Hi, I'm artist Lillian Gray and I'm super excited about today's lesson.
I'm going to teach you some awesome tips and tricks
on how to use oil pastels. We'll be making a landscape honouring the Impressionists.
There's a free oil pastel printout on our blog
for you to practice the various tips and tricks in this video.
For today's lesson I'm using oil pastels and paper.
I've got other things that are going to help me along the way, like paper towel, earbuds and a
scraping tool. A quick note on buying oil pastels, there are various size packs that you can buy.
A cute little 12 set is great to work with. If you can afford a bigger pack with 48 pastels,
it just gives you a lot more colour options and really helps with the blending. If you would like
to buy any of these art supplies, you can shop online with us. The link is in the description
down below. Today I am going to be working on an easel. You don't have to work on an easel,
you can work flat if you like to. The easel just really aids with not smudging and getting your
proportions right. What happens when we work flat is our eye first sees this part of the page then
the middle then top, and when we flip it up usually our drawings are out of proportion,
where an easel prevents us from creating a parallax mistake with our eyes.
Have you ever wondered what is the difference between oil pastels and crayons? The biggest
difference is that with oil pastels the pigments are held together using oil. With crayons, the
pigment is held together using wax. By using oil and oil pastels it gives it this buttery texture,
a really smooth texture that is wonderful to blend with. It's much harder blending with crayons.
However, you need to be cautious when working with oil pastels because they can smudge too
much, dirtying the colours. Helpful tips and tricks: first lightly sketch out your drawing,
and then only start pressing harder. Make sure that you have the correct grip when using your
oil pastel. I tend to hold it like I'm holding a knife cutting a steak. Have paper towel or toilet
paper or tissue paper close by so you can clean the points of your pastels since they can get a
bit smudgy and dirty. A very helpful tip for me is to know which colours to blend together. Colours
next to each other on the colour wheel are called analogous colours. They blend really well.
Colours that are opposite each other on the colour wheel tend to create
mud. They are high contrasting, complementary colours and
should be placed next to each other and not mixed together. Examples of colours that can
be blended well together is usually your cool colours which are your blues, and your greens,
and your purples. And then your warm colours which are your reds, your oranges, and your yellows.
To prevent smudging and dirtying my hand I often put a paper towel underneath my hand while working
on my oil pastels. It is totally normal for your oil pastels to snap and break as you work with
them. The set is definitely not going to stay in some pristine condition. What's important to
note when using oil pastels, is you don't actually colour in. You can leave a bit of space in
between your pastel because you can save some oil pastel by smudging and rubbing it over the page.
Use short quick strokes overlapping each other to avoid white spaces. Press firmly when colouring
with oil pastels and applying them to the paper, think of it as squashing the oil pastel onto the
page. Always use black last. Avoid using black in the beginning. It will dirty all your other
colours. When blending, a helpful tip is to always start with a darker colour and then blend with
the white, so we work from dark to light, back to front. However, the exception is black. Black you
would like to add last. A helpful tip is to brush your artwork clean with a clean synthetic brush,
just a smooth brush that can gently brush away all the oil pastel flakes. Use hairspray or a fixative
to prevent the artwork from smudging afterwards. I will now be doing some expert techniques.
Sgraffito is an Italian word that means to scrape, to scrape away. What we are doing is,
we are applying our oil pastels quite thick, then we're using a tool like a toothpick,
a pen, or a scraper to remove areas of the oil pastel, and this reveals the colour underneath
or the background colour. You can create various line quality, textures, and patterns by using
Sgraffito. An interesting technique to try is, once your oil pastel artwork is completely done
you can paint over it using vegetable oil or baby oil. This dissolves the oil pastels and turns it
into a painting. Just remember it will take a long time to dry, so you'll need to leave it for about
two days. Heavy pressure bleeding: generously add pastels in one direction on the paper, layer
colours to achieve a blended, rich, thick look. Light pressure breathing leaves a lot of white
space. Lightly add pastels in one direction on the paper, layer colours to achieve various hues.
Scumbling is when we do like a doodle quick, scribble mark over each other using
various colours to build up various values and texture. Colour mixing: you can mix pastels on
your page by adding two colours over each other to create a completely new colour.
Stippling: use small, choppy, quick strokes to create a stippled effect on paper and layer with
additional colours for extra depth. This is great when you try to mimic the Impressionist artists.
You get various pastel papers that were made for oil pastels and soft pastels.
The hexagonal design holds the pigment to ensure that it doesn't rub off the
page. It's very important to use texture paper, especially when working with soft
pastels. With oil pastels, you can get away with working on various kinds of
paper. Today I am working on a smooth paper. It's also important to note that you can use
various colours and then use the background colour of the paper as an extra colour,
when you create your artwork let it shine through, incorporate it into your design and your artwork.
Now that you know various oil pastel techniques, let's create an amazing artwork.
I am going to create a landscape, inspired by the Impressionists and
the Post-impressionists. You will see I'm going to add some fuzzy edges that are inspired by Renoir,
some stippling that's inspired by Van Gogh, and some interesting marks that are inspired
by Toulouse-Lautrec. It is important to choose a good reference for your artwork. Ensure your
image has a good value range. My reference today is from Unsplash. It's an awesome website with
photos that do not have copyright on them. All they ask is that you link directly back to them,
crediting the photographer. Today I am going to do an olive grove.
Here are some tips and tricks for setting up your station. Use sheets of paper towel
or newspaper or a table cover to protect your desk. Your pastels will create a lot of flecks.
Tape off the area with masking tape that you plan to draw in. This leaves a nice crisp clean line
once you are done. My general approach here is to move from dark to light. I'm starting with my
cool colours, the colours that will blend easily together like my blues and my purples. Now I'm
just going to add my complementary colours as highlights. Notice that I'm not blending them.
Here I'm using sgraffito to create extra foliage on the grass, and extra leaves in the trees.
As you can see here I'm adding the black last, to create the drama and the higher contrast.
And that's it for our beautiful oil pastel landscape. I hope all of you enjoyed this lesson
quite a lot. If you did, please give us a thumbs up, drop us a comment down below. It really helps
us to grow our Youtube channel, which enables us to create more awesome art content for you.
Please feel free to share an image of the artworks you are creating at home
with us on our various social media platforms. I'm artist Lillian Gray and see you next time!