Oil pastels on Canvas!

They say all good things come in threes; I don’t count on that, yet every now and then I do make certain things twice, rarely three times, as is more often said. Painting the same thing three times would change the way you see and the way of working.

Today I decided to create this using the oil pastels and on canvas, which should work as well. I’d intended to use a palette knife, as I’ve never done that before either, but I haven’t got round to it yet.

I’ll just kept the canvas on my lap. I’ve used the different types of oil pastels all mixed together. To be honest, I noticed little, or actually no, difference. This might be because I was working on canvas, which I really enjoyed, the oil pastels easily blended on it. Perhaps another reason is that it’s warmer in the house at the moment, so the oil pastels might be a bit creamier.
I didn’t use anything to blend the colours, just light over dark and applying it nice and thick, which you can do with the side of a part of the oil pastel stick.
The plan was to use the palette knife, but I haven’t got that far yet; I’ll try that next time on this canvas as well.

Although I applied several layers on top of each other, you can’t really see this on the canvas itself, nor in the photo.
I also noticed this time that it’s possible to remove the oil pastel with a kneaded eraser; I couldn’t manage this on the paper I’d used previously. Watercolour pencils can also be removed with an eraser, making them more practical than using a graphite pencil when you want to draw on canvas or paper. I’ve got plenty of watercolour pencils. Who knows, I might be able to use them again in a while, as I’m not doing anything with watercolours at the moment.

I started at the top, and it’s easy to mix colours by applying light colours over dark ones. Making something white is more difficult. So, for the details, I’ll have to come up with something else. Perhaps the palette knife or the Derwent Colour Soft coloured pencils. It also remains to be seen how well the oil pastels dry.

By the way, the colours are richer in real life than they appear in the photo.

Another great thing about the kneaded eraser is that I was able to clean the oil pastels properly this time. It might just be that the kneaded eraser was a bit warmer and the temperature was higher. Of course, you can also clean the oil pastels by rubbing them on a piece of paper, and who knows, you might even be able to create something with the dirty oil pastel, but personally, I find dabbing with a kneaded eraser more practical. Whilst I had the canvas on my lap and was working on it with one hand, I held the kneading eraser in my other hand and kneaded it. This certainly resulted in cleaner hands this time, although I did have to remove the oil pastels from under my fingernails. Which is strange, really, when you consider that I didn’t use my fingers to blend the colours.

_{14-7-2026
Materials: oil pastels (Van Gogh + Pental), aquarel pencil to sketch the cats, kneading eraser}