How They Behave, the Method I Chose, and Two Simple Projects to Start
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| A 50-color set and my first floral painting with oil pastels. |
Introduction
Oil pastels are one of the friendliest materials to start with. There is no water, no drying time, no fixative to buy, and no dust to clean up. You open the box and you paint.
I am not an oil pastel expert. Dry pastel is my usual medium, and oil pastel is something I have been exploring more recently. This article follows those first steps: how the material actually behaves, the method I settled on, and two simple projects you can try today. If anything, learning alongside you is part of the point.
If you are still deciding between the different types of pastel, Soft Pastels vs Oil Pastels vs Hard Pastels compares them side by side.
1 - What I Used
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| Everything I used: oil pastels, cotton swabs, cotton, a small blade and a dish for scraping. |
You do not need much to start:
- Oil pastels. I used a Pentel Arts Oil Pastels set with 50 colors.
- Paper with some texture. I worked on Canson Mixed Media 300 gsm, which is my favorite all-purpose paper. For a full comparison of surfaces, I tested five of them in Best Paper for Pastels.
- Cotton swabs, my main blending tool here.
- A small piece of cotton, for softer, wider blending.
- A blending stump, sharpened, for edges and small details.
- A small blade for scraping, and a small dish to scrape into.
2 - Three Ways to Apply the Stick
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| The same stick, three different marks: the edge, the side, and the flat base. |
Before anything else, it helps to know that the stick itself gives you different marks depending on how you hold it. Using the edge gives you a thin line, the side gives you a broader stroke, and the flat base covers more ground at once. Each one produces a different line weight.
You can absolutely work this way, applying the stick directly to the paper. I chose a different route for most of my work, and the next section explains why.
3 - Why I Prefer Scraping
Instead of drawing with the stick, I scrape the pastel, either directly onto the paper or into a small dish, and then apply it with a cotton swab. Two reasons pushed me toward this method.
The first is streaking.
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| Left, the stick applied directly. Right, scraped pastel. The streaking is far more visible in the first. |
When you apply the stick directly, the streaked effect is much more evident and much harder and more laborious to smooth out. I only use that method in specific situations, such as creating deliberate effects or textures.
The second is control.
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| Scraping lets you build intensity gradually, from a whisper of color to full saturation. |
With scraping I have much more control over the intensity of the color, keeping it soft or building it up to full saturation depending on what I want. It can take a little more work, but it is the kind of work that goes into steering where the painting is heading.
That is different from working hard just to soften streaks or make an area look even. In the first case you have full control of the painting. In the second you are spending effort and time with nothing to show for it.
4 - Mixing Colors
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| Blue and yellow becoming green, using each of the three application methods. |
When it comes to mixing, every method works well: applying directly, scraping onto the paper, or mixing separately and applying the finished color. The colors blend quickly, which cuts both ways.
On one hand, you can create new colors and tones almost instantly. On the other, it means you need some caution when applying colors in your painting, so you do not end up with colors and tones you did not want.
For a full comparison of blending tools, including which ones work best with each application method, see How to Blend Pastels.
5 - Exercise 1: A Simple Sphere
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| A sphere holds almost everything: volume, light, reflection, shadow and cast shadow. |
Whenever I work with a new material, I like to paint a sphere. A sphere has volume, light, reflection, shadows both on the object and cast onto the surface, a defined edge, and light, mid and deep tones. It teaches you the material quickly.
For this sphere I used the color mix that was already on my dish and on my cotton swab, so it reads as green while you can also see blue and yellow tones in the shadows and the lit areas.
I blended with the cotton swab and occasionally with a small piece of cotton. For the edges I used a sharpened blending stump, and to reinforce the reflected light along the bottom of the sphere I applied white oil pastel directly to the paper.
As you can see, there is no single method. There is only where each one works best. I used several different approaches to make one simple sphere.
One thing worth noting: oil pastel makes far less mess than dry pastel, and I had excellent use of the material with very little waste.
6 - Exercise 2: A Floral Design
For the second exercise I used one of my own floral drawings and painted it with oil pastel alone.
The background was the part I found most challenging. There were moments when I wanted to reach for dry pastel instead, because spreading oil pastel, precisely because it is oil-based, means it does not glide across the paper as easily as what I am used to. With dry pastel I can cover a large area quickly.
So for large areas I would avoid oil pastel, purely because the effort is greater, though it is far from impossible. Since I do own dry pastel, in many cases I would end up choosing it for broad coverage simply because it is faster and more fluid.
Even so, I painted the background with oil pastel and I liked the result quite a lot. I think I am just spoiled by dry pastel.
The fact that oil pastel grips more, exactly because it is oil-based, and therefore asks for a little more effort, is not something I consider a flaw. It is a specific difference compared to dry pastel, which is simply my main point of reference and nothing more.
7 - What I Liked Most
Three things stood out during these first steps.
How easy it is to correct. One of my sheets came out too dark, and a simple eraser fixed it. The result pleased me a great deal. This alone makes oil pastel forgiving for beginners.
How the colors blend. The way colors mix easily and integrate almost instantly is a delight in itself.
The range between intense and soft. I could reach the saturation or the softness I wanted, in the proportion I wanted. The flowers ended up with livelier, more saturated color, while I kept the leaves soft, and whenever an area became too intense I could quickly bring it back with the eraser, desaturating the painting.
8 - Choosing a Material by Purpose
Comparing oil pastel with dry pastel is useful to me for one specific reason: when I am working on a mixed media painting, I want to know which material will give me the best result with the least effort.
The way I organize it in my head goes something like this: background washes go to watercolor or dry pastel, transparency goes to watercolor, details and textures go to colored pencil, and vibrant, intense color goes to oil pastel.
That is only an example, and your categories may differ. The point is that I keep sorting materials by their characteristics, the effort involved, and the result they produce, so that when I sit down to paint I already know which one serves which purpose.
One caveat on my own rule: for me, the result comes before the effort. If tool A takes more work but gives a better result, the result wins.
9 - Using Oil Pastels on Coloring Pages
Oil pastel works on printed pages, with two things to keep in mind.
The first is paper. Coloring pages printed on standard printer paper are smooth, which limits how much pigment the surface holds. Printing on mixed media or drawing paper makes a noticeable difference, as I found when I tested five surfaces.
The second is scale. Oil pastel suits shapes and areas where you want strong, saturated color more than it suits sweeping backgrounds, for the reason described above. On a floral design, that means the flowers themselves are where oil pastel shines, while large open areas may take more patience.
The scraping method helps a great deal here, because it lets you build color gradually inside defined shapes without the streaking that direct application leaves behind.
If you would like well-designed floral pages to practice on, the Original Floral Designs Coloring Book offers 72 hand-drawn floral coloring pages with a mix of detailed shapes and open areas, which makes it easy to try both approaches.
Final Thoughts
Oil pastels are a generous material for beginners. They are forgiving, they correct easily with an eraser, they blend almost instantly, and they need nothing beyond the sticks, some paper and a cotton swab.
If you are starting today, my suggestion is simple. Try the three ways of applying the stick, then try scraping, and see which one suits your hand. Paint a sphere. Then paint something you like. You will learn more in that one afternoon than in any amount of reading, including this article.
For more on pastel in general, Pastels for Beginners: Unlocking the World of Pastels covers the fundamentals across all types.
Have you tried oil pastels yet? Share your experience in the comments!
