Oil Pastel Tips You Need to Know!!! Let's Paint Avocados & Learn Oil Pastel Techniques!

What is your favorite oil pastel hack? You can watch the entire real-time lesson for this in Critique Club lindsayweirich.teachable.com/...
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Supplies (Affiliate links used)
Kuelox oil pastels: amzn.to/3vsmOAQ
Silicone nail art tools: amzn.to/3vC2zRu
Prismacolor pencils: shrsl.com/4dlvf
Matt board scrap or thick paper
Liquitex clear gesso: shrsl.com/4dlvd
*If you don't want to make your own surface you can use Canson XL Sand Grain mixed media paper for an affordable support: shrsl.com/4dlvs
Oil pastel fixative: shrsl.com/4dm19
Reference photo from the #foodpaintchallenge on Instagram: / dennispfeil.art
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Credits:
Video production and Craft ideas: Lindsay Weirich
Music: Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
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#thefrugalcrafter #watercolor #art

[@Linda-qq5mg]

I love this painting and thank you for all of your tips on oil pastels. You are correct about being careful with oily rags! Thanks again for this video.😉🤗

[@thefrugalcrafter]

You are so welcome!

[@absurdo217]

I love when you paint or draw food Lindsay! This piece is gorgeous! Thank you for all the tips even showing the use of a compass to draw the plate! Never occurred to me and I have been struggling with drawing circles lol😅

[@thefrugalcrafter]

You are so welcome!

[@jessicamaisonet917]

Wow this drawing/ painting came out so realistic… it’s really beautiful ❤

[@thefrugalcrafter]

Thank you so much 😀

[@georgekessler3548]

Okay, so... years ago I was playing with chalk with my kids out on the sidewalk and ended up drawing an avocado that I absolutely loved. It didn't have any depth because I struggle with shadows and highlights, but I think I'm going to try again on paper with some pentel oil pastels I got a while ago and haven't used. Thank you, Lindsay! -Kryste

[@wanderingstar5673]

Mine still look like sidewalk chalk drawings😂😂😂

[@thefrugalcrafter]

Have fun!

[@patgill3352]

I sure appreciate your concern for value versus cost. It’s very helpful.

[@thefrugalcrafter]

I'm so glad!

[@wanderingstar5673]

The show I watched and talked about the next day was Bonanza 😂😂. STILL watching all of the commercials for creators I enjoy. Hope more of your viewers are doing as well. Just joined Critique Club so I can routinely support your channel. I have gained so much from your channel 🙂

[@thefrugalcrafter]

You're the best!

[@valericaskey2540]

Love this! Amazing how real you can make them look!

[@thefrugalcrafter]

Thanks so much 😊

[@mjpete27]

Hullo Lindsay, I have to say that you have an “eye” for picking your subjects and converting your references into Art! Thank you for sharing another fantastic idea and painting techniques with us! I have found a bag of pumice from Amazon and so inexpensive that I have been creating my own surfaces and any clear gesso works with a measure of pumice! Thanks Lindsay, a lovely video!

[@thefrugalcrafter]

Good tip!

[@128titanic9]

Hi, Lindsay. Thank you for your video.🎉.

[@thefrugalcrafter]

You are so welcome!

[@AMNG1994]

You were absolutely right. What I love most about oil pastels is their accessibility. No need for expensive papers. No need for water. And they also work faster than watercolor pencils. I guess you can say the same about soft pastels but those leave dust that mess with my rhinitis.

[@thefrugalcrafter]

Yes!

[@claychick100]

Sanitizer gel works good to clean your hands as well! Love this painting!

[@thefrugalcrafter]

Great tip!

[@JoAnneSmith-di8ok]

I love the pastel of the avacodos. You showed me some other techniques for putting my oil pastels on paper. Thank you. Stay warm. Stay safe.

[@thefrugalcrafter]

You are so welcome!

[@shariherrington7035]

Love these oil pastel tutorials! More please! ❤️

[@thefrugalcrafter]

More to come!

