Sunday, July 3, 2016

Oil Pastels

So as my art supply addiction grows worse I have decided to expand my blog into more than just water-soluble crayons. Not only do I want to write about ALL art supplies but also I am fairly broke at the moment and have to restrain myself from purchasing any new stuff for just a little while longer.  But I do own quite a few things already that I can review!

So oil pastels. I love them. I started off creating art using oil pastels and have always had a certain fondness for them. I am not going to bother reviewing most of the brands in detail because there is already a wonderful Oil Pastel review site here: http://www.explore-oil-pastels-with-robert-sloan.com/oil-pastels-reviews.html . But I have done a few reviews on ones he hasn't covered as well as a small comparison chart of the brands that I own.


So for this little comparison I did two colors of each brand and blended them with my fingers to see how they compared. The top 3 (from best to worst) were Sennelier, Neopastels & Mungyo Gallery. 
Sennelier is almost in it's own category as none of the others compare to anything like it. They are like oil paints in a stick and they are extremely expensive (but worth it if you really enjoy oil pastels). 
The Neopastels & Mungyo Gallery are both very similar with the Neopastels being slightly better at blending. But besides the huge price difference (Mungyo are much cheaper) there isn't much of a difference.

After that I would rate the "cheaper" brands from best to worst: Twisty Stix, Cray-Pas Specialist, Cray-Pas Chubbies, Maped, Niji, & Pentel.
It's interesting to me how Cray-Pas Specialist is listed as Artist's Quality and they are nice but I preferred the creamy texture & blending of the Twisty Stix by International Arrivals which isn't listed as being an artist's pastel. 
The remaining four brands are the cheaper ones, being waxier and harder to blend with the fingers. They are all decent, though if you are starting out. I usually always start an oil pastel painting with the cheaper brands as the first one or two layers and then build up with the more expensive brands.

I would recommend that if you are starting out with oil pastels that you buy a cheaper package to try them out as well as one stick of Mungyo & Sennelier just to see the huge difference in the way they work. If someone just bought a package of Pentel and based their whole opinion of oil pastels on that, it wouldn't be accurate because they are like 2 different mediums for sure.

Overall this is a wonderful medium that I love because the colors are so bright and it is almost like painting rather than drawing.
Below is a rooster I painted using all of the brands. It's good to mix and match :)



For full reviews on oil pastels that I've written (that haven't been covered elsewhere):
Maped ,Twisty Stix and  Cretacolor Aquastic (more of a watercolor crayon to me but still considered an oil pastel)

Monday, June 27, 2016

Monday, June 6, 2016

Maped Smoothy

Here's a recent painting I did using the Maped Smoothy gel crayons. It was fun coming up with different ways to paint using the gel crayons. I dipped the crayon in a palette of water to turn it into watercolors (for the background and the shadows on the face), I colored the crayons on wet paper in layers for the feathers and I did the beak using dry crayon and blending them with my fingers. The gel crayons are so versatile and fun and I really enjoy using them. Definitely a unique tool to add to your art supply box


Friday, May 6, 2016

Comparison


I was just having fun comparing 6 different blue watercolor crayons and I'm surprised how they are all pretty similar when water is added. The 3 on the left are all "gel crayons" and the 3 on the right are all artist quality.

Saturday, April 30, 2016

New Reviews

New reviews added for Crayola Slick Stix & Maped Plasticlean. More crayon reviews on the way including ones that aren't water-soluble. All non-watercolor crayons are listed under "Other Crayon Reviews"

Wednesday, April 27, 2016

More crayons

There seems to be an endless amount of water-soluble crayons popping up that I can barely keep up. The ones that I still need to review are:

Prang Payons
Sargent
Tim Holtz Distress Crayons
Faber Castell Gelatos & Gel Crayons
Lyra
Crayola Slick Stix
Tombow Yo-I
Peter Pauper Press
Stabilo Woody
Georgie
Reeves
Amos
Staedtler
Mungyo
Derwent Artbar

A rather short list, isn't it? :) If you know of any others let me know and I will get to them!

Friday, April 22, 2016

It's been awhile....

So I have been on an acrylic painting binge and had temporarily abandoned my crayons. Well I am going to try to use them more again in between paintings because I DO love them. I am still finding myself always going back to Neocolor II because they are just so bright and blend so well...but I occasionally have been playing with the other brands as well. If anyone would like to see any reviews of regular wax crayons too I could do those.. what do you think? I still have quite a few brands of watercolor crayons I need to review as well....in time! If there are any brands you'd like to see reviewed next, please comment

Well here is my most recent crayon painting. Pentel brush pen with Neocolor II done on Strathmore Mixed Media Visual Journal