Help me fall in love with Oil Pastels

They say it's like painting with oils, only without all the crappy chemicals.

I've never tried it.

Where do I even begin?

One of my favorite mediums! I haven't done much with it, in about 10yrs. Interestingly, and ashamed, it was because a professional watercolor artist was very negative about something I was working on, and I let her discourage me. MY bad! I need to dig them back out!

Like any other medium, the best way to start is to get your hands on some decent quality pastels, and start playing with them. They layer and blend similarly to watercolor, but don't completely dry, without a sealant to 'fix' them. So, you can come back and reblend, much later, and add to them, as if it were the same session. But, unlike my experiences with watercolor, both light and dark pastels show up beautifully, on a dark canvas.

The more pressure you use, the thicker the medium goes on, but in my experience, I've gotten noticeably nicer results going over a piece in several light coats, instead of one heavier one, because a heavy layer is easily picked up again, if it's touched - going back to that thing about it not drying - it stays soft.

Oil Pastels is not what I first thought it was.

Oh, I would love this as it looks like fun.

It would be so easy for me to fall in love with Oil Pastels!

That palette knife technique reminds me of a Bob Ross painting.

I love oil pastels. I did this. I do have to use gloves. I'm allergic to the oil so don't use them much anymore but they are awesome. Try using paper over what you have done and ironing it to seep into canvas or paper - or very carefully use a hot air gun. It's beautiful - the colors happen.

Peace,
Jo

My oil pastel is certainly not great - but oil pastels are seriously fun, but I do very carefully melt it in. I do not know anyone else who does that. Probably they do but I just made it up.
Again, Peace
Jo

... one more thing - I always only use old paper bags or sheets stretched, The best one I did was on the back of my electric bill ...

I think you'll like it and the knife through layers is so cool.

This is the back of my Edison electricity bill.
Hilarious.
I'm ill shake a lot, sorry the photo is blurry.

Peace,
Jo

My Paul Ruben's Haiya oil pastels arrived.  This is what triggered my desire to learn oil pastels - I found it for half price!

They are extremely soft and melted a bit on the way here.  

I also bought some random "oil pastel paper" but didn't notice how small the size was (a5 and a 3.5" square)

So... um... can you help me get some courage to try these out?  I'm very much stuck on the "oh, look at all the pretty things, I don't want to wreck them by using them" stage.  I don't normally get stuck here so I don't know how to get unstuck.  

r ranson wrote:My Paul Ruben's Haiya oil pastels arrived.  This is what triggered my desire to learn oil pastels - I found it for half price!

They are extremely soft and melted a bit on the way here.  

I also bought some random "oil pastel paper" but didn't notice how small the size was (a5 and a 3.5" square)

So... um... can you help me get some courage to try these out?  I'm very much stuck on the "oh, look at all the pretty things, I don't want to wreck them by using them" stage.  I don't normally get stuck here so I don't know how to get unstuck.  

They can be as easy as coloring, like a child, or as complex as you want them to be. How about starting the way you did with the water colors - similar pictures, and color choices. That will give you a quick, easy comparison and start you on your way.

When I am afraid to start, I remind myself I am not an art supply collector, but an artist.  Oil pastels, like watercolors, are nice because it is just a piece of paper, no expensive canvas to worry about.  A5 is the size I recommend to students for starting oil pastels because you want to apply a lot of layers, and finish the picture in a reasonable time frame. Does your paper have some texture, "tooth"?  That helps hold the layers.  Find a sunset photo you like and dig in.  Apply color in layers, like using a crayon.  Work light to dark.  I find 3 layers in I can start to smudge things together with a finger.  Keep a rag handy to wipe off color contamination on pastels.  when the paper won't take more layers, you can leave it for 24 hours, and some of the oil will have soaked into the paper and hardened things a bit and then you can add highlights and shadows as needed to finish.

Here are two of mine.  A5 cotton paper, Mungyo artist gallery oil pastels.

Crazy question.   Do you think it's possible to follow an oil painting tutorial with oil pastels?   What are the biggest changes to make?

