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Loosen up Your Style With Oil Pastels

Oil pastels are an exciting and versatile art medium. Their convenient versatility can be the aspect of oil pastels that make them confusing to beginners. There are more than a few ways to use oil pastels. Which way is the right way?

The good news is, one of the greatest freedoms in art is that we are not bound to use the mediums in the same way others use them, or for that matter, how they’re intended to be used.

If you can get comfortable with that, then you can have endless success in oil pastel. This post is about making the most of the oil pastel’s ability to be loose, expressive and imperfect. I will introduce you to the benefits of oil pastel in its loose form. At the end of the post you can find the link to an oil pastel tutorial in the style of my children’s book illustrations.

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How to: Expressive Oil Pastel Illustrations (in the Style of the Children's Book Little Birder)

Do you want to use oil pastels but don’t know where to start? In this tutorial I will walk you through the steps to illustrate an oil pastel bird (or any subject matter) in the style of my children’s book “Little Birder: A Field Guide to Birds of the Alphabet”. This stye is bright and impactful and makes the most of oil pastel’s appealing qualities, but it does not require perfection or years of mastery and can be painted in a relatively short time.

This is a great place to start your oil pastel journey or continue to develop your own style using the versatile medium of oil pastels.

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Sparking Creativity | Kids with Oil Pastels | Art Tutorial

This style is intentionally imperfect but the defining features of the bright oil pastels, with heavy black outlines, created by expressive markings on black paper is like an elevated version of the crayon scribbles we all know and love. It is amazing how this small change from crayons to oil pastels, white to black paper, and some intentional black outlines will create stunningly eye-catching artwork from the same little hands that brought you that lovely chicken-dog blob that has been hanging on the fridge since it came home from school on Father’s Day.

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Free Art Class for Kids | How to Draw Realistic Birds on Outschool - Part Two: Guided Drawing Video

Do you have a child that wants to be an artist or learn to draw? This is the guided-drawing video of a Black-capped Chickadee. A free video lesson from my class How to Draw Realistic Birds (and Think Like an Artist) on Outschool.com

If you haven’t watched the part-one learning video, find it here.

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Free Art Class for Kids | How to Draw Realistic Birds on Outschool - Part One

Do you have a child that wants to be an artist or learn to draw? In this post I share the first video from week one of my How to Draw Realistic Birds (and Think Like an Artist) class on Outschool.com

Keep reading to learn more about learning on Outschool and find the free learning video.

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