Hi and welcome to another soft pastel time-lapse here on my YouTube channel. As you can see I'm focusing on a lot of blue-toned colours as today I'm going to be drawing a dynamic sea and skyscape. As soon as I saw the reference photo with all of those epic lighting details, I knew I just had to draw it. I've been obsessed with sea scape and skyscape art lately so I can't wait to start making more of these artworks. So as you can see I started work on the bottom half of the artwork which consists of the water waves. I first filled out the darkest shardery areas with a black soft pastel just to help map out where everything was meant to go. I then roughly filled in the base colour layer not having to be too careful just to get the values and tones in as quickly as possible. Once that was done next it was time to blend and I used soft sponge tools for this. It was important to blend the colours together seamlessly but also leave some of the straight edges for the darkest areas as these give structure to the shape of the waves. The base layer doesn't have to be anything special though and it can be really off-putting at this ugly stage but as long as I push through to the pencil details it all starts coming together nicely. Now moving on to the pencil details I'm going to first focus on one area at a time and here I've chosen the far top right side. I'm taking a black pencil and I'm creating some of those small distant wave shadows and then I'm adding in the highlights with the lighter blue colour. Moving on to adding the details in this darker area it's a little bit more complicated. I need to think carefully about what colours I choose for the highlights. After mapping out the wavy shapes for the water I opt for a dark cold grey to bring out some of those subtle highlights. I wouldn't want anything lighter as this area needs to stay generally dark even for the highlights. I'm mainly switching between a varying shades of blue and grey pencils to bring out those highlights and the saturation. I'm figuring out all of the different lines and shapes as I go along. I'm not being too exact but I'm following the reference to the best of my ability. As you can see I'm using the critical black chalk pencil to add in those really dark details. Some areas can be overwhelming but I find that if I focus on a little bit at a time using the dark wave sections as mapping points I can slowly add all of the relevant details to the surrounding areas. For these lighter lines in the lighter section using a more opaque brand like the current dash pastel pencils will give me the strong vibrant details that I'm after. I'm also using light graze here to soften up some of the harsh wave lines and create more of a flowing water look. I'm simply refining the rough base layer and working in details to sort of correct the tones, shape and values. For the sky just as with the c section I'm going to start with a base layer of pastel. Following the reference the left side is lighter and I will use a mixture of pastel colors to achieve these tonalities. So once I have the base layer nicely blended and smoothed out I can then start creating the rough shapes of the clouds with my pastel sticks. I'm not going to be too exact with the shapes I'm just aiming to follow the reference to the best of my ability before refining with the pencils. I will also use the pigment that is left on my sponge and create some of the shapes directly that way. It's a bonus that painting directly with the sponge creates softer shapes which is perfect for creating fluffy clouds. Once those basic shapes are in I can continue to refine these further with my sponge and also with lighter and darker pencils. It's really satisfying being able to pull the highlights out from a darker base layer. If you would like to watch how I created this drawing in real time that video is available to watch now on my Patreon channel. I'll leave a link to that in the comments if you are interested. Now adding the final details can be quite a tedious job but usually it's the final moments that can really elevate the artwork and bring all of the visual elements together. That being said sometimes I can spend far too long on an artwork at the end so it's also knowing when's good to stop. And I'm not sure about you but I also find that it's best to do this early in the day because times where I have finished an artwork late in the evening when I'm tired I tend to make more mistakes and actually make the artwork worse rather than improve it. Nevertheless when I do come to the end though I like to take my time and be slow with the finalizing, adding little bits here and there and refining some previous details that I may have rushed. I'm constantly stepping back from the artwork and comparing it to my reference which is right next to the artwork, seeing what major differences I can spot and fix. If you need any help in spotting what details need fixing a good trick is to have the reference photo in your phone's camera roll as the latest photo and then take a photo of your artwork. You can then swipe back and forth the reference photo and the photo of your artwork and it's a pretty good way at picking up any errors or points of interest. Lastly I always add a little signature in one of the bottom corners and here it is. I had so much fun creating this sea and seascape in soft pastels. I'm used to drawing animals so this was a lovely change. Hopefully this video has given you a little insight into how I work with pastels. If you would like a much more in depth view into how I work I have the real time video for this artwork available now on my Patreon channel so you can watch exactly how I created this piece at your own leisure. The post on Patreon also includes the reference as well as all of the pencil colors I used and materials needed. As well as this particular artwork I also have many other videos on many different topics. I specialize in creating realistic artworks in soft pastels, graphite and oil paints so if that's something that you're interested in I would love for you to come over and check out the channel by clicking the Patreon link in the description or by clicking the card in the corner now. I have also created a three beginners guide two soft pastels which can be downloaded as a PDF from my website. Thanks for watching feel free to like this video and subscribe if you would like to and I hope to see you again very soon.