Using oil pastels like a professional artist involves mastering a range of techniques to achieve depth, texture, and vibrant color, including sophisticated methods for controlling value and application such as using dotting techniques.
Professional oil pastel techniques go beyond simple drawing and coloring. They involve understanding the unique properties of the medium – its opacity, blendability, and ability to be layered extensively. Here are some key approaches:
Essential Oil Pastel Techniques for Professionals
Mastering several techniques is crucial for creating professional-level oil pastel artwork. These methods allow artists to control color, value, and texture with precision.
- Layering: This is fundamental. Artists build up color gradually, applying multiple layers of different colors to create depth, nuance, and complex color mixtures. You can layer opaque colors over each other, or work from light to dark (or dark to light, depending on the desired effect and the pastel quality).
- Blending: Oil pastels can be blended in various ways:
- Finger Blending: Using your finger to smudge and mix colors directly on the surface.
- Tool Blending: Using a paper stump (tortillon), cotton swabs, or a soft cloth.
- Solvent Blending: Applying a small amount of odorless mineral spirits, turpentine, or baby oil with a brush to dissolve and blend the pigments, creating washes similar to painting.
- Sgraffito: This technique involves scratching through an top layer of oil pastel to reveal the color underneath. Tools like a sgraffito tool, craft knife, or even a toothpick can be used.
- Scumbling: Applying a broken layer of color using small, circular, or random scribbled marks. This allows the underlying color or surface to show through, creating texture and optical color mixing.
- Impasto: Applying the pastels thickly, building up a textured surface. This creates a paint-like effect with visible strokes.
- Color Mixing: While you can layer, professionals also learn to mix colors by applying them side-by-side and blending, or by layering translucent colors.
- Blocking In: Starting with broad areas of color or value to establish the composition before adding details.
Controlling Value and Texture with Oil Pastels
Achieving a professional look requires careful control over light and shadow (value) and surface quality (texture).
One technique for controlling value, particularly when adding lighter areas or creating subtle transitions, involves using discrete marks. For example, using a dotting technique can create tonal variation:
- Dotting/Stippling: Applying small dots of color.
- To make an area appear lighter, the dots are placed further away from each other.
- To make an area appear darker or more intense, the dots are placed closer together, or more color is used. As mentioned in one reference, the more color you use, the better this effect can be for achieving intensity or depth within the stippling.
| Technique | Purpose | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Layering | Depth, rich color, subtle transitions | Applying multiple layers of pigment. |
| Blending | Smooth transitions, mixing colors | Using fingers, tools, or solvents to mix colors on the surface. |
| Sgraffito | Revealing underlayers, creating fine lines | Scratching through top layers to show colors beneath. |
| Scumbling | Texture, optical mixing, broken color | Applying loose, scribbled marks allowing underlayers to show. |
| Impasto | Texture, visible strokes, paint-like effect | Applying pastels thickly. |
| Dotting | Value control, texture, optical mixing | Using dots spaced for value (further apart = lighter) and intensity. |
By combining these techniques and understanding how to apply pressure, work on different surfaces (paper, board, canvas), and build up layers strategically, artists can use oil pastels to create sophisticated and compelling artwork.
