Oil pastel selfie by Marjorie Firth

Warming them with a hair dryer as you go works well for soft blending oil pastels Marjorie. The red makes the overall image work nicely.

Thanks for that tip John, I would never have thought of that.

A lovely self portrait Marjorie

Nice work Marjorie

Beautiful self-portrait, Marjorie, lovely skin tones.

Love the smoothness you've obtained with the oil pastel for the skin tones Marjorie. I have a starter set but haven't a clue how to use them. I did do a few experiments and for some reason I was under the impression that you could use a solvent of some kind to thin (?) them out on the support after application. I must have dreamt it because it didn't work!!

Lovely work Marjorie. I didn't know about the hair drier either. I've heard about steaming dry pastels though. Well done.

This is beautiful, Marjorie. Well done!

Thank you for the positive comments David, Jim and Cesare. Fiona, you weren't imagining it, you can use thinner but Unless you've used a helluva lot of pastel, I think it looks a mess. John and his hairdryer tip sounds promising, I'll try that. I've got some torchons somewhere but just used fingers today. I felt that as the pastel warmed up it moved around better. Also, I used pastel paper - not a good move, you need to use lots to fill in the texture. Mountboard next time.

You look so good Marjorie! A brilliant portrait though not as pretty as your photo!!

Well, that's another tip, Linda! But with dry pastels. Thank you Mia and Margaret too.

Lovely work Marjorie. John is right about the hair dryer...and I heard Degas used to boil his oil pastels to soften them and start painting with them, then let that dry and go over that with more pastel work. I'll have try try that some day. That will need some discipline!

More tips! Thanks Tim, for those and the comment. I feel quite enthusiastic about using oil pastels again, thanks to you. But I need to buy more, maybe the larger size.

Lovely painting Marjorie it's so good from what I can remember they are very difficult to use especially for detailed work such as this. But there's not much smell so I'm thinking of buying some , my wife doesn't like the smell of oil paints in the house you see. Henpecked I am , anyway it's really nice painting Marjorie.

Nice one Margaret.

I have never been able to get this level of detail with oil pastels so to me this is a brilliant portrait Margorie.

Great use of difficult medium!

That's lovely Marjorie....did you do it for your Birthday? .I would love to do more portraiture, it's way out of my comfort zone .

Beautiful work and selfie Marjorie with a limited set

Thanks everyone - no Sylvia, perhaps trying to forget! Hard to do a selfie without that slightly deranged look!

Lovely portrait Marjorie.

This is lovely Marjorie.

It's YOU.

Very good Marjorie :)

Lovely blending in the skin tones, not easy with oil pastels. Lots of good tips in these comments....on this showing ,not that you need them.

Oh I do Andre - some good tips here which I'll try. Thanks again everyone.

Self portraits are SOOO difficult because you don't really see youself with other people's eyes. You have done a great job here Marjorie and with oil pastels too! I have tried them once in a workshop when the others were using soft pastels and found them quite frustrating. Perhaps I should try again after seeing this lovely work of yours.

Let's all get them out Satu! - the oil pastels I mean.

Superb piece, Marjorie! Lovely selfie!

Marjorie, you said “I am in away” that’s true because in reality all is in Mind and never leaves it. If only we realized that each day. Happy tears to my eyes this morning. Thank you.