I Tried Oil Pastels for the First Time… What a Surprise!

What happens when a soft pastel artist tries oil pastels for the first time? Come on into the studio and let's find out. So, this is going to be different, my friends. I have never tried oil pastels. I mean, other than maybe when you're in elementary school. I think it was like Craya or something like that. But the Lightwish company, I love this cover. The product uh packaging is amazing. Look at the gold. Uh the company Lightwish, they're fantastic. They had sent me some of their soft pastels, you know, the dry kind uh to review, and I love them. Absolutely love them. But they mentioned if they could send me a set of their oil pastels, and I was like, well, I've never tried oil pastels before. and we came up with the idea of well, how fantastic for me to try their oil pastels for the first time. So, that's what we're going to do in this video. So, again, the packaging is fantastic. 77 colors, buttery soft, intense colors, smooth texture, and uh I am like a kid in a candy store right now. Ooh, look at this. That's interesting. They have one, two, three. That's a neat way to do it. They put the the full box on top of all three trays. So, I think we'll just spread them all out. And look at all the colors at once. How about that? This is so fun. If you're an artist, you got to be with me with this. It's just like you can't wait to see the colors. I can't really take them all three off at once. So, let's try this. Oh. Oh, okay. Okay, I see they're this way. Oh my gosh, look at these colors. Wow. Okay, I'm going to have to show each one like this. Look at that. Gorgeous. Wow. Now, I get questions all the time about oil pastels versus soft pastels. So, this is going to be a great opportunity for me to really give an answer to that. I usually, you know, I give generic information like, well, soft pastels are soft. They're dusty. They're matte finish. And uh you can layer a lot with soft pastels. I'm not sure about the layering ability of oil pastels. And uh or the water solubility uh of oil pastels. These colors are fantastic. I'm looking at them rather the same as I do with when I'm unboxing or opening uh soft pastels. I'm looking for a variety of colors. Um, I'm also always looking for beautiful greens. Looks like we got I'm looking for neutral, earthy greens, too. Look at these. A lot of sets of colors. Um, like when brands have a, you know, 50 colors, 100 colors, whatever. There's just a lot of highly saturated colors. So, I love the fact that there's some nice neutral colors in here. Ooh, look at this pretty little minty teal blue here. And, uh, there are purples. Sets are usually lacking purples. And look at this. We got some purples. We got some mauve colors. Ooh, there's a nice deep blue. That would be beautiful with some flowers. And then they have a couple of uh whites and grays. Oh, a gradation of kind of whites and grays. This presentation is just gorgeous. So, I'm just going to have some fun with these. I'm not going to try to create anything too serious, but I want to do something along with our theme this month. Um, this month we're uh kind of um revisiting uh older paintings. if you've been painting for a while, things you liked, thing you'd like to try again. And uh I've already had a couple of videos this month, but I'm going to um try to redo this painting. Now, this is nothing special. I am not really a big acrylic artist, but I've saved this little acrylic painting I did. Nothing special. Um I'm almost embarrassed to share it, but I I kept thinking I would like to redo this painting again. I want to try it with soft pastels, but I thought, you know, since I have these oil pastels here, let me try that. And then I think I might try something I think I'm going to try this on um pastel matte. Pastel matte is um surface that takes just about everything. I'm assuming it'll take oil pastels. I have not done a lot of research before this video, obviously. So, I thought I'd try that. Something kind of quick and fun and sketchy on that. And then I thought I'd try I had a lot of people asking about one of my videos uh last month where I worked in this black sketchbook. I used uh Karan D'Ache um Neocolor 2 watersoluble wax pastels. That's such a long name it's hard to say. And uh everybody loved the effect. And what I love about this is it doesn't smear. I mean that's fantastic. So, some of you have asked if uh oil pastels will smear or smudge on this. And I'm thinking the answer is yes. So, you would have to protect the pages with a piece of tracing paper or something. But, I thought I might try working on a black surface. I'm popping this little clip in afterwards after I made the video you're going to see right now to let you know I did work on a dark surface. This is a dark charcoal Canson velvet surface and I already learned a lot from the video you're going to see right now. And so I tried some new things and I have a lot more to share with you about oil pastels and specifically with this working on a dark surface. But before we get started, I thought I'd go ahead and share how you can purchase these. And Lightwish has let me know that the best value currently is on Amazon. They have offered a almost 20%. It's like a 19% discount on their sets. Now, that discount is only from August 20th to August 24th, but after that, from the 24th to the 29th, you can still get that 19% discount if you use the coupon code susan024, all caps. You can also purchase directly from the LightWish website. There is free shipping, I think, pretty much everywhere. Um, so that's a great deal, but they are a little more expensive than Amazon. I wanted to show you here there are three set