Oil Pastels

Last year in one of the classes I was taking, I was introduced to one of my favorite media's in the art world, Oil Pastels. When first being introduced to them I was very weary on what and how I was supposed to do with these thick waxy crayons, but the second my oil pastel crayon hit the paper it was love at first sight!

Now when dealing with oil pastels it's good to know that they are very forgiving when it comes to mark making, you can keep building layer on top of layer and blending the variety of colors. I never thought I was going to enjoy doing this as much as I did.

With oil pastels I have discovered it's great to use as a primary media but you also can also include a tertiary media or two to strengthen your piece with this media.

When starting your oil pastel piece make sure to have a good variety of colors, I would chose between a set of either 36 to 48, it will really save you time when trying to come up with the most ideal color that you want in an area of your piece. I use Cray-Pas Expressionist extra fine quality oil pastels. If you want to start off with the junior kit which is 16 cray-pas colors just to get a feel for it, go for that.

Since oil-pastels is similar to painting only it isn't wet media, I like to start with laying down a base color of paint before doing anything else. I like using a water downed gouache or water color for this, chose the the most common dark color that you plan on incorporating in your piece, this will speed up the process, you won't regret it! Make sure it is dried before continuing with the piece.

A cold press illustration board I feel is likely the best choice for oil pastels but i have done pieces on just regular colored canson mi teintes paper which eliminates the initial process of painting, that's up to you.

So once you have your chosen colored canson mi teintes paper or painted cold compress illustration board lay down the basic outline of your piece with, yes you guessed it, color pencil! I never realized until coming to R.I.T. how important colored pencils are to an illustrator!

Once you have the basic outline in, lay down the layers of oil pastel, I really like to get expressive with my colors and line values. In the sets that are larger in variety they usually come with a blender crayon which really helps with blending in colors so be sure to make use of it if you cannot get that particular color you're aiming for or there isn't a cohesive blend going on, sometimes the blending process can get mucky.

When I'm finished with the oil pastel I like to bust out the gouache again, white gouache turns into your best friend at this point for the highlights of the piece. Since I love doing portraits as I'm sure you can already tell, I find the whitest highlights and use a very very lightly watered down gouache now remember what I said before in a previous blog about oil and water mixing, keep that in mind!

Okay so when you think you are completely done, there may be certain areas that have a waxy build up, easy fix I usually hit the back of the piece (if it's on a board) if that doesn't work Q-tips come in handy with an easy gentle wipe on the oil pastel waxy build up.

The piece I'm showing is a piece I did in my illustration techniques class from this past fall using the techniques I described above.