I'm sorry for the double post but I'm shaking less so I took a less blurry photo of "Cinnamon".
He'd just been stung by a horsefly - 40 years ago. That was quite a thing! My mind's eye will never forget.
Anyway, oil pastels rock. and I'm pleased with the re-purposing of the electric bill. Hello creatives

Peace, Jo

My first attempt



This is going to take some getting used to.   But more fun than I expected.

The problem so far is that the pastels melt with the heat of my hand.  There must be some way to use that to my advantage.

I've heard that it's good to do the background with a cheaper and harder brand, then use these soft ones for the top layers.  Anyone tried this?

r ranson wrote:The problem so far is that the pastels melt with the heat of my hand.  There must be some way to use that to my advantage.

I've heard that it's good to do the background with a cheaper and harder brand, then use these soft ones for the top layers.  Anyone tried this?

Yes I've tried this.  It is effective. I also wear gloves but don't like them, but it works

It's like trying to draw with a stick of room temperature butter.   Fun, but tricky.



It's a struggle but there is something here that has a lot of potential.

r ranson wrote:It's like trying to draw with a stick of room temperature butter.   Fun, but tricky.
It's a struggle but there is something here that has a lot of potential.

That is a PERFECT description! I love it, LOL! Now you get a much better idea of how it works, and can start to really play with it! Blending will be so much fun!

Carla Burke wrote:

r ranson wrote:It's like trying to draw with a stick of room temperature butter.   Fun, but tricky.
It's a struggle but there is something here that has a lot of potential.

That is a PERFECT description! I love it, LOL! Now you get a much better idea of how it works, and can't start to really play with it! Blending will be so much fun!

Yes, layer and blend and tip of fingernail scrape and careful use of heat behind or on top from a distance. Even direct sun. I hold a hot iron an inch away in circles evenly. ... I'm saying I heat the art - not the oil pastels - just wanted to clarify. I melt it in to paper or whatever I use, even wood, fabric, all.

I love the art. Thank you

Is it just me, or are there very few references for learning oil pastels?  

When I search "watercolour" I get about 600 books in my local library.  When I search "pastels" I get less than a dozen - all of them about chalk pastels.

Youtube and reddit seem to be at about the same ratio.  

Is there something 'wrong' with oil pastels that they don't deserve more attention?  Or is something wrong with how we perceive them?  

I kind of noticed the same thing with watercolours - there are way more resources for learning oils and acrylics and it seems that only the last 20 years or so that watercolours are taken seriously.  

(then again, 'Charcoal' only has 3 books come up in the library and they aren't very good - not a single chicken in any of them)  

from reddit

by RubyTavi

Things I've learned:

put a background color in that is closest to the color you are going to want for each different color area. Rub it into the paper until there are no white spots. Then wipe off all the oil pastel with a paper towel. (A lighter shade will have stained the paper and won't wipe off.) Now you can start the actual painting and there won't be any white spots.

blend colors by rubbing them together gently with your finger or a paper towel. This works on the background color method above too. Test first on another piece of paper because you get different results depending on the order you apply the colors.

gentle is better. Too heavy a pressure just smears the oil pastel around and it doesn't stay where you want it or layer the way you want.

sometimes you have to let a layer dry (like for a week) before you can color over it the way you want.

you can get a smooth edge by smearing your finger slowly/gently along the edge.

you can get details and edges by scraping with a sharp point. (It's also really fun to layer dark colors over a lighter background color and then "draw" by scratching the dark color off with a sharp tip.)

oil pastels are hard to use. I have wiped all the pigment off and redone an area over and over and over. Near the end I usually start to get a feel for what kind of pressure or stroke will get the effect I want.

I had completely forgotten about this.  

Last summer I found some free art supplies.  I didn't realise they were oil pastels.  

The video turned out too cringe to publish.  The editing is a bit choppy and not keeping with the main topic of my channel, so I'm uploading it as a secret video.  You have to have the link to watch it.


if you watch it on youtube, you can give it a like and help my channel grow


It's interesting how horrible those cheap pastels felt on my hands.  The set I have now is almost like paint.  It doesn't bother my skin and blends together in a friendly way.  It doesn't seem like the same kind of thing at all.  