sizes. This is the same on Amazon too. I just didn't show you that page. They have a 100 color set that includes everything that's in the first two set. The smallest set is the 48 set and the set that I used in this tutorial. The one they gifted me is the 77 floral theme set. So those are the pastels you'll be seeing me use is from this 77 set. And just like with the Lightwish soft pastels that I shared with you guys a few videos ago, you can get a 12% discount on Lightwish oil pastels if you use the coupon code Susan024 at checkout. All caps. All right, you ready to see me paint with oil pastels for the first time? Here we go. Once again, this is pastel matte. I love this surface for soft pastels and I have come to find out I love it for oil pastels as well. It worked great. I will share that there's a lot of painting principles that are the same regardless of what medium you're using, but this was indeed a different experience for me. The oil pastels did behave differently. Now, I liked this little color and I realized it's almost exactly the same color as my surface. I don't remember what color it was, but isn't that lovely? Now, I do have a pet peeve about labels. I didn't even bother taking the labels off for this. I just decided uh to paint kind of in that sketchy style like I mentioned with the Neocolor two wax pastels and uh that's the way you're going to see me paint here. Now the little acrylic painting I showed at the beginning that I'm actually using as my reference. I couldn't remember where I had gotten the reference image and I recently found it's from unsplash.com. My colors I'm going to make a lot more vibrant, but I really love this neutral scene. And I just wanted to give credit to photographer from unsplash.com. Marina Reich. First, I'm going to get in a little sketch with a Prismacolor new pastel. It's just a darker pastel. You could use anything. And this is sped up a bit for the Monae Cafe version of this tutorial. If you're a patron of mine, you've probably already seen I shared this video already on my Patreon page. And it's almost 100% real time. So, just one of the perks from being a patron. I'll tell you how to become a patron. I do have a a coupon code you can use um through the end of August. So, I'll talk about that in a minute. So, I am just basically um redoing my painting, my acrylic painting. I have it sitting near me here. And I'm just kind of looking at it and getting a basic sketch in. And at this point, I had no idea what to expect when it comes to layering. I was uh touching my fingers there. I noticed these oil pastels. Uh, people talk about soft pastels being dusty or messy. I find the oil pastels are a little more messy, but I did love them. I'm going to go ahead and tell you it was really fun. So, I put down some dark for this tree, kind of like I would with soft pastel and started layering over it. Well, in hindsight, I've come up with a new way to do this. In the next videos you see, you'll you'll already see some of my new and improved techniques, but I started layering a little bit over it and decided I would come back to that later. I worked the way I typically do, kind of blocking things in to begin with, and I realized pretty soon that I wanted to use the approach, like I mentioned, with the uh one of the videos I did last month with the Neocolor 2 wax pastels. Uh you may recall, if you saw that video, it was a very popular video, how I sketched in a black sketchbook with those. Um actually, they look kind of like coloring crayons, but they're very sketchy. So, that's the the style and the technique I decided on here. Um, I got in a few of the distant trees. I put a little dark down first and I layered a little uh lighter blue on top. I did notice this set was lacking darks. That's why I was kind of going, "Okay, hm, how am I going to do this?" I really only had two dark darks. One was kind of a black, almost a charcoal the first one I put down, and the other was a dark blue that you can see here. Now, here's why I went definitely to the sketchy style, more linear work. I should say where I I think of Van Gogh when I paint or sketch in this way. And I'm just going to bring a lot of energy uh through directional marks. I use that pretty green, that earthy green to layer over some of the distant trees. And again, just like with the Neocolor two pastels, I found these or this technique very um meditative and relaxing. I really enjoyed this process. So, I'm getting a little bit of drama coming with some sketchy marks in the sky. And uh once again, I am just playing with these colors, not really knowing uh what is going to happen. And that was part of the mystery, you know. I kind of liked that. Now, I want to invite you if you are an oil pastel artist to comment, give me uh suggestions or feedback as to my approach. Pardon my hands in this. Again, it's part of the real-time Patreon video. uh because I've already learned so much uh on my own but also from my patrons. Now on my Patreon page, I have a lot of very very beginner artists. We do a lot mostly soft pastel but obviously I do branch out in other mediums sometimes. Um but I do have also very accomplished artists as part of my Patreon family um in other mediums. We have some fantastic watercolor artists, oil painters, and artists who are very accomplished with oil pastels. Donna, I'm talking to you, one of my patrons. She's already given me so many great tips. And on that note, let me go ahead and tell you how to become a patron and join my Patreon family. It's super easy. Only $5 a month. You get to unlock hundreds of lessons. We have games, prizes, and so much more. And I get to see your work. It's like a big, beautiful