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Combining Chalk and Oil pastels
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Message
Posted
We're on holiday in Northern Ireland at the moment and last night I did a pastel drawing (or is it painting?) of Slieve Donard from Newcastle. It was going well until I tried to draw some flowers in the foreground (no idea what species, but they have beautiful pink florets). I started with chalk pastels, but for the life of me I just couldn't do the flowers, because there just wasn't the intensity of colour I needed. So I finished them with oil pastels. It's a near disaster, though, because even with oil pastels I had to stab the paper to get the intensity I needed, which meant loss of accuracy.
Does anyone have any advice on how I should have done the flowers? Here's the drawing.
Here's the reference photo.
Here's the reference photo.
Edited
by Bill Downie
Posted
It’s a pastel drawing in my book, it isn’t painting but I’ve seen pastel work described as painting!
I can only think of using say gouache or even acrylic, but you’ve then got a mixed media work. Gouache dries flat so that’s what I would turn to.
A good quality W&N designer white with some body, tinted with your colour choice…
Posted
I’m not a huge pastel user Bill but could you reduce the build up of soft pastel were you want the intensity, back to the base layer, then add either the soft pastel highlights or oil pastel.
Perhaps too many layers of soft pastel to give a strong enough clean colour on top?
I’m just guessing, hopefully someone who uses soft pastel as their main media will see your question.
Posted
It’s a pastel drawing in my book, it isn’t painting but I’ve seen pastel work described as painting! I can only think of using say gouache or even acrylic, but you’ve then got a mixed media work. Gouache dries flat so that’s what I would turn to. A good quality W&N designer white with some body, tinted with your colour choice…Thanks. Yes, I did acrylic flowers when I drew scene with graphic pens a few years ago. I wanted to keep it pastel only though. I think maybe my background was too dark to begin with.
Posted
I’m not a huge pastel user Bill but could you reduce the build up of soft pastel were you want the intensity, back to the base layer, then add either the soft pastel highlights or oil pastel. Perhaps too many layers of soft pastel to give a strong enough clean colour on top? I’m just guessing, hopefully someone who uses soft pastel as their main media will see your question.Yes, I think my initial background was maybe too dark. Or maybe I need softer soft pastels. The ones I use are hard and crumbly, like chalk. Maybe starting with dark-coloured paper would have helped too.
Posted
I have pastels, but really only use them for colour notes - i.e. small sketches of something I'm planning on a bigger scale, in oil, acrylic or watercolour. However - as well as the suggestions above, I'd suggest fixing the work, or part of it, before trying to add brightly coloured flowers. I'm not fond of fixative, really, but a light coating can help a lot. Also - a professional pastel set probably would have had a colour of the intensity you required (especially as valerian isn't really THAT intense a colour; we have a fair bit of it around here - it can look quite intense en masse, and with the sun beaming down on it, but I think I have a few Intense pastels (possibly Inscribe, I'm too lazy to hoick them out right now to check!) which would be up to the job. You could also apply a little water, on a brush - get your mid-tones with the brush and water, then add the darks and brighter lights. Another technique: fixative + pick out the flowers in opaque white + fixative + stabs of strong colour, maybe a version of rose/magenta in this case.
None of this is a guarateed fix - experimentation on spare bits of pastel paper would be worth doing.
All I know about oil pastel is that I've had mine for far too long and they weren't very good ones in the first place - I've combined them with all sorts of materials, but not, I think, with soft pastel - I've seen it done, though; it can work well: but probably only in the hands of someone with massive experience.... the painting I saw using them combined pastel, oil pastel, acrylic paint, and scribing into the pastel with a razor blade - the sort of work that needs a well thought-out plan to start with, or I can see it going horribly wrong.
I don't know if his work is still discoverable on this site, but we had an artist named Mick Saunders, aka Bloodaxe, who produced interesting multi-media work; he died some while ago (Sylvia will remember him) - his nickname suited his temperament, but if his work can still be found here, it's worth a look.
Posted
https://www.painters-online.co.uk/gallery/?Search=Mick+Saunders
Those pastels I've got - well, I have two or three brands - were Mungyo: don't know where on earth I got Inscribe from. I also have some Daler-Rowney pastels (which I think I got as a prize from PoL!): there are certainly some very vibrant colours there which should suit your subject.
Looking up Mick's work won't necessarily help with your dilemma, but - it is worth a look, for his techniques and mix of materials.
Posted
I've never tried oil pastel. I use Faber-Castell or Mungyo. I prefer using Mungyo. I've never found any problems building up colour intensity. In your photo, there appears to be quite a lot of blue in the purple of the flowers in the foreground and on the left side of the larger blooms. If the flowers had been done in soft pastel, the cooler blue shades first, then build the purples and pink shades then highlights. If you fill the tooth, you can spray it a bit with water to bring back the tooth of the paper but I'm not sure you can do this with oil pastel. If you want to make highlights look brighter, add more darks.