[@jennw6809]

Isn't that clear gesso amazing? So great for colored pencil, soft pastel, oil pastel, charcoal... The silicone tip blenders can be great for soft pastels too! They have some called colorshapers but you can also get them for pottery, which tend to be cheaper as well. They might have larger ones for the pottery than for nails.

[@anitaholmes6824]

WOW...that is just so perfect! Thanks for sharing!

[@thefrugalcrafter]

You are so welcome!

[@katyg7959]

White erasers make good blending tools and you can cut them, as well.

[@thefrugalcrafter]

Great idea!

[@olderendirt]

Very pretty. Thank you for all the protective information about the flammability, too.

[@feeeny]

I have the entire line of Holbein oil pastels. They are marketed as, essentially, like being soft chalk pastels without the dust. They are firm and dense with very low crumbling. I find them to be excellent as a base. Overall, when I am doing archival portraits in oil pastels, I’m very happy to have the Holbein oil pastels as my “underpainting” as a first layer under my Sennelier oil pastels.

[@thefrugalcrafter]

Thanks for sharing!

[@jenniferdebeneditto6075]

I love the colors on this

[@thefrugalcrafter]

Thanks

[@sambabird7]

That’s looks so delicious! You know your art is good when it makes people hungry. 👍🏼

[@thefrugalcrafter]

Thank you so much 😀

[@kendallmccauley2194]

I was just thinking I wanted to ask for an oil pastel tutorial there!

[@thefrugalcrafter]

Yay! I am inspired. I think I want to try oil pastel on a cradled wood panel next!

[@artonthecreek]

Lovely❤ Every time you use pastels it reminds me how much I love working with them-oil or soft. I’ll be painting this one. Thanks Lindsay ❤

[@thefrugalcrafter]

Yay!

[@terrilyon6825]

Lovely piece and helpful video. My art goal for this year is to get to grips with oil pastels so this is perfect timing. Thanks

[@thefrugalcrafter]

You can do it!

[@Paintspotsandpaper]

Lovely Lindsay, great to see oil pastels again and thanks for the helpful tips. Take care xx

[@thefrugalcrafter]

You are so welcome!

[@KevieG]

Those avocados 🥑 look so delicious! I don't have enough guts to try pastels! Loved watching your video! Thanks for all you do for your subscribers!😊

[@thefrugalcrafter]

You are so welcome!

[@user-kp4fg5um9v]

Great video 🎉

[@thefrugalcrafter]

Thank you 😁

[@marilynshannon3648]

Love this Lindsay! That pit looks so real and you make it look so easy! Just signed up for Critique Club. Can't wait to attempt some of your lessons.

[@thefrugalcrafter]

Yay! Thank you!

[@melissaaldosari8024]

Fabulous painting Lindsay! The depth and detail you captured is amazing!💜💜💜

[@thefrugalcrafter]

Thank you so much 😀

[@jeanettegeldenhuys5050]

Absolutely brilliant, love hints & chat. Very inspiring.❤

[@thefrugalcrafter]

Glad you enjoyed it

[@JC-il4or]

Thank you. Saw these recently on Amazon, and wondered about them. Not that I need more oil pastels...but am looking forward to your assessment of this brand. Really liked watching the development of this piece. ❤

[@thefrugalcrafter]

You are so welcome!

[@TheGypsyChic1]

Such a beautiful painting!! I really enjoyed these pastels too! I found a great way to keep the square tips, just to wipe them on scrap paper on all four sides, then the top. I wish I would have figured that out earlier in my painting, but it worked great. I'm with you, I would love a harder square pastel now. These were a pleasant surprise, and months later they still have no oily residue like my set of Paul Rubens Haiya (sadly, I wanted to love those too). I enjoyed them so much I had to ask my family for Sennelier and Caran D'ache Neopastels for my birthday. Holbein are on my wishlist next. ;D Thank you so much for the tip on using gesso! I've been using Canson sand grain or sandpaper. I can't use my precious pricey paper yet...it's like my old scrapbooking paper that was too beautiful to cut. Lol 💗

[@thefrugalcrafter]

I just bought some open stock neophytes and specialists at an art shop today! Just a few to try out. It was fun to get to some real shops. I just wipe off any pastels that get oily. It doesn't bother me.