artistic family. Now, I do have a coupon code for August 2026 until the end of August, August 31st on the annual membership. patreon.com/susanjenkins. Use that coupon code and get 20% off. And I'll have all of that information in the description of this video. All right, let's get back to this fun little oil pastel painting. All right, so things are coming along. Uh, right now at this point, I have a pretty analogous color palette. That just means colors that are kind of close to each other on the color wheel, blues and greens. Um I do throw in some purple in a bit. And I did notice that my hands got quite waxy during this process. I had to get up and wash my hands um quite a few times. I kept a paper towel near me and that seemed to really help. So with my mark making um if you're a beginner artist, the way I approach this is you can see I've got some rolling hills in this particular um painting or image. Uh, I improvised it a bit from the reference image obviously with a color palette, but when I think of um making my marks when I'm painting in this sketchy style, I'm literally caressing the landscape, moving my pastels in the direction of the element. In this case, obviously, tall wispy grasses, but with the hills in the distance, I'm kind of carving my marks down again like I'm caressing the hill. And I put little shadowy or uh darker values in the crevices of the hill. Now I'm going to play and explore with some of the yellows. There were little bits of yellow flowers in the uh well the original reference image again was very neutral, but I do love that they have lots of nice neutral yellows, neutral brownish and sepia colors. So, my idea was to approach this similar to a soft pastel painting and get kind of my darker more u by the way a dark yellow. I used to wonder what is a dark yellow? Well, it's a brown or you know a dark tan or something like that. And then add gradually a little bit more of lighter golden colors on top. And then finally my lightest yellows um wherever the sun is hitting. And I'm showing how I'm trying to, you know, meander my flowers a little bit here. And this was a point where I'm starting to get more layering in. And uh when you add these just to the bare surface alone, they apply great. Now I'm adding some really gestural dark uh foreground grasses. But as soon as I get I would say three or four um maybe three layers um was kind of max for me. These are super super soft wax pastels. Um, so that's why I resorted to more of the sketchy style. You can see I got another little layer on top there. And they start to eventually blend themselves rather like soft pastels. The more layers you add, they start blending, but they will lose their vibrancy and color. And uh, what's a word I could use? Stickability. I found they didn't um adhere very well once you got past um, three or four layers. So, but there's nothing wrong with that. I love this sketchy kind of style. And it's really interesting to me how you could put colors next to each other to create vibrancy, movement, drama, and a really fun, like I say, it feels like a Van Go style to me. Here's where I'm adding little bits of that purple in the shadowy areas of the hills. I'm echoing it throughout the painting just for some fun. And uh a little bit in the shadowy areas of the hills, behind the trees, and uh just having fun. I'm going to jump ahead here just a little bit. Adding some lighter values to capture the sunshine on the hills. Adding a bit more drama in the sky. And while I'm finishing up here, I thought I'd share with you a few things that I learned. I think if I was to do this particular painting over again, I would have thought um more carefully about my darks and that big tree area there and perhaps worked a bit more in sections um rather than putting down all of that dark to begin with. But I did learn after this lesson, like I said, can't wait to bring you the next videos of the other four paintings. I did learn that you can blend these. I did some experimenting in one of my uh upcoming paintings where I blended the clouds in the sky. Um and it worked really great. So, I've got a lot more I'm going to be sharing. But once again, I am a novice oil pastel painter. And as I've already mentioned, I find many of the same principles apply when you cross mediums. There's so many artistic principles that they're just the same no matter what medium it is, but you kind of have to learn that particular medium. And now I want to show you the final. I did love the vibrancy. That quite surprised me, the vibrant color of these oil pastels. I also loved the texture. I mean, compare it to the little acrylic painting. Again, this painting is really old. You probably can't appreciate it here in the video, but some of the colors are literally uh like impasto where they they stick up and you can see it like like strokes of oil paint. So, I really love this experience. Yes, I do like oil pastels. Don't worry, I'm not giving up on my favorite medium soft pastels, but I am going to play more with them like I already did. Again, this is a little teaser of some of the next lessons coming up. My patrons are going to get mostly real-time content for these four paintings, but I think I'll take one of them and maybe make it all real time for my subscribers here on my YouTube channel. By the way, please subscribe if you haven't already. Like this video. Give it a thumbs up. It really helps YouTube to share my video more often. And please leave me a comment. Let me know what you thought about my first try with oil pastels and especially if you are an oil pastel painter. I'd love to hear your feedback. All right, everyone. As always, God bless and happy happy painting.