Fur In The Paint

Oil Pastel Tips

• Have a plan. As I have mentioned before, I draw everything out in advance. The pastels stain my substrate and so it is problematic to scrape off a color that is wrong and replace it with another color of similar values or lighter. Another way to deal with this is to use lighter colors first. When you apply darker colors over light, you can scrape away all of the pastel and have minimal staining.
• For smoother blending, it is best to work consistently. If you leave the painting alone for as little as 15 minutes the pastel “sets up” and makes a rough edge. rubbing your finger lightly over the painting or warming the pastel a bit in your hand will help when going back in to work an older area.
• Letting the pastel “set up” can be an advantage when you want to put a strong color or highlight over the already existing painting. Often I will let a painting set over night before I put my whitest whites in, over the top of another color.
• Be aware of your lighting situation. Oil pastels will glow under the desk lamps. I think this is because the underlying board is reflecting light through the pastels. However when you put the painting under normal room lighting it may well look dark. I have had this happen several times. Under the table lights it is luminous (insert angelic chorus here.) Then when I hang it on the wall, it is flat and lifeless. So disappointing. How I handle this is by working with my table lamps off. I try to work under the normal lighting conditions that it will be viewed in. This also means I don’t paint much at night anymore, either.
• Clean up. As mentioned before, oil pastels are messy. They develop little booger like tags which roll all over and smear. The floor under my drafting table is all speckled and nasty. About every 2 months (it really should be done much more often) I take some dish soap and scrub like the dickens. Goo Gone also works well. Or, if I were a wiser person I would lay down some paper which could be picked up and tossed.

Tools For Working With Oil Pastels

• Gloves. Disposable gloves are a blessing. Oil pastels are quite messy and greasy. If you don’t want to be constantly washing your hands, I highly recommend getting gloves. I change my gloves regularly as well to avoid tracking on my painting. I go through 10-20 in an afternoon.
• Turpenoids. I personally don’t use them other than for cleaning up. However they are great if you want to use a paint brush with your pastels. Also you can smudge and soften using a rag and a little turpenoid.
• Paper Towels. I use paper towels to wipe the tips of my pastels. This helps to prevent cross contamination of colors.



• Ceramic Tools. These are great for scraping out a large area or removing just tiny little bits. They have a pointed blade on one side and a curved almost spoon like hook on the other.



• Color Shapers. I have color shapers that come in various sizes, shapes, points and firmness’. You an get them at most of the same places as oil pastels. They are good for smoothing rough edges, minor blending and cleaning up the little tags of oil pastel that are on the surface of the painting.

These of course aren’t all of the possible tools you could use. These are just the one I use regularly and consistently. Go experiment and have fun.

I thought I would address how to paint hair (in this case a horse’s coat) with oil pastels. I plan to also blog about doing horse hair in water soluble pencil in the near future. I tend to work with oil pastels in a more impressionistic way, than I do in water soluble pencils. So creating a fur coat is less about putting in every little hair and more about directing line and color to achieve the visual effect of hair. I took a few WIP (work in progress) shots of my current painting for illustration. (I apologize for the lousy dark photos. I am still new to using Mike’s digital camera.) Since I am a sectional painter, (meaning, I like to work on one small area at a time and finish it, before moving on) the photos are of a small section of the whole painting.

To begin with, I need to have a fairly comprehensive drawing. Oil pastels stain my substrate (which is 100% cotton rag museum board) so I need to have a good idea of what I am placing where, to avoid complications from having the wrong color in the wrong place. It is possible to scrape off a certain amount of color, but in general it wouldn’t work to have too great a color shift. The underlying stain would show through any similar value color as well as anything lighter, placed over the top.

Also, I don’t use turpenoids for blending. You get can get some great effects with turps. Like subtle blending or for painting with a brush. However, I love the mark making that using the straight oil pastel gives. I rely on laying color next to color to achieve my goals. Nearly all of my blending is done with the pastels themselves.

First Thing: I do is lay in my darks. In this case, black and darkest grays. Though it has a random scribbley look to it. I lay my lines in the direction that the horse’s hair coat runs.

Step Two: I add the mid-tone ranges of grays. I also add the periwinkle and ginger colors now. (one of my favorite color combinations) In this applications the gingers add warmth and the periwinkle provides pop.

Step Three: This is where I put in the lightest grays, creams and sparingly … white. White, much like black, when used in excess can make a painting look flat and lifeless. However when used properly, you can achieve great contrast and highlights. Some blending and overlay is good. Too much though and you’ll have mud.

Lastly: Go back in and do whatever needs to be done. Often this is re-establishing the darks, if they get blended out too much. In this painting I added royal purple in my darks to again add zing. Also, there are always little bits of board showing through where I didn’t get the colors completely blended. So I rub these out using a shaping tool or my finger. Then I move onto the next section.

I have been working with oil pastels for a couple of years now. At this point, a lot of what I do is almost done without thought. Working quickly, I just let the creative energy flow through me while I put in colors. Then at some point I just realize that it is done. It looks like it is supposed too. Anyway, that is how it is supposed to happen (when the stars are aligned and all is right in the heavens.) Sometimes, I can work it and work it and it still doesn’t come out right. Then, the wisest course of action is to either stop for awhile or move on to a completely new area. That is what I did with this painting. The left hand dark horse hasn’t worked out the way I envisioned it. So, I moved on to the gray horses. Now that I am happy with them, I feel more confident to go back in and rework the dark horse.

In the next few days, I will cover oil pastels further. What they are, where you can get them and offer some tips for using them.