Pigment Sticks, Oil Pastels, and Other Drawing Materials

I've been experimenting with pigment sticks (like oil paint sticks), oil pastels, water soluble crayons, and colored pencils, on paper with several different grounds. I am using these with a couple of oil paint mediums: alkyd resin gel and odorless mineral spirits. This is not a tutorial, as I am pretty much a novice with the oil media, though I've experimented with it over the years.

I hope you enjoy this video of my explorations:


If you are interested in the materials I'm using, check out the links below. I have just ordered a few more mediums, and will also try cold wax with the pigment sticks and oil pastels. I am interested in finding new ways of painting, seeing what happens to the imagery when using different materials.

R&F  Pigment Sticks
Arches Oil Paper
Gamsol
Alkyd Resin
Prismacolor colored pencils
Caran d'Ache NeoPastel oil pastels
Holbein oil pastels
Sennelier oil pastels
Sandable Hard Gesso
Absorbent Ground
Caran d'Ache water soluble crayons

I also like to use 300# smooth (hot press) watercolor paper.

Working Larger

I am having a lot of fun with these crayon pieces, and they work (for me) at this small scale, 10"x10".  I would LOVE, though, to see them really BIG:

Obviously, the crayons I'm using would not scale up like this.  So what?  Oil stick?  Paint on a brush?  I know I (and some of you perhaps) often see a piece that I'd like to do at a larger scale.  I'd like to feel myself in a different relationship, physically, to the painting.  Instead of Me the Artist at the table or standing at the wall/easel, separate from the Painting, I'd love to almost walk into the painting, feel it more like an environment, and then have to walk ten feet back to actually see it.  Two very different relationships to it in space. 

When working on small pieces, I can be the artist and the viewer at the same time, and I think those are very different roles.  As the artist, I need to be in the process, obsessed with the marks I'm making as they relate to one another and to the painting.  As a viewer, I see the final visual content, separate from process.  The piece becomes its own entity, no matter what my process or intentions. Part of the process of making art is going back and forth between these roles.  I wonder how scale would affect my ability to do so, or my perception of this back and forth dance.

Crayons, Again

So I'm still on this crayon kick, and wanted to try various crayons on a pastel ground.  Pastel Ground is a product that Golden makes, which transforms your paper into a toothy pastel paper.

This was my "beginner's luck" piece.  10"x10" on gessoed paper

This is the piece I did in the demo.  I used the materials mentioned in the video, plus various brands of oil pastel.

In this one I'm trying to copy the first piece, at top.

Here is a link to the Cretacolor Monolith pencils.  I think everything else is in my previous post.

Crayons and Oil Pastels

Today I worked with lines and scribbles, inspired by a few of my students who were in the 100 Drawings class.  My goal was just to see what I can do with crayons, oil pastels, and other line-making tools, on their own, without point.  I did venture into paint, though, as you'll see in the video, but the focus is on drawing media.  These are not meant to be "pieces", or even studies.  They are just byproducts of my playing around.  Which is how I like to think of all my work.

Crayola, various oil pastels, water soluble crayon

Crayola, various oil pastels, water soluble crayon

Crayola, various oil pastels, water soluble crayon

This one started on a piece of "scrap" paper, one I'd used to lift paint.  So it has a ground of acrylic paint.  I scratched through the oil pastel with a razor into the dark green at bottom right.

This one is soft pastel (the really dusty kind), conte crayon (the black), a few oil pastels, and Crayola crayons.  Maybe some graphite in there too.

Graphite of various sorts, oil pastels, water soluble crayon

Graphie, ink, Crayola crayon, and water soluble crayon

Soft pastel, graphite crayon, Crayola crayon, ink, water soluble crayon

Various oil pastels and crayons, acrylic paint

Various crayons and oil pastels, graphite, ink, and acrylic paint

This one started on a piece of "scrap" paper on which I had off-loaded excess paint.  On top of the paint is graphite, oil pastel, and various crayons.

Also done on top of paint off-loads: mostly oil pastel, acrylic paint.

The crayons and oil pastels I reference in the video are:

• Crayola Crayons, which you can get anywhere, so a link is unnecessary.
• Cheap Oil Pastels: I used ProArt, but Cray Pas are comparable; Van Gogh are good inexpensive oil pastels.
• Sennelier Oil Pastels:  these are buttery and pigment-rich.
• Holbein Oil Pastels:  I love these; they are a bit harder than the Sennelier, and just as smooth and pigment-rich.  They come in a H U G E range of colors, with tints and shades of many colors as well.  These are a bit larger than Sennelier, and comparably more expensive per piece.
• Caran d'Ache Neopastel: yummy, not as soft as Sennelier, good pigment load.  These are a little smaller than the Sennelier, and very slightly cheaper.  Probably the same price per unit of weight or volume.
• Caran d'Ache Neocolor II:  these are the water soluble crayons I use all the time. 

In some of the above pieces I've used graphite crayon, graphite pencils, and pitt pens as well. Fun FUN!! 

Notes from the Studio

Just wanted to share with you what's going on in my studio this week.  First, this morning for some unknown reason I wanted to work in oil media:  oil sticks, pigment sticks, oil pastels and oil paint.  So I painted on some drawings I'd made yesterday.  Here are two of the drawings:

Drawing #1; 20"x20", acrylic, charcoal, graphite on paper

Drawing #3; 20"x20", acrylic, charcoal, graphite on paper

There were four of these, and I kept #1, but painted over #2, #3, and #4 using oils.  Here are the results so far.  THESE ARE STILL IN PROCESS, so if you post them somewhere, please indicate that.

