It seems that many artists unfamiliar with oil pastels want to know how to use them, or at least how to get started. While oil pastel work isn’t quite painting, it isn’t quite drawing either, not in the traditional pencil or pen sense anyway. So in this blog post, I thought I would talk about how I use oil pastels and also go through step by step, some of the different techniques I use to achieve certain results.
Oil Pastels Still Life
Recently I did an oil pastels drawing of some pears, and I thought it would make a good example to use to talk about how I use oil pastels, generally speaking.
Every piece is different, and might require different approaches, but overall, the oil pastel techniques I talk about here can be applied to most oil pastel work.
Step by Step
First, I make just a sketchy drawing with some base colors to get a feel for my composition and how the shapes are working out.
Pears in Oil Pastels – first sketch
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Next I establish more base colors and get just a light a sense of how the composition is going to look in the end. I know adjustments will be made, but I want to have some idea of what the overall piece is going to look like.
Pears in Oil Pastels – second sketch
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In my next step I am adding more colors into the composition – not much blending yet, still somewhat sketchy.
Pears in Oil Pastels – sketch 3
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In this next step I actually may have jumped what should have been two steps here before taking another picture (I should have taken more along the way!). Basically you have the blending of the pears being one step, and the other step is the stronger shadowing against the wood. Here I felt like I really had enough needed colors to really get started blending. Plus I wasn’t sure about my oranges and I wanted to see if I was heading in the right direction. Some may rightly advise I should have spent more time doing thumbnails or quick studies prior to making the final piece! 🙂
Pears in Oil Pastels – sketch 4
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Next I worked out my background color. This step took longer than may appear… I had at first a lighter blue which I didn’t feel very good about. I ended up making that blue darker, and then after that I decided to add in the reds and browns.
Pears in Oil Pastels – sketch 5
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In the next step, I focus on the wood and the shadows cast on the wood. I do some blending but still leave a sketchy feel to the surface. The sketchiness was left in (as opposed to smooth blending) to capture more of the sense of the cut of the wood. It is a bit more blended in on the right side as that is where a strong light source was coming from. In this step I also added in a touch more green and blue to the pear colors.
Pears in Oil Pastels – sketch 6
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Final Step
This is the final step. I’ve blended the rest in and touched up some highlights, such as the stem of each pear and along the sides. I also have gone back and restudied from the photo and made some adjustments to values. For example, the highlight along the top of the wood in the center, right between the two pears – if you compare that with the previous photo you’ll see I made it darker.
And so this is the final result:
Pears in Oil Pastels – sketch 7
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Thanks for reading and following along – any questions or suggestions for me please feel free to ask!
– Eric
What I would like to do here is talk a little more in depth about the techniques used to achieve the realism of the painting.
While I worked on the painting, I took photos of the work as it was in progress, with plans of going back and talking about the oil pastel techniques involved (and also with the hope that it would turn out alright!).
So let’s get started talking about it!
Step One
Oil Pastels Lips - Step One
The first step was in simply sketching out the composition of the piece and filling in some underlying color.
I used cheaper artist quality Mungyo oil pastels for this step. The linework and the base colors are Mungyos.
Since the piece was done on White Pastelbord, some of the brighter sections I left alone, although some areas I filled in with white oil pastels.
I took a bit of a risk by filling in the black part of the inside of the mouth here. It seemed like a risk because I felt like it maybe wasn’t pure black and actually had shades of purple and brown. But I figured I could go back and add in some browns and purples, which I did later.
Step Two
Oil Pastels Lips - Step Two
In Step two, I filled in more of the reds and skin tones and got a feel for how these colors were going to look in the overall composition.
I was still using Mungyo oil pastels for much of the base colors, however, here I began working in some of the higher quality Sennelier oil pastels.
The Senneliers are much smoother and work very well for both the lip color and for the skin tones.
I also established a bit more of the shadows underneath the lips, although here I started out a little bit too dark. It was a challenge to go back later and undo this dark area, so this is something I will definitely remember for future oil pastel paintings.
