Oil Pastel Art - For Painting Tips

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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.

What Are Acrylic Painting - For Painting Tips

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What Are Acrylic For Art Painting

Acrylics are the only new paint to have come onto the market for centuries. Introduced in about 1962, they are as versatile as it is possible to imagine. They can be used thickly like oil paints, or in transparent washes like watercolours. They can be applied to almost any surface whether it be paper, panel, cardboard or canvas. Their main attribute is that they dry yes quickly and are ideal for those who work at top speed and like to see a finished picture in half an hour. They dry too quickly for some, but the drying speed can be slowed down with a retarder, and there are all Kinds of additives such as mediums and texture pastes to suit every taste, though normally water is used as the painting agent. 

Van Gogh would have loved acrylics. Some established painters are suspicious of them despite the many claims (justified) made for them.

Acrylic can being very quick drying. there is a temptation to regard a quick flashy picture as a good picture; it is almost impossible to avoid making a picture by putting on colour at speed. acrylic can be mixed with other mediums to create something wholly new, and acrylic is virtually permanent. Unlike oil paints, where asterisks on the tube denote the degree of permanence, you can be pretty sure that acrylics last.