Oil Pastel Painting Tutorial

These lockdown days, I am trying to practice some traditional drawing and painting skills.

Pastel or any other dry medium is of my choice for their instant usage and started to dusting off those colorful boxes which in normal time, is kept under the shelf. And while posting the paintings on my facebook, some of my friends asked me if I cud show how I draw and paint with oil pastels.

So I started to record some video on my phone and here is a time-lapsed video tutorial on how to paint with oil pastels on colored craft papers. Cosmic scenery is one of my favorite - as there is huge scope for playing with light, so took this exploding planet as my main subject.

you see my process of painting with oil pastels is really simple

  1. Use the paper color as the mid-tone - that's why colored craft papers are really good.
  2. Fill large areas with colors, sometimes mix colors to achieve the shade you want.
  3. Then using a piece of cloth rub so the colors blend and fill the paper.
  4. Lastly add details, shadows and highlights, and if the new strokes need blending - rub again.

Oil pastels are somewhat opaque in nature, so mistakes can be fixed easily and one don't have to be cautious about edges.

Here is the final painting, sorry I needed to use my phone camera to shoot it, I don't have any scanner as my workflow is completely digital - so many photo artifacts and some loss in color too :/

Cosmic scenery oil pastel painting tutorial

And again, if you like this or have any suggestions, please comment here or on youtube.

Hope one day I ll illustrate a complete children's' book with manual medium - umm, may be in mixed media too ;)

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