Oil pastels: instructions for beginners

2024 Author: Leah Sherlock | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 05:25

One of the oldest materials used for creativity is pastel. She wrote their magnificent works by Renoir, Leonardo da Vinci, Degas and other artists. Pastel can be used both as an independent image medium and as an auxiliary material in other techniques, including polymer clay modeling, as well as decoupage. Pastel stands out with bright, vibrant colors and a velvety texture.

A pastel is produced from a coloring pigment and a binder, which can be wax, gum arabic or mineral oils. In stores, you can buy pastels in the form of rimless pencils or colored crayons. There are three types of pastel: watercolor, oil and dry. Let's take a closer look at oil pastels and how to use them in drawing.

Oil pastels are very similar to wax crayons, and are quite soft. In addition, the colors are very saturated. Pastel crayons are produced in the form of small sticks with a square or round cross section. They differ from waxes by the presencemore pigments, high firmness and elasticity. It should be noted that oil pastel practically does not get dirty, and after applying it to the surface of the sheet, additional fixation in the form of varnish is not required.

Any surface is suitable for painting with oil pastels. The advantage of this tool is the ability to blur it. To do this, the artist needs to have a special solvent for oil paints and shading - a stick of compressed paper. It is dipped in a solvent and washed out to obtain the desired shade. Solvent painting should be done in a room that is well ventilated.

The texture of oil pastels allows you to create effects that cannot be done in other painting techniques. For decorative paintings, oil pastel is very often used, the application technique of which allows you to convey the rich and deep tones of the depicted object. Artistic drawings made by this method should preferably be stored in frames and under glass, and there must be a gap between the glass and the picture. This is necessary to preserve the image, since pastel drawings are very susceptible to minor damage, shedding, and are also easily erased.

Oil pastels require a rough base because they don't adhere well to the surface. For this technique, special paper is needed, for example, emery, loose fleecy cardboard, suede, canvas, parchment or torchon paper. To the benefitsThe material under consideration can be attributed to the ability to remove and overlap several layers at once.

Oil pastel is represented by a huge number of shades, of which there are more than one and a half thousand. This diversity allows you to implement any creative ideas in various genres. The pastel technique has come a long way from a simple three-color drawing to a full-fledged painting, which became especially popular during the Baroque, and is now preferred by the Impressionists.