For one of my art pieces I wanted to create an oil pastel artwork. I first started researching how to blend oil pastels together and how they behave using different techniques. From my research there was three main ways of blending oil pastels that I wanted to test.

The first was using a palate knife to cut off some of the oil pastel onto a palate and then mix it together with the offcut of another colour. I didn’t have much success with this attempt as my pastels (the initial ones I had at least) where too hard to be able to mix in with the other colours.

The second technique I tried was to mix the pastels on the paper with the palate knife. You layer the colour on the paper and then take a palate knife and swipe it back and forth to mix the colours onto the sheet directly. I had medium success with this, as my pastels again where too hard to achieve the desired effect.

The last technique I used (and by far my favourite) was the blending using cooking oil. This makes the pastels act almost like a thick watercolor and it allows me to blend the colours much smoother and easier than without.

I also purchased a newer set of oil pastels that were softer and the oil made the pastels act almost like oil paint. It was very exciting and used this oil pastel + oil technique for a red dragon piece that I have almost finished (pictured below)

From this experience, I have actually found that I really enjoyed working with oil pastels. Being able to draw the pigment directly on the paper and then blend it out with oil was really fun and satisfying and I may even attempt to do this again with another piece for this assignment.  

Sources:

Wikihow (2019). How to blend with Oil Pastels. Retrieved 18 April 2019 from: https://www.wikihow.com/Blend-Oil-Pastels

Reeves (2019). How to Blend Oil Pastels. Retrieved 18 April 2019 from: https://myreeves.com/en/tips-tricks/how-to-blend-oil-pastels/