I got out the free oil pastels from the kids set in the video and yep.  They are horrible to touch.   Something in them burns my skin.  They are awkward to use, like if crayons could go bad, this would be it.  They also smell like rancid moter oil.

The new ones don't have a bad smell and don't hurt my skin.

Is the poor quality of kids oil pastels the reason it's not more popular?

Most likely, yes. Nice pastels are far more expensive than crayons, and much messier. Cheap ones that don't blend well are less messy, so parents like them, better, and they're probably much more economical for those schools that still teach art to children. But, crappy quality 'beginner' stuff is often so crappy that it turns off the beginner, who then doesn't want to 'throw away' money on the pricier stuff, not understanding that the cheap ones are so different from the more expensive ones as to almost be a completely different medium.

Here we are, my first four attempts with real oil pastels.



They aren't how I expected, but I'm really happy with the progress.

The hardest thing I find is the background.  Getting it so the background recedes and the flower stands out is hard.  

r ranson wrote:I got out the free oil pastels from the kids set in the video and yep.  They are horrible to touch.   Something in them burns my skin.  They are awkward to use, like if crayons could go bad, this would be it.  They also smell like rancid moter oil.

The new ones don't have a bad smell and don't hurt my skin.

Is the poor quality of kids oil pastels the reason it's not more popular?

Kids end up with a lot of poor quality coloring utensils. They get cheap, waxy crayons. They get hard colored pencils that don't blend well. The watercolors often have very little pigment and so all their art is washed out. Their colored markers probably aren't nearly as nice as Prismacolor marker (I don't like drawing with markers, so I haven't invested in good ones).

I find it really sad that kids usually get cheap supplies. They can't create nearly as nice of things, nor have nearly as much success and ease of creating, with their poor utensils.

This all reminds me of my most hated art assignment in school. My art teacher made us draw plastic insects with crayon on watercolor paper. It was terrible. We all hated it. Not only was it degrading to use "little kid crayons," cheap crayons are just terrible. The colors don't blend well. They don't lay down color well. They were so stiff and waxy that they ripped chunks in the paper. They didn't erase. It was so painful trying to draw and color something with them. And to think, these are what we give most kids for coloring! and we wonder why so few kids keep drawing past the early elementary years.

(A bit off topic: For anyone looking for nice crayons, I highly recommend These Beeswax Crayons. I bought them for my kids, trying to find less-toxic crayons. I'm honestly not sure how much beeswax is in the crayons, but I can say that they lay down color really well. They are very pigment rich, and a joy to work with.



I honestly think it's important to let kids use high-quality art materials, or at least "student-grade," rather than just Crayola (or, heaven forbid, RoseArt). I know they're more expensive than other art supplies, so maybe just bring them out for more important projects if you can't afford them to have the good stuff all the time (I can't). But, man, if we're frustrated coloring with subpar art, think what the kids are feeling when they don't even yet know WHY their art just isn't turning out the way they want.

And, I totally failed in following directions and posted this in the Oil Pastel Chicken video thread, rather than here....because apparently I can't follow instructions. I'm going to paste it here so it's in the right spot!

My son, looking at the chicken in the book, says, "That chicken looks cursed!"

My kids and I all agree, you did a great job drawing the chicken in the book... but book's chicken is an awful drawing. You did a fantastic job drawing an awful thing.

I almost wonder if a mixed media thing might be better? It's hard to try to draw a background after drawing the foreground. Maybe if the background was removed, or if you painted the background in watercolors and then drew the chicken in pastels, it would look better. It definitely looked better before you added the background. I've noticed that most of your chicken painting lack backgrounds, and they look great that way!

I also think it might work better for you to draw a picture of a real chicken, rather than a ridiculous book cartoon. The book cartoon isn't your style. You obviously have the ability to reproduce what you see, so maybe try reproducing a real chicken, rather than a funky cartoon chicken.

