The history of oil pastel is quite interesting and started off in 1921 where two brothers-in law created a crayon that combined the soft, smooth color application of crayon with the brightness of pastel. In 1947, artists Pablo Picasso and Henri Goetz decided to make a more professional version of the product. According to The Oil Pastel Society, Picasso convinced Goetz to create a medium in which he can use on anything without having to prepare or prime a canvas. Two years after, in 1949, Henri Sennelier invented the first professional oil pastels with the help of Goetz and Picasso. The history of oil pastel continues which is available on few websites like The Oil Pastel Society.
Greg Albert wrote in his article "Painting with Oil Pastels for Beginners" about different tips and techniques to use when working with this form of art. Some techniques he has stated here are:
- Underpainting
- Cross-hatching
- Blending
- Layering and impasto
- Scumbling
- Scraping
Oil pastels can be used on any surface, so drawing on top of acrylic paint, or even water color can bring out the different shades of colors and leave a visible background. This process is called underpainting. Cross hatching on the other hand is an artistic technique used to create tone or shading effects by drawing closely spaced parallel lines that cross each other. Blending oil pastels is a bit difficult to do because the medium is so wax-like, but this can be done by using paper towels or blending sticks. Layering and impasto is important in oil pastel paintings. The word impasto refers to a technique used in painting, where paint (or other medias) is laid on the surface very thickly. Having thick layers can lead to other techniques like scumbling and scraping that provides a broken, speckled, scratchy color over another color. This technique shows the lower layer of color.The result gives a sense of depth and color variation to an area.
Other sources of using different techniques in oil pastels are YouTube videos. This artist in this video, Oil Pastel Techniques: How to Color with Oil Pastels mentions stroke work and how to move and blend in the direction of the picture. She demonstrates few tips like highlighting and contrasting the picture to give it a more vivid look.
After reviewing these few techniques, I did a little experiment on my own. I have once worked with oil pastel in the past, so I compared my old drawing to the one I recently completed, using some of these tips.
I've noticed that I used an extreme amount of color to create this landscape. Now since oil pastel never dries, I went back and added the scraping effect in the corners of the page.
My blending in this oil pastel painting is way better than the first painting. I used scumbling/scraping, a little bit of stippling, and blending to create this drawing. The hardest part of the drawing was blending the colors in the water to give a reflection look.
Working with the product is pretty simple. It may be difficult to use for others, but it's easy to work with and to create originality in a painting or drawing. During my senior year of high school, my art teacher gave us an assignment to imitate a landscape using oil pastels. I personally disliked it at first because the drawing looked nothing like the original picture. Another thing that made the project even more difficult was the fact that we could not use the color black. These restrictions ultimately stressed me out, but it dawned upon me that we are only imitating and using the picture as a reference. Using oil pastels can help an artist become more colorful and original with their works because its almost impossible to make the painting look exactly like it's original/reference.
You have a great variety of details in this post, and I feel like I learned quite a bit here. The depth of data on oil pastels was well worth it; you show your experience as an artist while contextualizing the similarities and differences of one medium in oil/pastels from the other common ones. Well done!
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