Oil #1, 20"x20"

Oil #2, 20"x20"

Oil #3, 20"x20"

I am using an alkyd resin medium with the the paints and over the oil pastels (makes it dry faster), and mostly using my fingers to apply the paint.  I've been looking at some colorful work on Pinterest, in particular recently Madeline Denaro, Wendy McWilliams, Charlotte Foust, and others.  I'd been getting very scribbly and linear, and using neutrals, so I'm looking maybe to bring in some shapes and patterns?  I don't know.  This is just a baby step beginning.

On the 3'x3' front, I will show you several stages of the painting I put in a recent post:

This is where it was in my Working Large post.

Here is is somewhat transformed.

And here I totally obscured the India ink portion.

This is a detail shot of the piece at this point.

 This, of course, is still in process.  I've done a little more to the red area, but it has a ways to go. 

Here are links to some of the materials I used:
Holbein Oil Pastels
Sennelier Oil Pastels
Caran d'Ache Neopastels
R&F Pigment Sticks
Gamblin Oil Paints
Alkyd Resin Gel (Gamblin's brand is called "Galkyd")

Some of the above links are to the manufacturers; some are to Blick Art Materials.  All of the above are available at Blick Art Materials, and many other art supply retailers.

My work table this morning.

Encaustic Collage Experiments

I am quite revved up about encaustics, having had a fabulously stimulating time at the Fifth Annual Encaustics Conference in Provincetown, MA the other weekend. I have been experimenting with various techniques I learned at the conference, and corresponding with artists I met there.
Above is my first encaustic "Scribble Collage" experiment.

I've also been experimenting with a way to apply my Scribble Collage approach to this exciting medium: painting tissue papers, then using them for collage. As acrylics are not compatible with encaustic, I tried painting papers using oil paint mixed with cold wax medium, and let them dry for a few days.

I scraped the paint/wax on using a credit card, and then did texture rubbings and transfers.

I also scribbled on the papers with oil sticks and pigment sticks (which are the same thing) and oil pastels (which differ from the above in that they contain no drying agents).
I don't know if this combination of oil media and encaustics is safe and durable yet, and I have sent out feelers to determine the best way to approach this technique and will share more as I learn.

This piece is done on unryu (say: un-RYE-you), a tissue-weight paper with a distinctive fibrous texture:

Meanwhile, if any of you have suggestions, comments, or questions, please e-mail me or leave a comment on this post. DO NOT TRY THIS AT HOME until I get the goods on safety! There may be a better medium than cold wax to do this process. Read this for more info on cold wax. I'm trying to find out if the solvents in the cold wax evaporate sufficiently during drying to be compatible with this process.
THANKS for visiting!

More Blind Scribble

Thanks for all your comments of my blind scribble drawing practice that I posted on Friday. I thought I'd share a few painting-collage-drawings that I did based on this practice. I began each in this series with a newspaper collage background, just to add some text and texture.

In this one, I followed the newspaper collage with a blind scribble in black oil pastel, then another one in a terracotta oil pastel. I painted with acrylics, being guided by the structure imposed by the collage and the scribbles. I stamped the Q's, and then went over the scribbles to give them more visual weight.


In this one I painted acrylics over the newspaper collage, and then did the blind scribble with a water-soluble graphite pencil. Next came the white crayon scribble, not blind, and watercolor in sepia and pthalo blue. I emphasized the pencil scribble with black oil pastel, then added the red in acrylic. I love that red!


Here is a page in my sketchbook in which I did two half-blind drawings of crows in water-soluble graphite pencil. By "half-blind" I mean I was looking at a picture of a crow, not at my paper, and then towards the end of the drawing I did look at my paper so that I could make a closed shape. Sort of like cheating just at the end. But this process does result in really interesting shapes!


To use these crows in a collage-painting, I first traced them both onto white Art Tissue paper (not wrapping tissue, which has a shiny side) in fine point Micron pen. Then I cut them out, roughly, and applied them to this collage-painting, PEN SIDE DOWN, using acrylic matte medium. This is an adaptation of a technique I learned from Jane LaFazio. The tissue paper practically disappears so that you are left with the drawing layered onto the collage.


Trying to incorporate drawing into my collage-paintings is an ongoing process, and doing these series of studies in my sketchbook or on small sheets of paper is immensely helpful. Thanks for visiting!

PS: I decided to change my picture in my Profile. This one is more realistic, and more recent.

Water-Soluble Oil Pastels Revisited

OK, so I tried the Portfolio water-soluble oil pastels again, inspired by iHanna, who kindly commented and gave me a link to her demonstration. Check it out. She uses the oil pastels on un-primed paper, then coats it with acrylic medium when dry. I did a variation on that by brushing on a tiny bit of gesso, just here and there, on the page before playing with the oil pastels. Then, after brushing on some water, I scraped the color around with a credit card, my favorite art supply. Here is a detail of the above.
And here is another page in this ongoing sketchbook:
On another topic: I'm gearing up for my Color and Composition class, "Creative Beginnings", which is on Friday. I got my supplies together this afternoon and wrote the hand-out. Here are a few paints I'm bringing:
These Blick matte acrylic craft paints are not as bright as I'd like, so I'll be sharing my Goldens for color mixing. I use a lot of craft paints along with my Goldens in Scribble Collage. Thanks for visiting!