The pastel is an art medium in stick form consisting of pure powdered pigment and a binder to keep its shape. With oil pastels you can get effects similar to most types of oil paintings. It is one of the most versatile art mediums that can be adapted for different styles, on top of dried oil paints, with watercolours, charcoal, and pencil drawings. For more information on the art materials I use when creating my pet portraits click on my Art Materials and Techniques page.
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Pastel Types and Uses
Soft Pastels - These sticks have a higher portion of pigment and less binder, resulting in brighter colours. The drawing can be readily smudged and blended, but results in a higher portion of dust.
Hard Pastels - A higher portion of binder and less pigment produce a sharp drawing material that is useful for fine detail but has a less vivid colour. Often used with other pastels for drawing outlines and adding accents.
Pastel Pencils - These are pencils with pastel lead. They are useful for adding fine detail.
Oil Pastels - Soft, waxy consistency with vivid colours. More difficult to blend than soft pastels, but do not need a fixative. They are not to be confused with oil sticks, which are oil paint in stick form.
Water-soluble pastels - Similar to soft pastels but contain a water soluble ingredient allowing the colours to be thinned out when using a water wash.
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When trying any new medium, its always a false economy to start with cheap materials as the quality of your work is compromised, so I would recommend you buy the best quality you can afford. You don't need too many colours to begin with as oil pastels can be blended.
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Oil pastels never really dry out, so you can always go back to a piece of oil pastel artwork and add, redo, or tweak to perfect it. It is because of this though that you work must be protected from damage either by a layer of glassine or wax paper, or by framing.
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The oil pastel can be painted on almost any surface - Paper, card, fabric, wood, metal, glass.
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Keep in mind the roughness of the surface on which you are painting and the pressure of the strokes. Experiment with other surfaces once you have learned the basic techniques. When blending with pastels using your fingers different textured surfaces give different effects. The rougher the surface, the more 'broken' the colours become. Applying more pressure to your strokes increases the intensity of the colours and gives better coverage.
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Etching tools are used to scrape into the pastel painting and household items such as screwdrivers, metal nail files or penknives can be used to get a similar effect. Be careful not to cut through or damage the paper when using these techniques.
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Painting a pet portrait step by step
Try not to make your pet portrait too small, it is easier to control the oil pastel sticks if it is a larger rather than small picture.
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A rough draft - The first stage is the initial blocking in of shapes, and mapping out of landmarks of the basic form. This includes the eyes, ears, mouth and nose, laying down future colours. Try to get fair coverage without building up too much of a layer at this stage. Put lighter tones where they belong first with darker on top.âEUR
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Initial blending - Next use a blending stump to smooth together the different pigments, again a rough stage, finishing strokes in the direction of the fur. Develop the eyes further, adding depth and highlights.âEUR
Shadow and texture - Add further layers of oil pastel over the now blended draft based, start adding shadow showing where the light is coming from and the shadow being cast. Small amounts added a little at a time then blended as you go. You can use a finger to gently smooth over the hatched lines or ridges, blending new paint into the painting underneath.
Blending and depth - Blend thin layers of light and dark tone if needed giving the impression of depth and softness.
The finished portrait - Final detailing and soft blending of all areas with fingers and fine tools, making tiny lines here and there, giving the effect of individual hairs, whiskers etc, and individual touches to the face and eyes.âEUR

Pilothouse Pet Portraits