Acrylics, oils and watercolor aren’t your only options for painting. Painting with pastels offers a unique way to create artwork that has the same advantages as conventional paints. So, what really are pastels? Pastels are an artistic medium that come in stick form and contain pure powdered pigment as well as a binder. There are two types: soft pastels and oil pastels. Beware, however: They do produce dust! Oil pastels, while they can be harder to clean (requiring solvents), do not leave behind powdered pigment. What to paint? It’s a question only you can answer, but with these easy oil pastel drawings and painting ideas you can decide quickly. Take a look!
Easy Oil Pastel Drawings and Painting Ideas
Landscapes
This includes seascapes, deserts, jungles, your back yard, even cityscapes and parking lots. Intimate landscapes like the hollow of an old oak tree and big Western skies are landscapes too, even if the horizon doesn’t show. Seascapes and water scenes are a grand, show-off, beautiful specialty in landscape painting that’s not always as hard as it looks. Human landscapes are full of hard-edged geometric shapes, the intricate curves and designs of made things, signs with text on them and other special elements.
Animals
If it moves around, eats, reproduces and isn’t human, your painting subject falls in this section. With birds, you can get out all the bright and then some, there’s an infinite variety between bald eagles, water birds and little birds to have fun with. The more often you paint birds, the easier it is to get them true! Good photo references can help give you accurate anatomy and details for animals you’ve never seen even in a zoo. Easy oil pastel drawings and painting ideas just for you!
People
The one model every artist has available is the only one who’ll sit still as long as you really want them to. Do a good self-portrait with a mirror and portraits of anyone else will get a lot easier! Don’t worry, you don’t look as bad as you think you do. And the art will flatter you. Your strokes are much wider than that wrinkle or pimple, all that comes through is the high points! Easy oil pastel drawings and painting ideas for your inspiration.
Abstract
Abstract painting is tough. This is because you don’t have a recognizable subject to engage the viewer’s interest. Your composition, colour balance and other artistic qualities must be superb to make it a beautiful painting. What to paint when you can’t decide what to paint could grow from your favourite colour, an emotion, or a fancy ancient pattern.
Imaginative subjects
When there are no living examples of what to paint, you can still create an accurate impression. This section will build castles in the air with sound principles of good rendering. Dragons, dinosaurs, surrealist landscapes and basically all you can fantasize about can become alive on the paper with these easy oil pastel drawings and painting ideas.
Still Life
What all still life subjects have in common is that they’re easy! You can set up your still life and keep it right where you can see it for as long as it takes to finish the painting. Do try small studies of individual objects first, then build up to arranging a still life for a serious painting with a theme. Marbles, quartz pebbles, glass vases or glasses, painting clear objects is easier than it looks. Once you get the knack, your still lives will be a stunning show off pieces!
The professional artist doesn’t just “see an apple” and rush off to render it. He has intentions. The better you understand your intentions as an artist, the less trouble you will have knowing “what to do with” the objects of the world.