Home › Forums › Explore Media › Oil Pastels › Oil Pastel Talk › Crumbly oil pastels
- This topic has 6 replies, 5 voices, and was last updated 5 years, 1 month ago by Grotius.
-
AuthorPosts
-
March 15, 2019 at 10:49 pm #470590
Any idea why some oil pastel brands like the Mungyo leave a lot of crumbs while brands like the Sennelier don’t leave any crumbs at all?
March 16, 2019 at 6:46 pm #798690Hi Nirdesha! Sure – it has everything to do with the amount of pigment + wax + oil blend. Every manufacturer does it differently. To confuse things further, brand names like Mungyo have dirt-cheap student-grade OPs, which are hard as a brick and crumbly, but also have the Mungyo Gallery Artist Extra Soft grade, which are almost as creamy as Neopastels from Caran d’Ache.
Starting out with OPs can be frustrating and annoying as you learn what OP/paper combinations you like the best. Some papers are highly textured, with many grooves/nooks & crannies that seem impossible to fill in without grinding in a harder OP. Yet, a smooth paper can be just as challenging as some OPs will smear over a hard smooth surface and not blend well.
So, there are lots of things to consider when you first pick up this medium. I find it valuable to have some harder OPs around for a baseline sketch or first layer. Softer OPs will glide over harder ones, so it’s easy to build up layers – and you eventually get to that “sweet spot” where you have a beautiful thickness of OP that can be easily spread around, blended, or otherwise manipulated.
Does any of this help? Oil pastels are wonderful, but not without their challenges.
Terri
Film photographer with special love for alternative photographic processes - especially ones that get my hands dirty!
March 17, 2019 at 12:10 am #798688Adding a tiny bit of oil will help with the application and blending of the crumbly op’s. Using oil is best on a gessoed board or paper as it won’t affect the paper then.
Christel
March 18, 2019 at 11:02 am #798691^^ Agreed. Arches Oil paper is great for oil pastels, and you can easily add a medium like the Senns colorless blending stick to help with flow.
Terri
Film photographer with special love for alternative photographic processes - especially ones that get my hands dirty!
March 18, 2019 at 2:53 pm #798693Great tips!
Actually most, if not all, student grade brands crumble more or less. The cheapest ones are usually worst… Sometimes even more expensive ones can suffer from that – like the hardest artist grade brand Cray-Pas Specialist – I haven’t tried it yet, but from what I’ve heard it crumbles more than you expect from an artist grade brand. I suppose the more oil is used, the less crumbs there will be… that’s why Sennelier produces no crumbs – it got lots of oil in itI love oil pastels and have created a blog about this medium. While the blog posts are in Russian, still I invite you to get inspired with various artists' beautiful OP paintings in my blog's gallery: https://oilpastelist.wordpress.com/gallery
March 19, 2019 at 6:16 am #798689I don’t find that Specialists crumble :thumbsup:
http://www.shyeomans.co.uk
\m/ neue deutsche härte \m/
Nothing left but smoke and cellar, and a woman with a black umbrella...March 21, 2019 at 9:26 am #798692I don’t find that Specialists crumble :thumbsup:
Sarah – that’s great! Cause I’m waiting for my 25 pcs set of the Specialists and your high opinion of the Specialist encouraged my purchase :thumbsup:
I’ve seen crumbs on one WIP with the Specialists and heard in one review that they crumble “a lot”. Didn’t really believe that they crumble that much – they are artist grade, after all… my guess that it depends on the paper and I hope I’ll be happy with my setI love oil pastels and have created a blog about this medium. While the blog posts are in Russian, still I invite you to get inspired with various artists' beautiful OP paintings in my blog's gallery: https://oilpastelist.wordpress.com/gallery
-
AuthorPosts
- You must be logged in to reply to this topic.
Register For This Site
A password will be e-mailed to you.
Search