I think tutorials like the one in the book are meant for people who generalize what they see, not for people who's brains like to draw what they see. I think some people are good at having their brain's process what they see into a symbolic representation/caricature of what they see. Other peoples brains don't do that step of generalizing what they see, and do better at just drawing what they see.

Anyway, all that is to say, you did a great job using pastels. Maybe try drawing something realistic with them, before giving up on them?

I started drawing with oil pastels when I was given some as a kid, probably around age 10. They were cheap crumbly ones that make it smell like I was drawing at a gas station.

I did some drawing with them in my high school art class. That room usually smelled like a gas station. To me, for the longest time, it was the smell of art. The fact that all my art teachers had to take time off for cancer treatments and had chronic health problems was not lost on me as a teenager.

After school, I mostly just stuck to drawing with pencil and cheap Crayola crayons and watercolor. My nicest supplies were prismacolor pencils.

When I started buying supplies for my own kids, I tried to buy, at the very least, "student grade" stuff from actual art stores. Water soluble crayons were something fun I only recently discovered.

When I opened my kids new oil pastels that were recommended by the at curriculum we were following last year, I was shocked that they didn't smell like petroleum. I even stuck my nose right next to the box and sniffed but they are completely scentless. And they draw so smoothly! And they blend! And they don't crumble! I almost cried with the unfairness of not knowing that oil pastels were meant to be like this!

Last month I got a cheaper brand of pastels to try because they had fun florescent colors and even these didn't have an off gassing smell. They were firmer than I expect for oil pastels but still very smooth and blendable.

Nicole Alderman wrote:

r ranson wrote:I got out the free oil pastels from the kids set in the video and yep.  They are horrible to touch.   Something in them burns my skin.  They are awkward to use, like if crayons could go bad, this would be it.  They also smell like rancid moter oil.

The new ones don't have a bad smell and don't hurt my skin.

Is the poor quality of kids oil pastels the reason it's not more popular?

I honestly think it's important to let kids use high-quality art materials, or at least "student-grade," rather than just Crayola (or, heaven forbid, RoseArt). I know they're more expensive than other art supplies, so maybe just bring them out for more important projects if you can't afford them to have the good stuff all the time (I can't). But, man, if we're frustrated coloring with subpar art, think what the kids are feeling when they don't even yet know WHY their art just isn't turning out the way they want.

A lot of art museums now have art rooms for people to create art for free, kids and adults. At our closest museum, it is free and the supplies are good quality. The museum itself is also free a few days a month and in the other days, you can go for free with a pass that you check out for free from the library. It was one of the experiences I had with my kids when the oldest was still very young that made me realize kids deserve decent materials to learn with, at least some of the time.

r ranson wrote:Here we are, my first four attempts with real oil pastels.



They aren't how I expected, but I'm really happy with the progress.

The hardest thing I find is the background.  Getting it so the background recedes and the flower stands out is hard.  

A portrait artist said to me to apply the background first and in a color and a shade darker than you'd want. Then to with lighter colors create the image.

I have no idea if this is a "thing."  It worked for me. I was very grateful.

This one - I used a black background. I banged the tip white oil pastel to make the specks of light shine - I hope.

(Not important, just my thing I do, re-purpose - I made the frame from rescued bamboo and brown paper bag and the canvas is a rescued back to a drawer of an old terrible Ikea dresser drawer.)

I truly like your art and still have no idea what I'm doing except by the random offerings of advice from friends over the years and my curiosity. So I feel your journey.

Peace, Joanna

Even without "crappy chemicals" in the ingredients, we still have to be cautious with art supplies... Some of the pigments, such as cadmium are harmful.  I can't remember the title off the top of my head, but there is a book about art materials safety.

That's one of the reasons I went with oil pastels instead of chalk pastels.   I was worried about the dust.

With watercolour painting,  there is a lot of conversation about the toxicity of the pigments (not all pigments,  and I've been careful not to buy safe paints like student grade or from somewhere like https://www.beampaints.com/collections/paintstones ). the conclusion is that the harm comes (in this order) from breathing the pigment dust, eating,  and absorbing through the skin.

