Oil pastels are crayons made for professional artists —with some important benefits compared with kids’ crayons, soft pastels, and even oil paint.
Benefits of oil pastels:
Compared with children’s crayons, oil pastels of top quality — carefully tested and rated —are much more lightfast.
Compared with soft pastels, oil pastels are dust-free and thus easier to store, frame, and transport without damage.
Oil pastels can be framed under acrylic as well as glass, while acrylic glazing can damage a soft pastel painting.
Compared with most acrylic and oil paintings, oil pastels often carry a more spontaneous energy. Why?
There’s no brush between the artist’s hand and the painting. The flow is direct from heart to hand to painting.
Color choices are so varied that no pre-mixing or fixed palette is needed. Hand sees color, hand chooses color.
Protective UV varnish isn’t needed because the glazing (glass or acrylic) provides some protection from sunlight.
The professional oil pastels I favor:
Sennelier oil pastels — for their smooth softness, easy blending, and large oil pastels for favorite colors. I have the set of all 120 colors, buy a lot of larger sticks and extra small sticks in my favorites.
HK Holbein Artist’s oil pastels — for their square shapes that can be used on edge or for fine lines.
There are only 45 hues, but each comes in a set of five values, for fine precision in choosing the exact tint or shade. I have the full set of 225 sticks.
Caran D’Ache Neocolor II - 84 colors. These are water-soluble and also blend easily without water.
Lightfastness
Note that even within these top-quality oil pastel brands, the pigments vary in lightfastness from excellent to quick fading. So I’ve curated my own inventory in order to use the most lightfast oil pastels as much as possible.
This is to make your oil pastel heart paintings keep their color for your lifetime and longer.
The manufacturers provide lightfastness ratings. I supplement these with the tests of other artists, plus my own lightfast tests in a south window greenhouse.
This is especially important as I begin to experiment more with combining oil pastel with acrylic on stretched canvas that won’t be framed under glazing.
Questions? Email me and I’ll be glad to answer.