New tools have also made it easier to get fine detail and painterly effects. Treat them as “extra fat” in relation to oils in mixed media-the oil pastel layers should be the outermost.Īs I discovered as a street artist in New Orleans, it’s also easy to use a wet brush to mix thin washes and paint directly from the oil pastel sticks, or just wash medium over areas already drawn for that blended look. Keep in mind that they should not be applied heavily under a traditional oil painting without a good thinning of turpentine, as oil pastels have mineral oils in the binder that never completely dry. Some surfaces work better with a coat of gesso, for preservation or more tooth, but you can be confident in using an oil pastel over any kind of round objects in a collage or mixed media piece.Ĭolors may be blended completely on the surface, scumbled over each other in layers, or blended on the palette and then applied with a knife or Color Shaper tool. Oil pastels can be used wet or dry on any support: paper, board, canvas, glass, metal, wood. Softer products like Holbein or Sennelier can be used when the surface tooth is fully saturated over heavy layers of firm oil pastels. Many artists combine different brands of oil pastels to achieve different effects.įirm brands like Cray-Pas Specialist or Erengi are better for early layers, fine details, and control. Like colored pencils, the hardness of each stick contributes to a different purpose. Tips and techniques for using oil pastels Selecting oil pastel hardness
Nonetheless, using oil pastels can be fun and rewarding once you figure them out. I priced them appropriately between $5 and $10 and used the proceeds to buy tube oils and stretched canvases, soon leaving oil pastels behind. I wasn’t a very good painter, but the resulting thin-wash paintings were, as promoted, genuine oil paintings. Oil Pastels can be used to create oil paintings.Īfter studying a package, I discovered that I could thin them with oil mediums and realized that it would be an inexpensive way to do some oil paintings, so I picked up a set of 24, along with a bottle of turpentine and canvas boards, and I got started. Compared to artist-grade colored pencils, oil pastels were very cheap. Later on, in New Orleans, when I was first starting out as a street artist, I reconsidered the medium. I lumped it in with children’s watercolor sets and crayons, just from its price and presentation, and passed it by. The colors looked bright, the oil sticks were short, round, and wrapped, and the box cheerily announced that everything inside was nontoxic and safe for children.
It cost a dollar and change for a set of 24 and two dollars and change for a larger set of 36. The first time I saw a set of oil pastels was at a drugstore in a very small display of art supplies. Why use oil pastels? Oil Pastels are cost-effective. Click the images to visit the artists’ websites and learn more. By Robert Sloan in Research > Art ProductsĪll images in this article have been used with permission and are copyrighted by their respective artists.
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