How to Use Oil Pastels for Animal Portraits
Imbue animals with eternal life by making portraits of them in oil pastels. Oil pastels can be difficult to learn at first, but with practice, you can use them to create some beautiful works of art. Oil pastels allow you the ability to liberally apply color, but it requires control to properly manipulate the effects. Unlike painting, oil pastels have the advantage of being fairly low-maintenance when it comes to preparation and application, while still producing a full range of colors. Animals come in many colors with various markings on their bodies, which makes oil pastels an excellent medium for animal portraits.
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Things You'll Need
- Oil Pastels
- Blending tools
- Smooth white or toned drawing paper
- Spray fixative
Instructions
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Select a white or toned drawing paper to create your pastel portrait on. White paper is useful for just about any pastel animal portrait, but toned papers offer the benefit of being specific to the overall color of the animal and its environment. Toned paper eliminates the need for the application of pastel base colors.
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Get a photo reference of the animal you want to create in oil pastel and visualize the different parts of the animal's body as basic shapes. Draw parts like the head, legs and torso as circles and ovals.
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Add white pastel in the areas that will remain highlights. Place applications of other colors around these areas, so as not to dilute the white too early. Look at the general areas of color on your animal, and apply pastel color lightly in the appropriate areas in your drawing. Apply other colors lightly after this, until the whole animal is covered. The result is a pastel underpainting that shows only base colors; new colors will be added on top.
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Layer on new colors in each area and use your fingers or a blending tool to mix the new colors with the base colors. Continue adding color and blending until the mixed colors reflect the look you want. Oil pastels can be messy, and the result at this point will probably be very smooth with little detail. Work all areas of the animal portrait to this level before moving on.
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Add the details of your animal portrait like fur by using a dark pastel to draw outlines of the shapes you want. Slightly blend these areas, but leave some outline in order to keep some detail. Fur can be represented by pointy, arrowlike shapes that protrude from the animals' bodies. Feathers are easy to draw with more rounded shapes.
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Add a background to create a finished portrait, but avoid it distracting from the subject. Pastel drawings often utilize a base color that is smoothed to create atmospheric perspective that does not overpower the subject. Background elements such as foliage should be smoothed out as well.
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Tips & Warnings
Spray the finished pastel portrait with spray fixative to preserve it. Fixative will hold the pastel somewhat, but it will still be subject to smudging. mat and frame the finished painting to insure better protection.
