Oil pastel
Encyclopedia
Oil pastel is a painting and drawing medium with characteristics similar to pastel
Pastel
Pastel is an art medium in the form of a stick, consisting of pure powdered pigment and a binder. The pigments used in pastels are the same as those used to produce all colored art media, including oil paints; the binder is of a neutral hue and low saturation....

s and wax crayon
Crayon
A crayon is a stick of colored wax, charcoal, chalk, or other materials used for writing, coloring, drawing, and other methods of illustration. A crayon made of oiled chalk is called an oil pastel; when made of pigment with a dry binder, it is simply a pastel; both are popular media for color...

s. Unlike "soft" or "French" pastel sticks, which are made with a gum or methyl cellulose binder, oil pastels consist of pigment
Pigment
A pigment is a material that changes the color of reflected or transmitted light as the result of wavelength-selective absorption. This physical process differs from fluorescence, phosphorescence, and other forms of luminescence, in which a material emits light.Many materials selectively absorb...

 mixed with a non-drying oil and wax binder. The surface of an oil pastel painting is therefore less powdery, but more difficult to protect with a fixative
Fixative (drawing)
In drawing, a fixative is a liquid, similar to varnish, which is usually sprayed over a finished piece of artwork to better preserve it and prevent smudging....

. Oil pastels provide a harder edge than "soft" or "French" pastels but are more difficult to blend.

History

At the end of World War I
World War I
World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...

, Kanae Yamamoto
Kanae Yamamoto
is a Japanese politician of the New Komeito Party, a member of the House of Councillors in the Diet . A native of Hiroshima Prefecture and graduate of Kyoto University, she joined the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in 1995, attending Istanbul University while in the ministry...

 proposed an overhaul of the Japan
Japan
Japan is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...

ese education system. He thought that it had been geared too much towards uncritical absorption of information by imitation and wanted to promote a less restraining system, a vision he expounded in his book Theory of self-expression which described the Jiyu-ga method, "learning without a teacher". Teachers Rinzo Satake and his brother-in-law Shuku Sasaki read Yamamoto's work and became fanatical supporters. They became keen to implement his ideas by replacing the many hours Japanese children had to spend drawing ideogram
Ideogram
An ideogram or ideograph is a graphic symbol that represents an idea or concept. Some ideograms are comprehensible only by familiarity with prior convention; others convey their meaning through pictorial resemblance to a physical object, and thus may also be referred to as pictograms.Examples of...

s with black Indian ink with free drawing hours, filled with as much as colour as possible. For this, they decided to produce an improved wax crayon and in 1921 founded the Sakura Cray-Pas Company and began production. The new product wasn't completely satisfactory, pigment concentration was low and blending or impasto was impossible, so in 1924 they decided to develop a high viscosity crayon: the oil pastel. This used a mixture of mashed paraffin
Paraffin
In chemistry, paraffin is a term that can be used synonymously with "alkane", indicating hydrocarbons with the general formula CnH2n+2. Paraffin wax refers to a mixture of alkanes that falls within the 20 ≤ n ≤ 40 range; they are found in the solid state at room temperature and begin to enter the...

, stearic acid
Stearic acid
Stearic acid is the saturated fatty acid with an 18 carbon chain and has the IUPAC name octadecanoic acid. It is a waxy solid, and its chemical formula is CH316CO2H. Its name comes from the Greek word στέαρ "stéatos", which means tallow. The salts and esters of stearic acid are called stearates...

 and coconut oil
Coconut oil
Coconut oil is an edible oil extracted from the kernel or meat of matured coconuts harvested from the coconut palm . Throughout the tropical world, it has provided the primary source of fat in the diets of millions of people for generations. It has various applications in food, medicine, and industry...

 as a binder
Binder (material)
-See also:*Adhesive or Glue*Cement*Paint...

. Designed as a relatively cheap, easily applied, colorful medium, oil pastels granted younger artists and students a greater freedom of expression than the expensive chalk-like pastels normally associated with the fine arts. Until the addition of a stabiliser in 1927, oil pastels came in two types: winter pastels with additional oil to prevent hardening and summer pastels with little oil to avoid melting. State schools simply couldn't afford the medium and, suspicious of the very idea of "self-expression" in general, favoured the coloured pencil, a cheaper German invention then widely promoted in Europe as a means to instill work discipline
Work ethic
Work ethic is a set of values based on hard work and diligence. It is also a belief in the moral benefit of work and its ability to enhance character. An example would be the Protestant work ethic...

 in young children.

