Drawing: Oil Pastel Exploration
Shara Hughes
Drawing: Oil Pastel Exploration
Oil pastels are a versatile media that can be used in many different ways. ��They are a cross between drawing with crayons and painting with tempera or acrylic paint.
They can be mixed, smudged and blended to produce rich colors making them ideal for many projects. ��
Drawing: Oil Pastel Exploration
You will need:
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Drawing: Oil Pastel Exploration
Color Wheel – The color wheel was the first organized system of colors. It is still used to illustrate the relationships between colors.
Drawing: Oil Pastel Exploration
Primary Colors: Red, yellow, and blue are the building blocks of all other colors. These colors cannot be made from other colors.
Drawing: Oil Pastel Exploration
Secondary Colors: These colors can be made by mixing pairs of the primary colors. ��red + blue = purple
�blue + yellow = green
�yellow + red = orange
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Drawing: Oil Pastel Exploration
Tint: A tint is any color mixed with white. ��What is a tint that you know the name of?
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Drawing: Oil Pastel Exploration
Shade: A shade is any color mixed with black.��What is a shade that you know the name of?
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Drawing: Oil Pastel Exploration
Oil Pastel Techniques
Mix: Oil Pastels colors can be combined to create new colors. �
Smudge: Oil Pastels can be easily smeared and blended using your fingers.
Layer: Oil Pastels can be layered by putting one color directly on top of another.
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Drawing: Oil Pastel Exploration
Oil Pastel Tips
Oil pastels can get messy, but don’t let that stop you! ��It can be helpful to clean off your oil pastel on a separate sheet of paper or paper towel before using it to mix a new color.
It can also be helpful to use specific fingers when smudging. This will help keep unwanted colors from mixing with one another on your page. ��
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Drawing: Oil Pastel Exploration
Draw three 3-5 shapes.
Choose a light-colored oil pastel and draw 3-5 different overlapping shapes on your paper.
You now have many new shapes of different sizes where the shapes overlap.
The goal will be to fill each with a new color. ��
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Drawing: Oil Pastel Exploration
Fill a shape with a primary color.
Use a primary color to fill in a section of a shape.
Experiment with using different amounts of pressure while adding color.
How does the color change when you press hard? How does it change when you press lightly?�
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Harder Pressure
Lighter Pressure
Drawing: Oil Pastel Exploration
Practice smudging and layering while making tints and shades.
Add white to a section of your shape to create a tint.
Add black to a section of your shape to create a shade.
Use your finger to smudge the colors together.
How does the smudged tint look different from the layered shade? ��
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Smudged
Layered
Drawing: Oil Pastel Exploration
Fill each shape with a primary color.
Continue to fill sections of your shapes with primary colors. Add white and black to create tints and shades. ��
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Drawing: Oil Pastel Exploration
Practice mixing secondary colors.
Now that you’ve experimented mixing tints and shades, it’s time to mix some secondary colors. ��Work lightly to mix layers of primary colors together to create secondary colors.
What color can you make when you mix red and yellow together?
Continue filling in the rest of your shapes with mixed, smudged, and layered secondary colors. ��
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Drawing: Oil Pastel Exploration
Add layers.
You may find that some colors are stronger than others. You can add additional layers of color to get richer values.��Which colors do you find to be the strongest? ��Which are the weakest?
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Drawing: Oil Pastel Exploration
…add more layers!
Add a second or even third layer to adjust any of the colors you’d like to change.
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Drawing: Oil Pastel Exploration
Finish your drawing.
Continue filling in the rest of your page, experimenting to mix primary and secondary colors, tints, and shades while
smudging and layering.
What’s a new color you created?��What colors did you combine to make it?
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Drawing: Oil Pastel Exploration
Looking at how other artists use mixing, layering, and smudging can help you with your own work.
Look at work by these artists for ideas:
How can you tell these artists used mixing, layering, or smudging in their work?
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Holly Coulis, Cat as Universe, Mars, 2023
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