Using oil pastels in Plein Air
What one artist carries to use oil pastels on location.
Member Martin Stankewitz likes to paint within a 2-3 mile circle around his home in Baden-Württemberg, Germany. He doesn’t see the day coming when he will run out of subjects to paint.
Martin what do you take with you when plein air painting with oil pastels?
My "Equipment":
- a kind of camping chair made of aluminium, very light, I bought this at a bargain on a shop closure.
- an 8 mm plywood size 12X16 (I have various sizes)
- 2 metal clamps to fix my paper on the plywood
- a plastic case that you usually buy at the Do-it-yourself supermarket for storing screws. I use this for transport of my Sennelier oil pastels.
- a cotton cloth to clean my hands every now and then
- a number of prepared surfaces to paint on
What types of surfaces do you paint on?
I always have a number of "prepared" paper sheets with me. These can be old oil paintings that I have cut into pieces or left-overs from doing monotypes.
I also prepare papers by painting abstract patterns with oil color which I transfer by hand rub from the backside to another paper. Both sheets can be used after 3 months as painting underground. The oil layer should not be too thick. Each sheet has unique dimension as I do not cut 100% correctly. This gives even more individuality to each finished sheet.
I prefer sizes of 7X10, see framed example (in the first photo), but I do also a bit larger like 7X15 or sometimes 10X15 which is the biggest until now.
For a 7X10 oil pastel I need same time as for a 16X24 oil painting, about 2-3 hours. I put several layers and work in same way as with oil colors by "mixing" with pressure or putting on top with light touch.
How do you arrange the oil pastels in your plastic case?
I order them in groups: white and very bright yellows, yellow, greys, warm green, cold greens, blacks or dark greys, blues, red, earth tones etc..