Step Three
Oil Pastels Lips - Step Three
For Step three, I continued much of what began in the photo in Step two.
I build onto the skin tones, making some adjustments to the shadows, and I worked more on the skin color of the fingers.
I still hadn’t paid enough attention to the teeth, and perhaps when I look back on this, I should have.
Teeth are never exactly white, and although I knew that, and I had planned on getting to it, I let them stay white for too long, and I think this distracted from the way the piece progressed. In the final piece, I think the teeth could have gone even darker, but I never got there, possibly because I let it get away for so long.
Step Four
Oil Pastels Lips - Step Four
In this step you can see where the teeth finally get filled in some. I used a purple shade for the back tooth on the right, and for the front two teeth I used a light gray. Again, I feel it could have gone darker here.
I also develop more of the faint shadow along the inside of the finger, and take time to notice how light is reflecting off the bottom lip and on the side of the cheek, just behind in that small rectangular area behind the finger.
I felt that this area was crucial to developing a sense of the realism of the piece. You have bright light getting through, right on the cheek, reflecting in the lips, contrasted with the darker area underneath the bottom lip. All of these values were very important to getting the piece right.
Step Five
Oil Pastels Lips - Step Five
In Step Five, I really begin filling out all the areas where color is needed. I don’t want to have any areas left where the surface is showing where it shouldn’t be.
The lips are filled in, the fingers are rounded out, I establish more of the coloring to the teeth, and I start to pay closer attention to what exactly is going on in the colors of the tongue and lips.
The tongue and lips are the obvious focus of the piece, so I want to be careful not to overdo either the actual colors or the shadows. If you compare this with step Four, you can see where I faded out the shadowing between the bottom of the tongue and the upper part of the bottom lip. I also gave more attention to the second finger in the upper right corner.
Step Six
Oil Pastels Lips - Step Six
This step is where things started to come together. If you compare this with Step Five, you’ll see more blending, less of the rigid lines, and less of the flaky bits and pieces of pastels.
I have my focus here mostly on the details in the lips and tongue, but I also am more concerned with the overall look and feel of the piece.
I also finally work in the tip of the finger and fingernail, along with the shadowing and blending of the finger.
It was also at this point in the painting that I realized I wasn’t quite happy with the skin tones, and so I added more flesh and white color, particularly in the corner in the bottom left side of the piece.
Step Seven
Oil Pastels Lips - Step Seven
In Step seven, I am mostly fine tuning, reworking details, and adjusting colors.
Here you can see in the tongue I spend some time getting the purple just right, as well as more of the reflection and color variations.
There is also more detail and reflection in the lips, both bottom and top, as well as adding in some oranges and pinks.
I add a bit more shadowing to the fingernail and in the shadow of the second finger in the upper right.
Finally, I also darkened up just a bit the shadowing from the inside of the tongue, over on the left side.
Step Eight (The finished piece)
Oil Pastels Lips - Final Step
In this final step, there was more fine tuning, tweaking and color adjustments.
I added more oranges and pinks, especially to the upper right side of the top lip, and some in the bottom lip as well.
I got more blending in of the colors in the fingers, and overall throughout the piece made sure blending was smooth where needed.
I added a bit more reflections in the lips, but I was careful not to overdo it. It would have been tempting to add touches of white all over the lips and tongue, but I don’t think that would have felt right.
I have actually skipped over a couple of the final steps, because there was so much time spent on reworking the fine details.
Conclusion
I hope this post has been useful for you oil pastelists out there, and for any artists that may have interest in this type of work. Please feel free to offer comments and suggestions in the Comments Form below.
Welcome to Oil Pastels Artist! I’m Eric, I’m an oil pastels artist, and I am looking forward to providing lessons, tips and tutorials on my favorite medium, oil pastels!
You don’t have to be a “Pro” to learn oil pastels and to enjoy this website. The site is dedicated to helping other oil pastelists learn skills and tips for how to use oil pastels, introduce you to new oil pastels techniques and tools, and to help promote oil pastels as a medium for artists.
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, some of the brighter sections I left alone, although some areas I filled in with white oil pastels.