[@TheGypsyChic1]

@@thefrugalcrafter I hope you love the Neopastels as much as I do. How fun to shop in person!! That would have made a great video?!? I'm selling more of my craft supplies to buy the Holbein oil pastels next. Ha, it feels like finally getting paid for all my hours making cards for design teams.

[@thefrugalcrafter]

@@TheGypsyChic1 lol, no video, my hands were too of pastela!

[@susansacco7583]

Thanks for all the great tips! I’ve been wondering about these oil pastels. Thanks for this great review!💕 Namaste 🙏

[@thefrugalcrafter]

You are so welcome!

[@sonyaoart]

Lots of great tips, thank you! I really need to get out my oil pastels, they’re so much fun.

[@thefrugalcrafter]

They are!

[@joymiller9668]

I had just added these to my cart lol I was wondering about them ❤.

[@marytesta3003]

I really like the colors you used. Oil pastel was fun and had gotten the silicone finger tips you suggested in another video. I'm a post-operative massage therapist, so I am extremely protective of my hands and nails. My oil pastels are Mungyo in a wood box, but for white, I buy Paul Rubens. What's hard is not being able to buy open stock for many of these pastel sets. Thank you for a fun video. I love watching you do foods in different mediums.

[@thefrugalcrafter]

You are so welcome!

[@susansacco7583]

Good to know fixative works. Looking forward to reviews on both.💕

[@thefrugalcrafter]

Coming soon!

[@gitogal]

Ooo my want monster wants these pastels since they are square haha

[@thefrugalcrafter]

I get that 😆

[@ElizabethMayoleth]

Beautiful painting, Lindsay. I have tried a few Holbein oil pastels that I got in a couple Sketchbox, (or Artsnacks?) boxes. I have 4 of what I later learned were lower grade (have wrapper), and 2 of their pro grade (no wrapper). The low grade ones I threw out, they were that horrible. Low pigment quality, actually scratched off other oil pastels, and barely blended. The better grade weren't so great either, but at least passed for oil pastel, unlike their cousins! I was disappointed because I like their colored pencils and gouache. My go to cheap/harder underpainting ones are Pentel and then I use the Caran d'Ache and Sennelier for the middle and top layers. Thanks for the tips, I'm going to try the alcohol clean-up since I never keep my hands out of the oil pastels for blending. Nothing works better!

[@thefrugalcrafter]

Thanks for the info, you saved me some money!

[@gertietheduck]

Holbein, Neopastel and Mungyo Gallery are very similar. Neopastels were my favourite art material as a kid, and my first art material love! You can literally use them on cartridge or printer paper and they will still take and you will be able to blend them with a finger seamlessly. I feel that Pentels etc, and on the other end of the scale Senneliers and Paul Rubens are almost completely different media! They handle so differently and blending in particular can be tricky and not as intuitive as with the Neos. I have found that using them (Senneliers etc) on grittier paper or pastelmat helps, but they are still quite greasy and smeary and there is this weird thing that happens with them where a top "fatty" layer will separate leaving a grease/tinted stain behind rather than seamlessly blending/creating a gradation when smeared with a finger. So whenever I try using my finger I end up with blobs of grease and a muddy mess. I was really happy to discover Mungyos handle similarly to Neopastels (and are cheaper than Holbein), and even happier to discover from watching this that the Kuelox are the same, so there is even more choice! Wonder how you deal with the Sennelier and Paul Rubens pastels - do you also find them harder to use? I love and have both but I prefer the harder pastels (I mean the ones that just feel harder but are still buttery and quality - so Neos/Mungyos/Holbeins rather than the Pentel and the like) because I can just intuitively blend them using my finger (and not have to figure out a million ways to compensate for not being able to blend in my favourite way) and I just love the way they feel!

[@jennw6809]

I use my Paul Rubens Hayia for abstracts and art therapy and I love how they blend, but I can see how they might be difficult to do anything remotely realistic! Now you've got me wondering. Maybe we should watch some artists who use the Senneliers and see what they do. Or maybe it's like soft pastel and they are best for top layer/finishing marks?

