In my artistic life, I have not worked with oil pastels very much. Usually my focus is on painting, printing, lettering and drawing with ink and pencil.
This past holiday, I went to see the “Mary Cassatt at Work” exhibit in San Francisco with my family. I knew I would enjoy it, but what I didn’t think to expect is that it would revitalize my artistic spirit and remind me about who I am and who I would like to be as an artist.
The exhibit attempted to show the artists intention as a business woman and professional artist alongside her processes in the media of oil painting, oil pastel, and printmaking. As I walked through the rooms, talking about the artistic process evident with my niece and nephew, I experienced a familiar feeling, rising up from deep inside, that strongest pull to create, draw, paint, explore with media line quality, depth, and expression.
So I begin again at home, remembering: I, too have oil pastels! I rarely work with them but why not start here. I have a random assortment of pastels and some mixed media paper at the ready- the col-o-ring oversize pad will do the trick! (that is not an affiliate link, but it’s a great little pad for these things).
Before me are a few things waiting to be used on my next sewing project: the ubiquitous “sewing tomato”, which holds a few pins and needles, and is perched atop a Sucrets tin that obviously contains more pins. Nearby are some spools of thread that wonder why I haven’t finished that pillowcase project. It is not the most dramatic, but these objects do hold meaning: they are inherited from my mother and grandmother, (not the thread), they can be relied upon, and as a collection can be seen to symbolize the Power of Making. It is ours to achieve by utilizing skills with these humble objects of art and craft.
Drawing Method for Oil Pastels
I spent maybe around 10 minutes on this drawing. It is a simple and small thing, 4″ x 5.5″. I sketched the composition outline with a light color, giving myself the opportunity to map out the relationship of the objects to each other. Depth and color were built up by lightly covering areas with the flat end of the pastel, repeated with lighter and darker shades to describe hue and shadow. I like how even with a pastel crayon, one can mix colors by overlay. And that’s great, because I have a small and quite incomplete set of colors! I didn’t try to make an exact replica of any of the shades I observed, just to engage in the push and pull of description. Decisions made include how much, if any, of the cabinet itself and objects behind my subject matter to draw. ‘Keep it simple’ was the instruction in my head, and so I left the surrounding scene to mere suggestion. It’s possible my favorite part of the drawing is the thread still attached to a needle in the tomato.
Is this a glorious masterwork? Well… I enjoyed it and feel inspired to continue working in oil pastels.