http://www.painters-online.co.uk artistApril 2021 51
PRACTICAL
as the binder, which is why they are
often described as being like children’s
crayons. Fundamentally you get what
you pay for.
My go-to brands of oil pastels are
Sennelier and Royal Talens Van Gogh.
Both brands are highly pigmented,
a joy to work with and available in
many different gorgeous and useful
colours. Sets are also offered by both
brands; these are a good idea and are
an affordable way to acquire some oil
pastels.
Royal Talens Van Gogh oil pastels
are made with pure pigments, mineral
oils and some wax binders and have a
remarkably soft and smooth application
on all sorts of supports – paper, card,
canvas, board, even stone. They have a
wonderful tinting strength and are easy
to use because of their softness.
Sennelier oil pastels have an
extraordinarily high pigment content
that gives a high colouring and covering
potential, excellent brightness and a
high degree of light stability throughout
the colour range; they are a joy to work
with. There are metallic oil pastels
too, which I also use. Three sizes of
Sennelier oil pastel are available:
normal, standard and giant. The colours
mix beautifully to create so many
variants of tone and shade that you’ll
always find the perfect match for what
you need. The white is very soft and
creamy and perfect for creating lighter
tints and shades with colours. The black
and the white pastels are the perfect
drawing tools for sketching monotone or
to use with other drawing media such as
graphite and ink.
For artists requiring a harder pastel,
Caran d’Ache Neopastels are a great
choice. There are two types – Neocolor
I and Neopastel. Neopastel is slightly
softer than Neocolor I. Transitions of
colour on all types of surfaces are soft
and the medium easily responds to
solvents such as turpentine, to thin it
and blend it for wash effects. Finger
blending is easy with Neopastel but
with Neocolor I you have to work that
bit harder. Colours remain sharp and
clean with both types of Caran d’Ache
oil pastels and radiate from the support- especially on white.
Combining with other media
Dry drawing media such as graphite
is fantastic to use with oil pastels. I
intermix. The graphite cuts through
the oil pastel to make interesting and
expressive ‘shiny’ drawing marks and oil
pastel over graphite covers it.
Another exciting way to use oil pastels,
oil sticks and related oil bars is to use apainting solvent with them, such as low-
odour thinners or turpentine to soften
and paint with them. The professional
brands of oil pastels discussed here
readily mix with solvents. A coloured
ground or base layer of acrylic inks
and paints allowed to show through
subsequent translucent and semi-
opaque layers of oil pastel creates
really exciting mixed-media paintings,
too.Supports
Oil pastels can be used on many
different supports but the oil content
will weaken and leach through un-
primed supports (card and paper in
particular). To increase longevity, there
are a number of options for paper and
card supports. I advise stretching all
papers below 140lb (300gsm) and, when
dry, coating them with a gesso base.
This protects the paper and thickens it;
the oil pastel oxidises outwards rather
than back into the paper when dryingu Moorland Coppice in Evening Light, oil
pastel and acrylic on Canson Heritage Not
watercolour paper, 300lb (640gsm), 30 3 22in
(76 3 56cm).
Expressive washes of acrylic ink and paint
created the initial layers on gesso- and
pumice-primed heavy-duty watercolour
paper. Using large and medium size Sennelier
oil pastels, I switched between dark and light
colours, using the pastels on their tips and
sides. To create details and further expression,
heavily saturated areas were painted into
with different brushes loaded with Winsor &
Newton Sansodor low-odour solvent. The
same solvent was applied to different palette
knives, which were used to press oil pastel
deep into the textured surface and to mix
and blend the soft oil pastels in areas and to
create sgraffito drawn marks between all the
final oil pastel layers. This study will now form
a reference for a much larger mixed-media
studio painting