Oil Pastel Willow Branch

Get started with oil pastels with me!

One of the things I love the most about being an art teacher, is the fact that I get to play with and encounter a wide variety of art mediums with my students. No two days are the same, no two years are the same. It’s a great way to keep my creative expression fresh and fun, while reinforcing and building up foundational skills. Working in an unfamiliar medium fosters the ability to adapt existing techniques in your repertoire in innovative ways.

For me, oil pastels are one such medium.

Oil pastels are highly pigmented sticks similar to the crayons of our youth with one key difference: they are oil-based rather than wax based, and so can be smudged and manipulated on the page. The vibrant colors and blendability lend themselves well to this process of innovation, and to a variety of subjects (I’ve successfully used mine for botanical paintings and scifi paintings, for example). Not to mention, they’re an insanely inexpensive medium as far as art supplies go!

For this lesson you will need:

• 80# sketch paper. I have found I really prefer the more silky texture on the lighter grade sketch paper rather than the 140# watercolor paper like many artists prefer. One of the fun things about oil pastels are that they work on a variety of substrates.

• Set of Oil pastels.

• Paper towels, blending stump, or silicone blenders. Personally, I prefer the silicone blenders, but you do you. These techniques will work regardless of which blending method you choose.

Really simple, yeah? Let’s go!