Video Art Lessons

At last, I made some video art lessons in oil pastels! Come see for yourself how this versatile modern art medium handles.

My first tutorial is lower resolution since it began as a test. It came out well despite one minor blooper. Have a laugh when I drop the camera toward the end and try this trick at home with your oil pastels. Most brands are opaque on black paper.





You can get both the Art Spectrum Colourfix paper and Caran d'Ache Neocolor II at either Blick or Jerry's Artarama. To help support this site and my freebie shorts, please browse for your supplies at my ads. I have yet to figure out how to do a linked supplies list for projects but if I can, I'll add that convenience.

A less expensive alternative for the lovely paper is to pick up just the black Colourfix primer and use it on 140lb watercolor paper. Cheap spiral bound watercolor pads will give you an oil pastels practice pad to try all sorts of things in. Just cut pieces of glassine to tape to the bottom of a page and flip up to cover the art. I've got one on my own next Blick order to make one of these and might do a video on the practice pad too. Let me know if you'd be interested.

Mindful of beginners' budgets, my next two videos use my favorite of the loony cheap student grade oil pastels. It's a two part lesson on color mixing covering some of what's discussed in Color Theory but also showing how to handle the sticks, what blended colors look like versus unblended similar colors and how to create some nice textures and skin tones.

Part One includes the color wheel, primaries, secondaries and tertiaries, tints and a skin tone shading bar showing blending with sticks. Also you get to see my face and hear my voice at the intro. I used the smooth side of the Canson Mi-Tientes page in this demo.






Part Two covers mixing Shades, browns and other tertiary neutrals, also creating optical mixing with pointillism or crosshatching. Notice that when you're shading in textures, precision isn't always as important as getting the texture more or less even in the final layers. Crumb Control is also demonstrated in this video just as it was in the first one. Some of these techniques are a bit easier to understand when you see them in a video!



I've added another two-part demo with a project you can complete using 10 Cretacolor Aqua Stic watersoluble oil pastels (dry) on white Canson Mi-Tientes paper -- or similar colors in any brand on sketchbook paper.

Give it a go, you may have a lot of fun especially if trees always gave you difficulties!

How to Draw a Tree in Oil Pastels

Please pardon the bloopers in the narration -- I got a bit mixed up on "left" and "right" when describing what I was doing. What I meant to say was that the shadow's on the right and the sun is on the left. If you watch what I'm doing, you'll get it right.

If you reverse the direction of the light in your drawing, just keep it consistent. Make sure the shadow's always toward the same side on every object in your picture and you'll be fine.



Thanks for watching! Stay tuned for further video demonstrations on many of the same topics I cover in my written tutorials. Till then... have fun and try this at home!

More Video Demonstrations

Landscape Video Art Lesson

Two three-part video series: How to Underpaint with Watersoluble Oil Pastels and Painting with Watersoluble Oil Pastels demonstrate a sunny summer landscape with a small set of Cretacolor Aqua Stic watersolubles.

You'll also get to see my furry muse, Ari Cat, in the first video intro section and getting petted while the sky wash is drying.

Coming Attractions

Plans are in the works for a more complete and thorough video workshop that I'll make available online and perhaps on DVD once I figure out the technical aspects of making DVDs. I'll probably include all the free ones on the DVD if I do that.

I'll also always have at least a few short free lessons available though, since I believe oil pastels are the best way for a person on a limited budget to learn to produce good salable art.

Try this at home! There's nothing like holding it in your hands and seeing the results for yourself. Please feel free to contact me if you have any questions or requests for specific topics.