If you follow me on Instagram (@averykspr), you probably saw this post earlier this week. Since it was the last week before Christmas break, I knew my students wouldn't really be focused, so I wanted to do a fun project that also doubled as an introduction to something we rarely use in my classroom--oil pastels.
I did quite a bit of research and experimenting on oil pastels before teaching these lessons...and I fell in love! I've never really used oil pastels before, and when I did use them, I treated them just like crayons.
I learned so much from my research, experimentation and teaching this past week. Most importantly, use a tortillion to blend! Fingers create a gross, strange smudgy look. The tortillion provides you control for days, and really allows for a beautiful gradient! With the snowman project below, we didn't blend. We did mix colors and add shadows, but left the strokes to create a very painterly style.
The candy canes were blended and the entire composition looked incredibly 3-dimensional once finished.
I did quite a bit of research and experimenting on oil pastels before teaching these lessons...and I fell in love! I've never really used oil pastels before, and when I did use them, I treated them just like crayons.
I learned so much from my research, experimentation and teaching this past week. Most importantly, use a tortillion to blend! Fingers create a gross, strange smudgy look. The tortillion provides you control for days, and really allows for a beautiful gradient! With the snowman project below, we didn't blend. We did mix colors and add shadows, but left the strokes to create a very painterly style.
The candy canes were blended and the entire composition looked incredibly 3-dimensional once finished.
After using the student-grade pastels, I thought I should try some slightly better pastels. I came across these at Hobby Lobby, but ended up purchasing them on Amazon and they were much cheaper. I chose the set of 50 colors, because I'm a gal that likes to have options.
Here's a photograph of the vast array of colors. Not quite as many pink values as I'd like, but still a fantastic starting set.
I decided to break these out and jump right into a practice drawing of a flamingo. I didn't have a blending stump, so I had to make my own out of printer paper (disaster), so my blending is really horrendous, but I was still able to get a good feel for these oil pastels.
I LOVE that these pastels come in a variety of colors. As I mentioned, I didn't have a blending stump, and I ended up using my mixed-media Creative Journal, so the paper isn't probably the best for this type of medium, but I actually quite liked them. They have a slightly more chalky, less "greasy" feel than the Blick student oil pastels I've had my kids use at school which seemed to make them a bit more challenging to blend. I personally didn't care for the white's lack of opacity. I think if I can find a good sale after Christmas, I will probably end up purchasing the Prismacolor Oil Pastels and experiment with them, as I've heard great things about them.
Which oil pastels do you use? Do you have any recommendations?
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