Being Deliberate

Hi everyone,

I hope you enjoy getting stuck in to the project this month! While I was editing the video it got me thinking about the different materials I use, specifically oil pastels.

Oil pastels are a really versatile material and because they can be used on a variety of surfaces, including paper, canvas, wood, and fabric, they offer a lot of flexibility. As you know I use a lot of different tools and media when painting and find it’s always good to keep trying out different things to see if they can add something or create a mark that I find exciting.

I often get asked about the Woodys, which are a water based drawing tool that I’ve used quite a lot. To be honest though I’ve started moving away from them towards oil pastels.

The reason for this is that I like to use materials to take advantage of their specific properties. (I do this with different types of paint too and I’ll write about this in a future post).

Painting in acrylic and other water based media means the oil pastels don’t mix with them. So I can use them in a variety of ways.

It’s great to be able to put down a mark or line that I know will not get picked up by the water. This is something that does happen with the Woodys because they are water based. If you work over them, the colour gets picked up and mixes with the paint. This can be nice but is tricky to have control over.

So this is where the oil pastel come in. I can make a drawing mark and when I work over, it just stays there. I can use this property very deliberately and use the pastel as a resist. Making marks that I know I can paint over and then wipe some paint off leaving the oil pastel colour mostly untouched.

Why am I telling you this I hear you ask? Well, it’s always good to have a firm understanding of the materials you use so you can pick up the right tool at the right time. Mixing materials can be very exciting but unless you think carefully about the properties of what you are using, you can end up with a bit of a mess. So it’s about being experimental, but deliberate in the choices you make by understanding what certain tools are likely to do.