Oil pastels were an immediate commercial success and other manufacturers were quick to take up the idea, such as Dutch company Talens, who began to produce Panda Pastels in 1930. However, none of these were comparable to the professional quality oil pastels produced today. These early products were intended to introduce west
Western world
The Western world, also known as the West and the Occident , is a term referring to the countries of Western Europe , the countries of the Americas, as well all countries of Northern and Central Europe, Australia and New Zealand...

ern art education
Art education
Art education is the area of learning that is based upon the visual, tangible arts—drawing, painting, sculpture, and design in jewelry, pottery, weaving, fabrics, etc. and design applied to more practical fields such as commercial graphics and home furnishings...

 to Japanese children, and not as a fine arts medium, although Sakura managed to persuade some avant-garde artists to acquaint themselves with the technique, among them Pablo Picasso
Pablo Picasso
Pablo Diego José Francisco de Paula Juan Nepomuceno María de los Remedios Cipriano de la Santísima Trinidad Ruiz y Picasso known as Pablo Ruiz Picasso was a Spanish expatriate painter, sculptor, printmaker, ceramicist, and stage designer, one of the greatest and most influential artists of the...

. In 1947 Picasso, who for many years had been unable to procure oil pastels because of the war condition
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...

s, convinced Henri Sennelier, a French manufacturer who specialised in high quality art products, to develop a fine arts version. In 1949 Sennelier
Sennelier
Sennelier is a French brand of art supplies famous for their hand selected pigments. They produce oil paints, water colors, gouache, pastels, india ink and many other mediums....

 produced the first oil pastels intended for professionals and experienced artists. These were superior in wax viscosity, texture and pigment quality and capable of producing more consistent and attractive work. The Japanese Holbein brand of oil pastel appeared in the mid-1980s with both student and professional grades; the latter with a range of 225 colours. Another brand, Caran d'Ache, introduced Neocolor wax crayons onto the market in 1965, using a patented polyethylene
Polyethylene
Polyethylene or polythene is the most widely used plastic, with an annual production of approximately 80 million metric tons...

 wax with superior lubrication
Lubrication
Lubrication is the process, or technique employed to reduce wear of one or both surfaces in close proximity, and moving relative to each another, by interposing a substance called lubricant between the surfaces to carry or to help carry the load between the opposing surfaces. The interposed...

; in the nineties these were developed into an oil pastel, Neopastel.

Use

Oil pastels can be used directly in dry form; when done lightly, the resulting effects are similar to pastel chalks. Heavy build-ups can create an almost impasto
Impasto
In English, the borrowed Italian word impasto most commonly refers to a technique used in painting, where paint is laid on an area of the surface very thickly, usually thickly enough that the brush or painting-knife strokes are visible. Paint can also be mixed right on the canvas...

 effect. Once applied to a surface, the oil pastel pigment can be manipulated with a brush moistened in white spirit
White spirit
White spirit [CAS 64475-85-0], also known as Stoddard solvent [CAS 8052-41-3] or mineral spirits, is a paraffin-derived clear, transparent liquid which is a common organic solvent used in painting and decorating. In 1924, an Atlanta dry cleaner named W. J. Stoddard worked with Lloyd E...

, turpentine
Turpentine
Turpentine is a fluid obtained by the distillation of resin obtained from trees, mainly pine trees. It is composed of terpenes, mainly the monoterpenes alpha-pinene and beta-pinene...

, linseed oil
Linseed oil
Linseed oil, also known as flaxseed oil, is a clear to yellowish oil obtained from the dried ripe seeds of the flax plant . The oil is obtained by cold pressing, sometimes followed by solvent extraction...

, or another type of vegetable oil or solvent
Solvent
A solvent is a liquid, solid, or gas that dissolves another solid, liquid, or gaseous solute, resulting in a solution that is soluble in a certain volume of solvent at a specified temperature...

. Alternatively, the drawing surface can be oiled before drawing or the pastel itself can be dipped in oil. Some of these solvents pose serious health concerns.