[@gertietheduck]

@@jennw6809 I've watched so many videos and I still cannot figure out how other artists do it, haha! The biggest difference in my experience, so far, is thanks to the paper. I only use those sifter pastels on pastelmat or similar now. I actually quite like them on Baohong oil painting paper, too, but I can only blend by pressing super hard with a stump. Funnily I don't really do realism in my "serious" art (I am an artist by training but more on the contemporary side and I did not train in visual art, so I definitely have an unorthodox, mish-mash approach)😄. Though I do still lives, landscapes, figure drawing etc as practice all the time and in my sketchbooks for sure. I think for me a lot of my difficulties with the softer pastels have to do with how familiar I was with the Neos as a kid, and they are so, so different. I really want to make them work though as they look so beautiful! I have the full set of Paul Rubens too and they are just gorgeous! I also absolutely adore Neocolor I (the non-water soluble ones) and use them as one of my primary sketchbook materials, so I definitely have a thing for harder yet still smooth and strongly pigmented pastels...

[@jennw6809]

@@gertietheduck I just got a set of Neocolor I recently, they are really fun and I like using them as watercolor resist too. And I've had the Neocolor II for many years. But I've never tried the Neopastels. Now I'm curious!

[@thefrugalcrafter]

I use sennelier and Paul rubens haiya as the final touches on a painting

[@taniauntalan459]

This painting is amazing!

[@thefrugalcrafter]

Thanks 😊

[@joymiller9668]

You should try the Monte marte clear gesso much cheaper and has alot of grit I've seen other pastel artists use it

[@thefrugalcrafter]

I have tried it, and it was not as gritty as this.

[@annettefournier9655]

Thanks Lindsay. I'm one of those that doesn't like the ick.😁

[@thefrugalcrafter]

I understand

[@berolinastrassmann]

Oh, the struggles with fixatives! Have you tried the Spectrafix fixative? It claims to be odor free, natural (casein based) and does not use solvents. Perhaps it might be wirth exploring? The D'Artigny Sennelier fixative has been the best I found, as it reduces the stickiness of theboil pastels. That thing is expensive, though! Anyway...if your experimental instinct might allow it, it would be great to see you review the Spectrafix fixative.

[@thefrugalcrafter]

It's one I want to try!

[@nalissa77]

That turned out beautiful. Good enough to eat. Question: If you wanted a set to do portraits would you suggest the more muted set or the more vibrant set?

[@thefrugalcrafter]

I would do the brighter one called classics. You can always mute a brighter color but you can brighten a muted one.

[@nalissa77]

@@thefrugalcrafter Thanks! Just bought that me Classic set.

[@SandiSchario]

I recently purchased these exact oil pastels and am looking forward to your review of these. I was wondering if cardstock covered with Gesso would make a great foundation for Oil pastels??

[@thefrugalcrafter]

Definitely if you use liquatex clear gesso, other gesso might not have enough grit.

[@lizadivine3785]

Lindsay do you have a review on the fixative?

[@thefrugalcrafter]

Not yet, sorry, I was hoping to finish the can then review it because the only negative I can think of with it would be how much milage you get from the can. The product is fabulous.

[@lizadivine3785]

@@thefrugalcrafter thank you Lindsay I do have a can have used some and agree, it works great but I have to be very judicious because I don’t think the product will go too far. I was just wondering what the average number of uses could possibly be. Love your channel!!

[@fontainerouge]

I returned the Kuelox because of the smell & rubbery consistency though I regret the option offered by the Morandi set. In the end, all the cheap sets can amount to a good quality set if waiting for a sale. So I've ended up with Neopastel & Sennelier. It is night & day, & they mix so well you can do more with less.

[@thefrugalcrafter]

We're they these square or round? I did not notice that with mine.

[@fontainerouge]

@@thefrugalcrafter The square ones. Also, lots of clumps. I could have kept them for loose sketches but I decided to get my money back & put it into fewer but better quality sticks.

[@thefrugalcrafter]

@fontainerouge thanks for the feedback. I used sticks from both classic and morandi sets for this oeuce and they worked great. I've tested them on my liquatex clear gesso prepped board and canson xl sand grain mixed media paper and they were smooth for me. Where and how long ago did you purchase them? Thanks for the info!

