Introduction to Artists' Oil Pastels with Roy Simmons

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A day to enjoy an Introduction to Artists' Oil Pastels with Roy Simmons



Oil pastel may be one of the most underrated mediums for artists. This may be due to the fact that there are many cheaper varieties available, but they're harder than the artist types, and don't blend as well.

Proper Artist quality Oil Pastels contain more pigment and wax/oil content. Sennelier are one of the most well known brands, but are expensive by comparison. However Mungyo make a version quite comparable, We will use Mungyo for colour and Sennelier for white as it is exceptionally good. Also the Mungyo pastels are larger which helps when creating broad areas of tone and colour. See below for details

We will look at the various materials and tools we will be using, the main 'tools' though are your fingers! Warm fingers soften the pastel and aid blending. We will begin by doing some simple exercises, to familiarise ourselves with how oil pastels behave. Concentrating on blending techniques and ways of drawing into the pastel. Layering the pastel can produce fascinating results, especially combined with scratching through the layers to colours beneath. We will also discuss using other materials and solvents with oil pastel. You can use different coloured papers to work on, smooth surfaces are best.

For our first painting I will demonstrate step by step for you to follow along. We will always keep in mind 'Start with unity, then add variety'. Using one or 2 colours to start with really helps with initial unity. This first painting will be a landscape with good lighting to exploit. After lunch I will demonstrate a painting with trees and more elements to really push the various techniques that are possible with this exiting medium. Then you will do your version.

There is a nice story from the Sennelier website regarding Picasso... "In 1949, Parisian painter Henri Goetz approached Henri Sennelier the famous artist materials manufacturer, about creating a wax colour stick for his friend Pablo Picasso. Picasso, a long-time Sennelier customer and a frequent visitor to their store across the street from the Louvre Museum, was looking for a medium that could be used freely on a variety of surfaces without fading or cracking. Their collaboration produced the incomparable SENNELIER oil pastels.

" We should though mention the fact that Oil Pastels were invented in Japan, by the Cray-pas company. This is from Wikipedia... Teachers Rinzo Satake and his brother-in-law Shuku Sasaki read Yamamoto's work and became fanatical supporters. They became keen to implement his ideas by replacing the many hours Japanese children had to spend drawing ideograms with black Indian ink with free drawing hours, filled with as much colour as possible. For this, they decided to produce an improved wax crayon and in 1921 founded the Sakura Cray-Pas Company and began production.