Oil Pastels

After using charcoal in drawing class for some time, we finally moved on to oil pastels. I had never used oil pastels before in my life, so it was a new and interesting experience. Oil pastels are like oily, waxy, crayons. There are several techniques to using oil pastels, depending on what it is you want to create and what kind of surface you plan to use as your "canvas." But because we only had a few days in class to work with this media, we primarily focused on applying the color and then brushing over it with turpentine or paint thinner. By using this method, it allows the oil to "melt" and blend and take on medium similar to watercolor.

For our first assignment, our teacher brought in some rubber heads of people and animals draped with silk cloth and other materials. We had also just learned more about complimentary colors, so all of the props were decorated with cloth fitting to our lesson. Here is a gorilla mask with yellow and purple cloth draped around it. I used oil pastels blended with terpenoid (a turpentine substitute) on drawing paper.

Here is a picture of a turtle named Chunky Rice (a comic by Craig Thompson) playing in the surf. I tried to experiment with complimentary colors (red and green, blue and orange, etc.)

This was our last project of the semester. We were asked to get a picture of ourselves and draw a grid over it. Then using the grid as a guide, we made the same grid on a much larger scale on some Bristol paper. The point of this was to create something that looked "pixel-ated" similar to Chuck Close's work. So looking up close the picture might be hard to recognize but as you move further back, you can actually see that each square together makes up a whole picture.

I only had a 24 pack of oil pastels, so my color options were sort of limited. The assignment was to use one solid color for each square and the same color couldn't be touching (unless it was diagonal.) This is basically how it turned out. We weren't required to use the turpentine on these, but I did just for the sake of time and to smooth out the texture a bit. Oil pastels were a lot of fun to work with and I think I'll spend more time learning other application methods.