Oil Pastels

Sketchbooks, pencils, pens, slabs of rock ... what's your latest discovery?

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bluemax500

Oil Pastels

Post by bluemax500 »

I was inspired to try a sketchcrawl last month, but I had no watercolor set. I tried using oil pastels, and it just didn't work out that well. I stopped trying to color with them after only two sketches. They just weren't quick enough, I guess. I think I'll just get a little watercolor set before the 21st.
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bluemax500
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Post by bluemax500 »

gosh. I didn't realize how dark the background was. It's as hard to see as this default color is on the white box. :P
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Post by enrico »

ah yes ... uhm ... darn ... gotta work these kinks out ...

E
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littlefish
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watercolor?

Post by littlefish »

Do we have to watercolor the sketches?

i have no watercolor kits, or probably will screw up my sketches even if i try it...never really done any :(
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rainboy
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Post by rainboy »

I believe we can use any media we r comfortable with. I'm taking my water colour & colour pencils with me.
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Post by Bex »

I'm just going to be using white paper and black pen. That way I won't get too caught up in trying to correct "mistakes", as sometimes happens with pencils.

I'm probably going to be drawing a lot of bodies in motion, so quick gesture sketches is what I'm aiming for. Oh, and I'll probably get frustrated and start doing really detailed studies of a shoelace or a coffee cup or ANYTHING that doesn't move.
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zironu
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Post by zironu »

Since I draw with a pen all the time, I think that that's what I'm going to stick with. If I feel like adding some color, I think that I'd take a few color pencils, or copic markers along. I'm not so sure about watercolors, though. I don't have that much experience with that medium, and if I want to try, I'd want to buy a watercolor sketchbook. So I guess we'll see. :)
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bluemax500
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Post by bluemax500 »

For the most part I just used pen on my previous attempt, but I found this neat trail that went under a bridge, and I was trying to sketch it, but drawing trees and bushes drives me crazy, because I either want to draw each individual leaf which is simply unrealistic, or I just want to outline the general shape. So I tried to show to put some color in my blobs so you could tell what they were, but oil pastels just didn't really work for what I was going for at all, and what I really would have liked to have had was watercolor so I could have just splashed it with green.

Back to the subject of oil pastels, they're also a little too messy, I mean, if you want to make them smooth you either need to pack along a bunch of cue-tips or something or end up with colorful fingerprints on everything. As much as I appreciate the utility of fingerprints, sometimes it just makes me feel like a slob.
nil

Post by nil »

What bluemax said. ExACTly. I was very hesitant to carry watercolours, but they are fantastic for fleshing out a quick sketch, well, quickly. I always felt helpless trying to capture an outdoor sketch with one-dimensional paths of colour (pencils).

I bought a little winsor-newton set with 14 half-pans, and a Kuretake water brush-pen, after Enrico's first crawl (see his materials). It makes SO much difference not having to think about water when you're on the move, and the paint set is as small as the smallest sketchbook you'd want to bring. You can hold both while standing and draw at the same time.

In my humble opinion, for a sketchcrawl you don't need watercolour paper. It can warp a bit. I used some mediocre Daler-Rowney cartridge my first time and it did the job. :)
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bluemax500
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Post by bluemax500 »

Yeah, my thoughts exactly. Pastels kind of just fall into the same category as crayons and pencils, and sometimes you just want a big blob of color that would take a lot longer with "one-dimensional paths of color."

Honestly, I just snagged a Roseart watercolor set last minute, but it'll be good enough for what I need it for. Those water-brushes are the coolest though!

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