Oil Pastel Drawing – Sunflowers

Drawing Sunflowers with Oil Pastels

In this pastel drawing lesson, we’ll draw an image of sunflowers with oil pastels. Here’s a look at the finished drawing…

A photo reference is used to complete the drawing. Here’s a look at the photo reference…

Oil Pastel Materials

Oil pastels are a unique drawing or painting medium. While oil pastels are called “pastels”, they are quite different from soft pastels. Oil pastels never dry and remain workable. While layering is important when applying oil pastels, they are not completely opaque. Some mixing will occur with colors and values already present on the surface. This differs from traditional soft pastels. Oil pastels, while applied dry, tend to resemble a painting created with thick impasto applications.

For these reasons, we must consider the mixing that will occur as subsequent applications are applied. Oil pastels are closely related to colored pencils in their behavior. Just like with colored pencils, we build up color and “mix” colors through layering.

In this lesson, two different brands of oil pastels are used. Sakura Cray Pas oil pastels are harder and less intense with pigmentation. These pastels are used earlier in the process and act as base colors that don’t use up too much of the tooth the paper. Sennelier oil pastels are softer and more rich with pigmentation. These oil pastels are layered over the base applications to create a more painterly look.

It is important to work on a textured surface when using pastels. A heavy tooth allows for more layers, which leads to more depth and interest in color. Canson Mi-Teintes pastel paper provides and excellent surface for layering oil pastels and is the paper used in this tutorial.

Stay Loose with Oil Pastels

Many beginning artists are easily distracted by details. We tend to focus on the detail first, rather than looking for shapes of color and value. Oil pastels are a bulky medium, making details difficult to create without some layers of material on the surface. Details emerge from the drawing as various colors and values are developed.

Instead of focusing on details, we should pay attention to the simple shapes of color and value that are observed. When these shapes are drawn with the correct values and colors, the details tend to be found, rather than spelled out. For this reason, oil pastel drawings go through stages. Some stages may be discouraging to artists new to oil pastels. It is essential to work through these stages and allow the drawing to develop as it should. This development may require many layers of the material before reaching the depth in color and variety needed for a successful drawing.