New Medium

 Greetings

Every now and again my friends give me presents of art materials.

Often these are things I use all the time, such as oil paints, art board, acrylic paints.

But sometimes they are things I have never used, or have used once and not got the hang of, or just found too tricky, impermanent, or simply too annoying.

Pastels fall into this latter category. The colours in a set are never the most useful and 'chalk' pastels are too dusty to  retain any drawn effect if left in a portfolio- even after several coats of fixative.

I also dislike their blocky nature, which makes any detail extremely difficult to achieve.

As a consequence, I have hardly ever used them in my work.

Nor, till now, had I tried to work in oil pastels.

I discovered a box of these when tidying the studio- I know not whence they came, but I know I didn't buy them.

I did, however, decided to give them a go.

This is the result.

It is true that they are blendable, but that blendablity if countered by their habit of catching a little bit of a neighbouring colour and carrying it into the bit you are working on willy nilly.

It was only by creating points with a craft knife that I was able to achieve any of the eye mouth and nose detail, and even then, they are nowhere near what I can do with a pencil.

The result is, I think, reasonable for a first go and I've learnt quite a lot about the limitations of the medium.

I may try again in the future and see if I can get a better result.

I shall also have to do some research as to how to preserve any work I do. Does fixative work on oil pastel? Do I just store it with a cover sheet and hope?

Until next time

Adieu