If I keep on with oil pastels after my starter sets are used up, I want to find a brand that is closer to my values or at least includes an ingredients list.


Any idea how oil pastels are made?  I've had no luck finding out.

I bought some Pentel Arts Oil Pastels and they arrived today.  Opening them, I'm shocked by how badly they stink of motor oil.  It's really nasty.  

I'm scared to use them because of the smell, but they do have a 3rd party safe to use stamp on them... I'm confused.

So I looked up some reviews and it looks like the smell started circa 2021 (also when the texture changed).  It's a common complaint now.  I wish I had known that.

I'm toying with the idea of returning them the smell is that bad.  But I'm leaving it out for a day to see if the smell dissipates.  

...

But it got me thinking - are there any brands of oil pastels out there that share ingredient information or focus on health or whatever?  Some sort of transparency so I can have more confidence?  

I haven't had a chance to look at the ingredients, but I searched for "Waldorf oil pastels" and found a few brands.

Waldorf is a type of school, where the focus on nature, creativity, imagination, and real-world skills. In general, things marketed for the Waldorf crowd are:

(A) pretty high quality
(B) made out of more natural materials
(C) made in Europe
(D) a bit pricey

The brands that come up first in my search are Filia (these seem to be their set for older students) and Faber-Castell

I also found these talc-free pastel sticks, but they don't seem to be OIL pastels.

Filia seems to be the brand most recommended, so maybe look for their ingredient list first. They make both "oil crayons" as well as the "oil pastels" for older students.

websites sellign them say,

The Filia oil crayons are very strong and resist breakage. Their square-shaped remains true to its retro design from 1952, and has a pointed tip allowing for outlining, defined contours, two-dimensional drawing and shading.

Filia oil crayons are highly pigmented and are produced in Denmark using only pure and natural ingredients. Their sustainable production process is eco-conscious and does not emit sewage, harmful emissions or hazardous waste.

https://teiaeducation.ch/product-category/brands/filia/

And

Oil Crayons leave a clean, dry and smudge-resistant surface. They are strong and do not crumble easily. Paper wrappers are not necessary for these crayons so you are not obstructed at any time when they are coloring. Not as fragile as wax crayons, colors are brighter, resistant to softening or melting from sunlight. Blend easily to create different tones. The base of all these products consists of natural ingredients with approved colorants in compliance with all EU directives on Graphic instruments and Toy safety.

https://ecochoices.com/products/filia-pastel-oil-crayons-36-assorted-colors

I've gotta run, but I'll try to do more research and find the actual ingredient sheet when I get back from teaching, if you haven't had a chance by then.

r ranson wrote:I bought some Pentel Arts Oil Pastels and they arrived today.  Opening them, I'm shocked by how badly they stink of motor oil.  It's really nasty.  

I'm scared to use them because of the smell, but they do have a 3rd party safe to use stamp on them... I'm confused.

So I looked up some reviews and it looks like the smell started circa 2021 (also when the texture changed).  It's a common complaint now.  I wish I had known that.

I'm toying with the idea of returning them the smell is that bad.  But I'm leaving it out for a day to see if the smell dissipates.  

Oh you found my gasoline station pastels! Yup, that's the brand. And they smelled before 2021 and never stopped off gassing for YEARS! I got rid of a big box last year after having that box for at least 5 years and having it stink up the house every time I opened that cardboard box.

I suggest returning yours.

in the end, I decided that the cost of the pentel set wasn't worth the bother of returning it.  This might have been a mistake, but I decided to swatch them out and see if they smell worse with use (they do).



They are indeed firmer than what I've tried before.  They also make these little crumbs which muddy up the next colour.  I also can't make them smudge together with my finger, but they do smudge together when I put a new colour on top of old ones.

Now I can't return them.  But I'm also thinking if the pastels I'm using now are melting in my hand in the winter, it won't be fun to use in the summer.  So maybe using this cheap set outside in the summer might be an option.