Oil Crayons - The Spirit of Matter - Orbach and Galkin, 1997
- nonaorbach
- Feb 14
- 6 min read
Updated: 2 days ago
Medium Characteristics
Oil pastels look like colored sticks wrapped in paper. They feel soft, oily, creamy, and pliable. They soften even more when warmed by being held and may leave color marks on the fingers. Too much pressure or a fall may cause them to break.
Therapeutic and Spiritual Significance
The oil binder that comprises oil pastels makes them relatively easy to control and blend. They are suitable for a wide range of work: from lines to patches of color and on to complex layered drawings. The colors can be easily mixed or dramatically contrasted. They can produce a clean-cut or smudged effect. Oil pastels are actually hardened oil paint paste, which can be worked within layers to create great depth. Physical pressure, turpentine, and fixatives all contribute to the final outcome. Oil pastels require physical work to obtain intensity and richness of color; otherwise, the result will remain flat and linear.
Oil pastels are associated with childhood. Young children usually work with them in a linear, narrative manner. At a later age, they use the medium to cover large areas of color. Teens and adults returning to drawing at a much later stage of life, often remark: "I used these in kindergarten". Thus, they afford an informal atmosphere, as opposed to oil paints, for example, which may produce a sense of self-importance and inhibit creativity. Oil pastels support liberating childish behavior, which may also trigger anxiety and regressive feelings or shame and guilt as a result of messy stains.
Covering and layering demand rigorous work, which requires standing-up. Body weight, pressure and movement all participate when working with oil pastels. Through temperamental, hard work this medium reflects high emotional involvement. The oil pastel, being soft and oily, reveals sensation, sensuality and instinct. It melts when held in the warm hand, mixes easily with neighboring colors, and can be used in endless layers and color blends.
As oil paints "in disguise," oil pastels organically offer a large range of flexibility and expression: you can "open" the drawing over and over again; a work that seems sealed and shut can still be scratched with a spatula, dissolved with turpentine or dried by fixative and painted over again. It is a metaphorical process, reflecting a mental state that can always be transformed. The latitude of the matter is a metaphor for never-ending technical, emotional and spiritual processes.
Oil pastels open the door to layering techniques. They encourage experimentation: patch on patch, blending, etching, and tearing. Working on different surfaces and textures, they respond to the artist's development and deepening emotional and sensual processes. The work represents an ever-growing mound being constructed and re-built, created and dismantled, excavated and buried.
We noticed that children and adolescents (especially girls) like to smudge and mix shades and colors with their fingers. They enjoy vigorously smearing the surface. This is a very satisfying process as the tones are pleasant and the whole surface has a feeling of unity, perhaps mirroring attempts to merge and harmonize contradictive feelings.
White has the exclusive task of bonding all the other colors. It is the one color that often appears to unite all others - a unique aspect of white in oil pastels. Women often start a drawing with reds, greens, purples and then blend it all with white. The resulting composition portrays an aesthetic and calming atmosphere. Often, repeated observation reveals that most women who intuitively employ this technique are inadvertently covering (or healing) an unpleasant secret truth about their inner world.
Surfaces and Tools
Paper that is 120 grams or more, thick construction paper.
A soft 8B pencil works well with oil pastels.
A hard brush soaked in turpentine will spread and dissolve the colors, blending them and giving them an aquarelle look. A rag soaked with turpentine is also an option.
The fixative dries the color on the paper so that it will not mix with the previous one when adding a layer. The artist can work on a new layer, even white on top of black, without blending colors. The fixative will dissolve if it comes in contact with turpentine.
Various etching and engraving tools - spatulas, sticks, branches, toothpicks, sharp tips, forks, and knives – are useful for creating textures. The spatula can also be used to remove large areas of color completely.
Working with Oil Crayons
Each participant has a box of oil pastels containing at least twenty-four shades. If it is a new box, break the sticks in half. Unwrap one half and leave the other in the paper. The purpose is to work with the tip and the width of the color stick as needed. Even this process of breaking the crayons is liberating, often accompanied by laughter. Deliberately breaking a color stick into two, especially as following an instruction, is breaking a social convention. It encourages working freely later on.
There are three major methods when working in layers: working by pressing strongly on the tip of the color-stick to create layer upon layer. Dry each layer with fixative, allowing glimpses of the previous layer to show through the additional new layer. This method accommodates three to five layers. The second method is working with the width of the oil pastel stick, applying very light pressure and no fixative between the layers. Layers mix together like gentle screens. Eight layers can be attained easily if you are careful not to press the stick too strongly. The third method is working with color nets. In this technique, the directions of the net, the various amounts of pressure, and the nature of the lines all help to create shades and hues. This technique should allow you to successfully produce ten layers.
Initial Encounters
Choosing good quality oil pastels: take any color in your hand and observe its shade. Draw a line using the strength of a child of four. If the color of the line has the same shade as the stick it means the pigment is rich. If not - try another brand.
A trial – work with the tip of the color-stick and then with its width, to create new types of lines, patches, layers and densities.
On a 9.5X12.5 cm. sheet of paper, create two patches of color: a yellow patch with a red layer on top of it, and then a red patch with a yellow layer on top (the patch size should be about 5x5 cm). Note the differences between the shades of orange despite drawing with the same colors.
The same experiment can be done with the width of the color stick; it will create a more airy result.
White for blending: prepare patches of colors, covering the paper densely, then work "into the paper" with the white color and see how the white layer serves to mix and merge unrelated colors.
Creating shades of green from consecutive small dots and lines of yellow and blue - Pointillism.
Create a layer of lines, apply fixative and then add another layer of Oil Pastel lines. Continue repetitively to reach as many layers and shades of color as possible (preferably change the direction of the lines in each layer).
Draw lines on a patch of color by preparing a dense colored area and spraying it with fixative. Continue to work with open lines, so that the colored layer shows through.
Use a generous amount of turpentine to dissolve a patch of oil pastel from a sheet of paper.
Glue a piece of newspaper or a drawing onto a paper, and continue working with oil pastels to create a collage.
Use hands as a tool. Let them smear the page and leave their own marks.
Cut or tear a shape, place it on a sheet of paper and color it, continuing to spread the color with your fingers beyond the outline of the shape. This creates a peripheral line around the cut shape that looks like a cloud. Remove the shape when finished and only the “cloud” remains.
Take two small pieces of paper. Cover one with white oil pastel and spray it well with fixative. Then conceal the white with a layer of black and draw on it using a sharp tool. This exercise gives a clear idea of a line, texture and the rich working range of oil pastel. Color the second piece of paper with different colors, and follow the same engraving technique.
The text is based on The Spirit of Matter / A Database Handbook for Therapists, Artists, and Educators, Nona Orbach and Lilach Galkin, 1997
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