front of me, which is the one you saw at the beginning of this video that had a very cool color palette. And I think I was kind of torn between the two. And I finally decide, you'll see me change things up towards the end of this video where I make the painting more of a cool palette. I just really loved that one pastel painting I had done. And that leads me to another thing that pastels and acrylic have in common is that you can layer. You have more flexibility than you realize to change things. As you can see, how I'm just kind of painting over the sky here. I'm even gonna paint over that flower in a minute. And you can do the same with soft pastel. Now with soft pastel, you can actually get like a stiff bristle brush and brush some of the pastel off. Here's where I'm really committing to this cool palette. Now, let me get back to more of the advantages and disadvantages. One advantage to acrylic or oil painting or even watercolor to a degree is you don't have to have a frame. They're not as vulnerable as soft pastel finished paintings. Oh, it's been a dream of mine to come up with a way that you could really fix a pastel painting to where the dust didn't come off and it was safe to the touch or even to hang on a wall, but not yet. Here's where I was changing the color palette again. I had gotten rid of the other warm tones in those flowers and added more green tones. Oh, and I really liked this color palette. And again, you can see me just adding the highlights with this brush. I really liked this brush that I used here. And I will have links to all the products I'm talking about in the description of this video. Now, let me give you another advantage to acrylic painting is it's not dusty like soft pastels. Some people, they have challenges with the dust. I have a lot of simple solutions to manage the dust. I don't really have a problem with it, but some people don't like the dustiness of the soft pastels. And I will share, I was loving working with acrylic painting. What I was trying to say before is I wanted to have a notebook or a sketchbook like this that was dedicated to acrylic painting, or just even if I do oil painting, I have a neat new oil painting product that I wanna demonstrate sometime soon. So maybe I'll do that in the sketchbook as well. Here's where I am giving that mountain in the distance a little bit more of a purple distant mountain color along with some of these trees in the distance. Purple's a great color for things far away. Purples and blues just to cool things off. And so now I wanna add a little more purple also to just some little secondary flowers. Again, I'm adding a little bit of dark first. They look really dark right now, but I will lighten them up just like I would do with a pastel painting. Starting dark, adding highlights afterwards and little tidbits of darker values like this in a painting really give it some variety. And here you'll see where I'm going to lighten them up, but just give them a little highlight, but that dark base is still peeking through a bit. Now, let me get to the final conclusion of this. Has this acrylic painting exploration and adventure veered me away at all from soft pastel painting? Not on your life. I don't know where that expression came from. That's a crazy expression, but no way. I loved it, and I do wanna do more acrylic painting, but oh my goodness, I am, I'm just a fan of soft pastel painting. I know I've converted, I shouldn't say converted, that's not a good word. I know I've influenced a lot of artists to try soft pastels and fall in love with them. But I think it's always good to play around with different mediums and try with mixed media and just have fun. This is a artistic journey and a beautiful adventure and a happy and therapeutic thing that you can do for your life. So don't box yourself in by saying I only like this medium. Sometimes you might not like a medium at one stage of your life and you come back later and you go, oh my goodness, you're just in a different place. I noticed that about Bible verses. You read it one point of your life and it means something and years later you read it again and you're like, oh my goodness, how did I not see that before? Just like with painting, God's word is alive and beautiful. All right, so as you can see, I'm getting more of my grasses, layering a little bit more over some of the darker areas while at the same time trying not to give so much light value that I cover it up. This is just that gentle process of carving in some of the light that is creeping down into some of the grasses but not covering everything up. And as I stated before, I really loved the impressionism I was feeling in this piece. I did miss a little bit of footage adding the stems. I do add stems. You're gonna see the final in just a minute. I didn't do a whole lot more after this, but a little bit. And I loved the feel of this. And again, I love that I have a sketchbook dedicated to acrylic painting. Would I use this sketchbook for pastel painting? Absolutely. I wanna get another one, but here you can see kind of the difference. I've got my acrylic painting in my sketchbook and I can't wait to do more. Here is the final, a little bit of a better image. And I enjoyed this. I would love to know if you enjoyed this departure from pastel painting momentarily to do a little bit of acrylic painting. All right, everyone, as always, God bless and happy, happy painting.