Oil pastels are considered a fast medium because they are easy to paint with and convenient to carry; for this reason they are often used for sketching, but can also be used for sustained works. Because oil pastels never dry out completely, they need to be protected somehow, often by applying a special fixative
Fixative (drawing)
In drawing, a fixative is a liquid, similar to varnish, which is usually sprayed over a finished piece of artwork to better preserve it and prevent smudging....

 to the painting or placing the painting in a sleeve and then inside a frame. There are some known durability problems: firstly, as the oil doesn't dry it keeps permeating the paper. This process degrades both the paper and the colour layer as it reduces the flexibility of the latter. A second problem is that the stearic acid makes the paper brittle. Lastly both the stearic acid and the wax will be prone to efflorescence
Efflorescence
In chemistry, efflorescence is the loss of water of crystallization from a hydrated or solvated salt to the atmosphere on exposure to air.-Examples:...

 or "wax bloom", the building-up of fatty acids and wax on the surface into an opaque white layer. This is easily made transparent again by gentle polishing with a woolen cloth; but the three effects together result in a colour layer consisting mainly of brittle stearic acid on top of brittle paper, a combination that will crumble easily. A long term concern is simple evaporation
Evaporation
Evaporation is a type of vaporization of a liquid that occurs only on the surface of a liquid. The other type of vaporization is boiling, which, instead, occurs on the entire mass of the liquid....

: palmitic acid
Palmitic acid
Palmitic acid, or hexadecanoic acid in IUPAC nomenclature, is one of the most common saturated fatty acids found in animals and plants. Its molecular formula is CH314CO2H. As its name indicates, it is a major component of the oil from palm trees . Palmitate is a term for the salts and esters of...

 is often present and half of it will have evaporated within forty years; within 140 years half of the stearic acid will have disappeared. Impregnation of the entire art work by beeswax
Beeswax
Beeswax is a natural wax produced in the bee hive of honey bees of the genus Apis. It is mainly esters of fatty acids and various long chain alcohols...

 has been evaluated as a conservation measure.

Surface and techniques

The surface chosen for oil pastels can have a very dramatic effect on the final painting. Paper is a common surface but this medium can be used on other surfaces including wood, metal, hardboard (often known as "masonite", a defunct namebrand), canvas and glass. Many companies make papers specifically for pastels that are suitable for use with oil pastels.

Building up layers of color with the oil pastel, called layering, is a very common technique. Other techniques include underpainting
Underpainting
In art, an underpainting is an initial layer of paint applied to a ground, which serves as a base for subsequent layers of paint. Underpaintings are often monochromatic and help to define colour values for later painting...

and scraping down or sgraffito
Sgraffito
Sgraffito is a technique either of wall decor, produced by applying layers of plaster tinted in contrasting colors to a moistened surface, or in ceramics, by applying to an unfired ceramic body two successive layers of contrasting slip, and then in either case scratching so as to produce an...

. Turpentine, or similar liquids such as mineral spirits, are often used as a blending tool to create a wash
Wash (painting)
thumb|Example of a wash drawing by [[R. G. Skerrett]].A wash is a painting technique in which a paint brush that is very wet with solvent and holds a small paint load is applied to a wet or dry support such as paper or primed or raw canvas. The result is a smooth and uniform area that ideally lacks...

 effect similar to some watercolor paintings.

Brands

There are a number of types of oil pastels, each of which can be classified as either scholastic, student or professional grade.

Scholastic grade, for example the Loew Cornell brand, is the lowest grade: generally the oil pastels are harder and less vibrant than higher grades. It is generally meant for children or people starting out with oil pastels, and is fairly cheap compared to other grades, often about US$5 for a large box. The middle grade, student grade, is meant for art students and can be much more expensive but softer and more vibrant than scholastic grade. They are usually more expensive and cost around $1 to $2 each. An example of a student grade oil pastel is Van Gogh, manufactured by Talens. Professional grade is the highest grade of oil pastel and can be very expensive, often costing $3 to $5 per oil pastel, but are also the softest and most vibrant. Three professional quality brands of oil pastel are Sennelier, Holbein, and Garich.

Further reading

  • Elliot, John. Oil Pastel: for the Serious Beginner, Watson-Guptill Publications, 2002. ISBN 0-8230-3311-2.

External links

  • The Oil Pastel Society
  • http://palimpsest.stanford.edu/waac/wn/wn21/wn21-1/wn21-106.html for a discussion of the evaporation and efflorescence.
  • http://www.artdesignweb.com/learn_art/drawing/drawing_oil_pastels.htm for a verbatim copy of this Wikipedia article.
The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.  The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.
 
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