Oil Pastel Art - For Painting Tips

What Are Pastel?

Pastels are powdered colours mixed with water and chalk or oil and chalk, and made into sticks. Some manufacturers put in a binder to stop the pastels crumbling; the softer the pastel, the less binding is used. Water-based pastels are more often used than oil pastels.

What Materials Are Needed?

A Selection of Pastels Pastels are sold in boxes, with a compartment for each pastel, and to stop the sticks rattling about they are protected by a layer of cotton wool or tissue. There are at least 200 distinct tints, and boxes usually contain 12, 24, 36, 72 or 144 pastels, plus specialized selections for landscape and portrait work. Pastels are also sold singly and where expensive ingredients are used, prices of some individual sticks are higher than others.

There are hard pastels and soft pastels; the soft pastels are usually cylindrical .icon section, the hard ones square or encased in wood (the extremely useful pastel pencils which can double as coloured pencils). Hard pastels, the most famous of which is Conte crayon, are chalk based. Because of their hardness they are mostly used for preliminary work and detail, and are often used at an early stage in the picture as it is sometimes difficult to apply hard on top of soft pastel if used loosely, though not if rubbed in with the finger tip. Soft pastel, far more frequently used, goes well on hard pastel.

Paper

The most popular kind of paper is called Ingres, and it comes in various sizes and colours. It has a slight tooth, which is ideal for picking up the pastel powder. Any kind of paper can be used, such as watercolour paper, brown wrapping paper, cartridge paper, card board, and even sandpaper.

A Drawing Board

Although not absolutely essential, a drawing board is very useful, as the paper can be fixed to it with drawings pins or Scotch tape (or masking tape). Some artists prefer to work on a surface which has more give, in which case a pad of folded newspaper is placed under the pastel paper.

An Easel

This is a matter of choice. Some artists prefer to work on a flat surface, but when you are using an easel the surplus pastel powder falls off and makes the surfaceless messy. There are many kinds of easels,large studio easels, fold-up easels, and table top easels. They have to be modestly robust as a good deal of pressure is applied to the paper when pastels are being used, and an easel which slides away as it is being used can be annoying, as well as bewildering to the sitter if you are doing a portrait.

Charcoal

Charcoal comes in thin sticks, and is very useful to sketch out the preliminary design. Charcoal does not have any real bite, and does not overwhelm the pastel. It also mixes very well with pastel, and can be taken out with an eraser or even the finger tip. A putty rubber and a piece of bread are two of the best forms of eraser,but. a putty rubber does get very grubby when used with charcoal. You can also use a chamois leather. Charcoal is usually bought in made up packs, so the buyer cannot really select the sticks he or she wants, but charcoal without a hard core is the better.

Pencils

Pencils can be used to make preliminary sketches, and a softer rather than a harder pencil is better (2B or 4B though some prefer HB which is neither hard nor soft and is the ordinary office pencil). Pencil in general should not be used in the final stages of a pastel picture, as it shows up shiny. The effects which can be obtained from various grades of pencil.

Pastel Pencils

Pastel pencils are quite new, and are merely pastels in the form of a pencil, useful for fine work, but rather tiresome as the wood has to be constantly shaved away.

Coloured pencils

are also very useful and come in a great range of tints. Mostly they are compatible with pastel, especially those which dissolve in water, as pastel does.

Stumps or Torchons

These are compressed pencils of blotting paper or a similar sub stance, used for blending the pastel colours on the paper.

Tissues

Tissues can also be used to blend the pastel colours on the paper, but they are useful to have about as when using pastels the hands tend to get powdery.

Cotton Buds

Again these are very suitable for blending pastel colours, especially for fine work. They can also be used to apply pastel powder where the pastel itself is too clumsy.

Erasers

The best kind of erasers are putty rubbers; ordinary pencil erasers are too harsh, and can mess up the tooth of the paper. The use of any kind of eraser should be kept to a minimum, except for preliminary sketches. When pastels are applied layer on layer, an eraser can ruin the whole thing.

Fixative

Some artists prefer not to use a fixative, as they think it takes some of the freshness away, but the risks of smudging a pastel picture are great enough to makes fixative very useful. Fixatives are sold in liquid form, and used with a mouth-spray (two narrow metal tubes on a hinge, and used with the tubes at right angles), or in aerosol cans (more convenient). Full instructions go with the cans. When the fixative is used, the pastel picture goes very dark, which can be alarming the first time, but it dries out in a few minutes without any great colour change taking place.

Brushes

Both soft and bristle brushes can be used in association with pastel, to blend the dry pastel, or used with water to turn the powder into a paste (the word pastel comes from the word paste). This paste can be drawn over with dry pastel. Bristle brushes can impart interesting textures to the picture surface. Some artists do not use brushes at all, and it is entirely up to you.

This is the basic equipment for painting in pastels, but there are extras which you can add at will. If you wish to do a detailed under painting on which you will put your pastels later, you may want to do this in watercolour,acrylic, pen and ink, or felt pen. All these go well with pastels, simply because they go with water.

The thing is to experiment, to find out what suits you. It may be that the sight of a clean sheet of paper is daunting. In that case, get something down on it right away, anything, even a splash of colour by using a sponge (which can spark off an idea for a picture, just as looking at a fire does).