Things You'll Need:
- White or colored heavy artist paper, like Canson Mi-Tientes or vellum surface Bristol
- A set of oil pastels
- Pencil or charcoal
- Kneaded eraser
- Krylon matte fixative
- Paper towels
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Step 1
Camellia outlines for sample project. Feel free to copy this design.Draw out the image area on your paper, leaving at least a half inch border between your art and the edge of the page. Lightly pencil or charcoal sketch just the outlines of what you want to draw. Make changes or fix mistakes with your kneaded eraser. If you're not skilled at freehand drawing, use a lightbox or a sunny window to trace the outlines from a printout of a reference photo, or trace a copyright-free design from source books like crafts books, decorative painting books or Dover royalty-free clip art books. Keep your first projects simple with only one or two subjects.
Draw the shapes loosely and avoid sketching details like jagged edges on leaves, you can add those later in the drawing. This is just for guidelines. -
Step 2
Darkened scan to show lightened sketch lines. Yours will be easier to see in person.Make any final changes to your sketch. Lighten your outline by pressing the kneaded eraser on it and lifting, until you can barely see it and it doesn't smudge. Stretch and fold your kneaded eraser between each time you press, or you may transfer lines into open areas. Spray your sketch with workable matte fixative to form a barrier layer.
This prevents loose charcoal or graphite from mixing with light colors or bright colors to gray them. It's useful for sketching under oil painting, acrylics, colored pencils, pastels or decorative painting too. -
Step 3
Base colors blocked in, center done in pointillismDraw the darkest parts in first, with loose expressive strokes. Follow the shape of the object. You can use many different types of strokes -- short jagged ones, smooth curving strokes, pointillism by filling in with squishy dots -- experiment with many different styles. Oil pastels are like crayons but more opaque and softer, and you can sometimes put light strokes over dark. Scrape the dark away under it if you do, using a nailfile or palette knife.
Some of my petals are striped or have white patches, so I left these blank for the moment. I went lighter where I intend to go over the main red color with a lighter orange or pink, went heavy on strong outlines and solid areas. The center is pointillism in yellow, gold and orange. I drew in the shadows with darker green after getting the leaves in.
Follow your reference for where the darks and base colors are. Go hard where you intend to have a strong color area, and go lighter where you intend to blend later. Draw the darkest shadows in over the medium dark areas to give detail. If you are doing leaves with jagged edges, this is when to put the jagged edges in, not at the sketch stage because matching each little point takes more precision. -
Step 4
Nearly finished, highlights and shadows are blended in, white areas blended.You can shade a color up with white or a lighter color in the same group, say, orangy-red over red. It's okay to look at two references and use the colors from one on a flower shape from the other one, that creates originality.
You can also shade green with blue and yellow. Dark blue into deep green makes it much darker. Dark brown into green mutes it and makes it more olive. Experiment with different combinations. If you are drawing on colored paper like the landscape I showed at the start, Autumn Winds, don't bother to cover all the paper. If you draw loosely on white, it will have a different effect -- the previous stage is a loose drawing on white and might be good by itself if I hadn't gone so heavily on one of the leaves.
Be creative. Try the same drawing in different ways and different colors. The more often you draw a specific subject, the more accurately you'll get it. If you are drawing from a real flower or other object, try drawing it from different angles too. -
Step 5
"Camellia" by Robert A. Sloan, finished.Artwork is full of surprises! If you plan to post your drawing online, scan it and check it when you think you're done. You may have to make changes so that it looks better in the scan. My red turned very orangy and my blue shadows are too stark, so I will add some red-purple into some areas near the shadows to blend that out. I also went over some of the vermilion and orangy areas with the original bold red to unify it.
Bold effects like bright blue shadows, strong outlines and visible marks are a good style for oil pastels. The more often you draw with them, the more interesting ways you'll find to express yourself.
Oil pastels are the most inexpensive yet powerful color medium I've found. You can get sets of twelve for under $2 in stores, and even the largest 60 color set of Loew-Cornell oil pastels only cost $5.99 at Hobby Lobby. So go nuts! When you use them up, get more.
For beginners, I would recommend a larger set or the largest set available, 36 or 60 colors. Experienced artists can do beautiful works with a limited palette, but until you get used to color mixing, having many shades and hues available makes it easier to produce good results. A 24 color set usually has enough colors to render any subject, but 12 color sets may lack something like pink, skin tone peach, purple, white or gray.
Look at some pop art designs. The bold colors and rough style of oil pastel drawing may be great for pop art. Sketch something in a contour drawing and do half the areas in yellow, gold and orange, the other half in violet, purple and blue for a pop art effect.
