Over the last year I have done lots of experimenting with different media.
For oil sticks I have tried the Shivas, R&F, Sennelier and Oil bar.
They are very smelly messy fun. R&F are the creamiest almost too creamy and slow drying. Senneliers are too firm for my taste. To me the Shivas re just right and their the cheapest, and fastest drying. They seem more workable to me.
I would start with blocking out with washes of oils thinned with Linseed/turp mix. Then draw with the oil sticks on it.
Another thing you might to experiment with if your coming from acrylics is Water soluble oils. The fastest drying and most like acrylics is the vangogh H2oils. You can even mix them with acrylics and acrylic mediums. The wash up is easy like acrylics too. Thats what I am experimenting with now.

Well hello Platapie!

I just tried using oil bars for the first time last weekend for the WDE. So I will be interested to hear any advice also. Mind if I tailgate your thread?

Here is a link to my WDE thread, not so great but its my first time using them so I am not super unhappy with it. They certainly are fun to use! I used a canvas board and really like how the texture pulls the paint off the stick. It seems easy to make texture and marks that look similar to brush marks in a way. Now details I haven’t figured out yet. I am using the Shiva so far though I have some Winsor Newton also.

https://www.wetcanvas.com/forums/showthread.php?threadid=293053

You can try searching on Shiva to find some threads on oil sticks. I didn’t find much when searching for oil bar though.

Wow, what kind of oil stick did you use for that head?
Here is some I did, the first I did with Shivas and the second with R&F which was very slippery and messy.

Does anyone else have any oil stick examples? It’s interesting to see what others have done.

I might have to get them out again. I was thinking of starting with water soluble oils as a base and using oil sticks on top. Would it work?

Tracy, what cool perspective! I can tell you pretty much use the sticks straight, yes? I came from oil pastels to the sticks, intending to use them that way, but just really like using them more like tube oils for some reason. I did that piece all with Shiva paintstiks, although when i did the verdaccio underpainting I used some tube titanium with the Paintstiks as it was easier to keep the values consistant.
I can ask Michelle Richeson about them working over the water soluable oils and get back to you on that. i know Paintstiks are the same as tube oil, so if you can use that over water soluble, then you can use the Paintstiks. But she can give me a for sure answer.
I’d like to see more people’s work too!

Thanks Dyin for the tips! I might try the knife for lines soon, that sounds like it will work fine. You all are doing great things with the oil sticks/bars. Tracy, your women are looking good there!

Hi Platapie, if you haven’t tried the WDE yet, weekend drawing event, they are pretty fun. You pick a ref pic and then post whatever you get done in 2 hours. And then post updates every 2 hours. At least that is the idea, nobody is going to track that or complain if you do it differently. The WDE’s are a great place to do experimenting with techniques and media. Don’t need to consider if it is a perfect peice, they are not expected to be in 2 hours after all! And WDE has a policy of no critques unless asked for. They are a very freindly bunch of artists there.

They have a still life theme going on the weekend if you are interested in that. Some nice pics by Katju posted and they are already out there, I just looked. Hard to decide which one to do though…