Taken from: http://www.wetpaintart.com/Newsletter_Archive/White_Sale_05/Oil_Sticks_&_Oil%20Pastels.htm
What is an Oil Stick?
Oil sticks are oil paint in solid form. The same basic pigments and drying oils that are used in the formulation of tube paint are combined with wax and rolled into a crayon. This crayon develops a skin as the oil oxidizes, sealing the creamy semi-moist paint inside (this is very similar to how oil paint dries on your canvas; even though the surface can be dry to the touch the paint underneath may take much longer to dry). Each time you use your oil sticks this film needs to be rubbed or peeled off. After that, you are literally drawing with paint. The stick is versatile enough to use on almost any substrate. Remember however, that due to the wax content in oil sticks they should never be used for underpainting for traditional tube oil paint unless you are adding wax to it also. Using them over traditional oil paint is just fine.
~What follows is an accounting of my first experiences with oil sticks.
Each stick or "bar" is individually shrink wrapped. They say the stick has a hard "film" covering it. It's more like a shrink wrap of colour. I used an X-zacto knife to slice open the "film", or skin atop the colour, and used the edge of the blade to hold part of the skin down and unwrap the stick from the skin. The film is a good 1/16" thick and comes off in a sheet. It's like the hard film that sets up on oil or acrylic paint when it drys on your palette. It's a shameful waste of good colour and at $5 and up a stick, I don't want to waste this much of the stick everyday. I hope with daily or so use the skin won't form, so I won't have to "peel" the sticks again. Except as needed with use as I wear them down. I had a brainstorm to store them in a ziploc baggie. I love baggies, I store everything in them.
Once I got the skin off it was creamy as could be! Absolutely fabulous to smooth on the canvas. Almost too slippery on the cheap canvasbord I have, I'll have to try on other substrates to see how they "grab" the colour.
But if indeed, these will dry down like oil paints then they're a permanent oil pastel. I was able to clean it off my hands with Dawn dish washing soap. I found I had to let the soap soak on my hands for a few seconds before I could get it off. A dedicated scrub brush and towel will assist here. But that's me having to wash my hands alot in one day, and already today, my hands are dried out.
I can see how this is a scumblers dream come true! I had an artist friend who loved to scumble, and I'll admit that I do too. These are very thick and creamy. Alot of colour goes down. A brush can smooth it out and move it around without losing the intensity of the colour. Meaning, these don't dilute down and get all thin looking when you smooth them out with a dry brush. I suppose if you used some sort of solvent you'd get a more watery thin colour wash. But I like the intense, saturated colours. And I am trying to avoid toxic solvents.
Part of what I love about oil pastels is the rich, vibrant colour. It's intense. I don't want to loose that with switching. I want everything that an oil pastel is, but with archival permanence, not needing to frame under glass and respect from the art world!
I can see how working on a paper, or something absorbent like clay will be great with these. It'd soak up alot of the oil, speed drying time and make blending easier. I can see drying time will be an issue for me, at least to start. Again, I'll have to test these on all substrates to find what works best and what I like.
Blick Canvas Panel works ok, but it's very slick and glossy. Scumbling with a dry brush gets the colour going better. Streaky and kind of slimy, but I also had a bit of Linseed oil mixed in to start out. The green grass on the bottom was more creamy.
(After 2 nights of drying): it is still very wet and I don't like that. Lindseed is naughty.
Canson Watercolour paper is surprisingly good and better for sticks than oil pastels even. With a dry brush it's easy to cover the texture of the paper. I doubt you could use any solvents though. So boards may be better choices.
I'll need some sort of easel or way to tape stuff down as I can't get my hands on the piece when working on it. The paint comes right off onto my hands and then I have a big thumb print on the pic. It's just too messy to hold onto with my hands.
Wallis Sanded Museum Board works good if you use extender to blend. it doesn't take much stick to get the colour going here. Again frustrating to work small as the stick is big.
Layering seems to be a problem as there's more of a wet on wet technique going on here than a layering of colours like with oil pastels. So blending on the canvas becomes a big escapade.
(After a night of drying with a fan blowing on it): Dry, useable. I love Wallis for everything! Slight warping.
Forest # 15 - Oil Pastel and Oil Bar
Wallis Museum Board - 5x7 inches
Winsor & Newton Oil Bar for the sky and grass. It took about 2 days to dry to touch. I think some of it was still a little damp underneath maybe, (still a slight warp) but I could work on it. Pencil atop pastel took off the colour instead of layering. So it was revealing the underpainting. That looks bad on the tree trunk, but ok for the grass at the root of the tree. Notice the sky/grass line is a wee visible through the tree trunk. I wasn't able to do as much layering here, as you can see with the trunk. I think Wallis is best used with just one medium at a time for me. Luckily, Wallis Board is a superior kind of fabulous just on it's own.
Smooth Claybord - it's ok. I'm not horribly impressed with this board for use with anything so far. It's just generally too slick for anything to "stick" to it. Well, colour adheres to the board, but this would be a good board for lots of glazes. But not for layering or building colour. And how I paint, I build.
(After a night of drying with a fan blowing on it): still wet, still not liking smooth CB.
SUMMARY: "After a night of drying with a fan blowing on it":
~ Papers dry overnight, boards need more time. This is probably because papers absorb oils more so than the boards. The boards must evaporate in one direction only, where with paper evaporation occurs paint side and through the back of the paper as well. So paper dries quicker, naturally.
OPINIONS:
I'm going back and forth on liking the oil sticks and not liking them. So far, they worked best on the cheap Canson watercolour paper. I'm not so sure how long that paper would last nor if the oils would wreck it entirely. It is a paper and we are working with oils.
I can see how one needs a good colour set to start. Unless you're really good at making colours, and THAT is exactly what I was staying away from with paint. I never learned to mix colours and don't really want to spend my time doing that now. I like thinking "I need a reddish brown right there" and then grabbing the exact colour in a stick that I was looking for. Need. SNAP. Fulfilled. I guess I'm an instant gratification kind of gal.
Sticks allow you to focus on changing values of a colour instead of changing the hue and the value. Plus you can focus on the blending/not blending on the canvas, which you can do all that with painting, but painting just has that whole other step of making the right colour on the palet. Which always became the consuming quest for me, instead of making Art. When you stick too many variables in there it gets too hard for me. I'm not dumb, I just like things simple and easy:
"If it's easy it's God. If it's hard, it's not God, so don't do it."
Oil sticks are very messy compared to oil pastels and that makes me a bit more uncomfortable considering some of these colours are carcenogenic. I also am not keen on the need of toxic solvents. That is exactly what I am trying to avoid. I have enough health issues without adding in toxic stuff to my life.
Also not keen on having my company get colour smears on them. My art/life ends up everywhere. It's like glitter: if you ever use glitter just once in your house you will find tiny specs of it in the strangest places for the next 10 years!
I want an oil pastel that is permanent and archival. Something that doesn't need to go behind glass. Glass framing limits size to under 30". To my thinking glass over 30x30 inches would just be too heavy to hang on a wall. & IF that was done on a board backing, the weight would be excessive. So sizing is an ongoing concern, yet we need big because the stick is big. You see the quandry?
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