Branching out into Oil Pastels

I’ve been hitting a wall creatively with watercolours recently, as I lack confidence in my technical skills, and get frustrated with the outcomes as a result. Now, I love creating and I do enjoy putting in the effort to learn new techniques and develop my skills, but I don’t want making art to become a negative process. That means I have to know when to pull back and gain a different perspective on creating.

Changing the medium I’m using always seems to do the trick! While working with watercolours I tend to get caught up in the details and realism, so when I picked up oil pastels the thick crayons made it so I had to let go of the small details and instead focus on the large shapes. I also love how pigmented and vibrant the colours are! Something I don’t get with my watercolours.

Blooming Tulips

One of the first oil pastel pieces I did! You can see how flat the drawing is, and how it comes across as more of an illustration, which was so new and fun to me!

I started out by drawing flower still lifes, very simple and flat drawings that have an illustrative feel to them. I then branched out into landscapes and got more comfortable with layering the colours, blending the elements together and adding depth and dimension to the pieces. I feel like I can now draw just about anything in pastels!

What started as a creative outlet to re-invigorate me turned into a whole new obsession! I now have just as many oil pastel paintings as I do watercolour paintings!

So if you’re in an art block and in need of a change of pace artistically, try picking up a new medium (it doesn’t have to be professional quality, these pastels were $1 a piece! $26 for the set!), you never know how it will affect your art making!