If you are an artist, there are all manner of art mediums available in the market to choose from depending on your painting style. While using pencils and paintings to work on your piece of art may seem classical, you can’t rule out the use of soft oil pastels which is still the preferred choice for most artists. They allow you to achieve the effects that you can’t get from other mediums, and for those who still find soft oil pastel interesting, you will get the best soft pastel for your kind of work. So what are the soft pastels?
To simplify things for you, there are several forms of pastels available today including; soft pastels, oil pastels, hard pastels, pencil pastels, chalk pastels, and pan pastels. They could be sticks of pigments or pans as is the case with pan pastels held together and what makes their difference is how they are held together. Soft pastel is different from the rest in that the binder they contain is the least compared to the rest of pastels, instead, they have more pigment resulting in dense colours. However, the less the binder the soft pastel has the more fragile it becomes.
Sennelier oil pastels date back in history to around 1925 when artists required a blend between dustless crayons and saturated colours. While some artists wanted something they could paint on directly to the canvas without having to paint with brush and colours some wanted the status quo to remain where you sketch first and then come with your paint. There are several grades of sennelier oil pastels available in the market although they are pricey.
When starting with oil pastels, you should look for inexpensive sets of artist-grade brands or simply create your palette and put your favourite colours in them.
How to use oil pastels
Just like the coloured pencils, the stick’s hardiness contributes to different effects when using oil pastels. Oil pastel can be used wet or dry on canvas, glass, board, paper, metal, wood, or rock. You can use oil pastel confidently on any kind of surface or even in mixed media. You can blend colours or apply them in layers and work well. When you are finished with oil pastel paintings make sure you glaze them to cure although some will cure on their own as acrylics do harden after some time.
Thoughts about sennelier pastels
For every aspiring artist out there, sennelier soft pastels are the softest you can ever try, and you must handle them carefully lest you scramble them. The bright side of soft pastel is that the pigment is extra brilliant such that the white panel is as white as snow, and the rest of the colours are as bold as they are loud. The flip of the softness in oil pastels is that they are not versatile enough for under layers. They are the best only for the final layers. Another downside of soft sennelier pastels is that not all colours are consistent in fine quality. Some are extra smooth such as white while darker ones are scratchy and chalky. Finally, even if pastels nowadays are non-toxic by design, they leave a lot of dust behind and it will certainly affect your respiratory system in one way or another. Hurry and order some sennelier pastels today!