[@fontainerouge]

@@thefrugalcrafter Purchased with Temu, 2 months ago. Either the batches are not consistent or they suffered from big changes in temperature in storage facilities & transport. Used them on various unprepared papers, including Canson watercolor & Canson Mi-teinte.

[@thefrugalcrafter]

I wonder if there is any chance they were counterfeit or old stock. I've heard accusations of stuff happening like that on TEMU. I have spoken to other people who tried these sticks and they were all good. @@fontainerouge

[@creativesolutions902]

Hi Lindsey! I’m really trying to explore oil pastels more, I totally suck at them! Lol but I can do every other media just fine, don’t know what it is about me and oil pastels! Have you ever tried Sakura signature oil pastels? They’re pretty high-quality and they are square, medium hardness slightly harder than the ones you’re using. :-)

[@thefrugalcrafter]

No, but I want to!

[@creativesolutions902]

@@thefrugalcrafter 🤣😉

[@creativesolutions902]

@@thefrugalcrafter I’m so sorry Lindsay! In my infinite sea of art supplies, I’ve given you the wrong product information! My square oil pastels are cray pas specialist, not Sakura signature!!! The reason I got confused is because Sakura makes them… but they are really good quality they all have pigment information on the rappers. Sorry about that! :-) you probably already have them lol

[@thefrugalcrafter]

@@creativesolutions902 i don't actually LOL!

[@creativesolutions902]

@@thefrugalcrafter Well well well! Then I will be looking forward to your review on them lol

[@lucyhardman8386]

Are the mungyo ones good for beginners? I want to try oil pastels I’m in the UK though I’ve been looking at the sennelier ones x

[@thefrugalcrafter]

Yes, in my opinion they are. I would go with the mungyo gallery soft oil pastels if you want a traditional oil pastel. They make a nice wateroluble oil pastel too. I wouldn't buy sennelier unless you know you really love oil pastels. You will be able to see if you like oil pastels with mungyo and then add sennelier later because they work well together.

[@gertietheduck]

I have been burned before here in the UK ordering online, so if you get the Mungyo, make sure you get the Mungyo Gallery pastels that shave a "MOVP" code on them. I have seen some cheaper ones around branded as Mungyo Gallery (usually sold by third-party re-sellers) and with similar packaging but they are student-grade pastels much like Pentels rather than the proper Gallery Pastels - but the code is thankfully always the giveaway. Mungyos are similar to Holbeins and Caran D'Ache Neopastels in the same way that Paul Rubens is similar to Sennelier. They are great.

[@califmike2003]

Do you prefer oil pastels or soft pastels ?

[@thefrugalcrafter]

Depends on the day

[@akschauer]

How does the color selection compare to the Mungyo? I have the 72 set of Mungyo, but I find some colors lacking, like dark greens (yellow leaning) and reds.

[@thefrugalcrafter]

I'm not sure, I have a 24 set. You can compare the colors from the Amazon listing with mungyo and see what you think.

[@prarthanarajan1152]

I think it would be nice if you converted one of your favorite paintings to a diamond painting by sending it to a diamond painting company. 😂

[@thefrugalcrafter]

I never thought about that

[@juliasugarbaker9032]

I love oil pastels, they might be my favorite medium, but I don’t use them as often as I would like because they never dry and paintings are messy to store much less sell. If you use the fixative, will it be fixed well enough to sell the original art un-framed? I can’t be bothered with frames 😂

[@juliasugarbaker9032]

Well, you just answered my question at the end of the video I suppose I should’ve waited. 😂 Did I hear you say that you could varnish over that fixative? That could be the game changer I’m looking for.

[@thefrugalcrafter]

I think it will still need a varnish.

[@thefrugalcrafter]

I'm going to test that. People have done a waterbased varnish over the top. I'm gonna test on a scrap.

[@juliasugarbaker9032]

@@thefrugalcrafter thank you! That would be amazing

[@ChantelleArts]

such amazing tips, might have to give oil pastels another shop ☺☺

[@thefrugalcrafter]

You should!