Comparison: OIl pastels vs soft pastels - 2 paintings of Yellowstone Park!

I had so much fun with my new-found oil pastels that I decided to paint another scenery right away. This time, it's of Yellowstone Park in winter, photo reference from Pixabay. I used Mungyo Gallery Artists' Soft Oil Pastels on Strathmore pastel paper.

I think I'm getting the hang of oil pastels. There's a learning curve to using them but if you're used to soft pastels, the adjustment isn't too difficult. The Mungyo Gallery Artists' Soft Oil Pastels really are superb. They are creamy and blend very well without being patchy. You can see some of the grain of the paper still, but it's not too bad. Right from the beginning when I laid down the background colours, the oil pastels went on vibrant and smooth.

Incidentally, this Strathmore pastel paper is awful for soft pastels, but it takes a few layers of oil pastels ok. Glad I found a use for the remaining sheets in the pad!

After this painting, I got to thinking: I wonder how different the outcome would be if I used soft pastels instead. I haven't had much success with landscapes using soft pastels, and was curious if I could replicate the oil pastel painting.   

Challenge to myself accepted! To make it a fair comparison, I used unsanded paper for the soft pastel painting, this time the Strathmore pink tinted Artagain paper. Initially, I'd intended to just use Panpastels for the large areas and pastel pencils for the details. Since I wasn't using sanded paper, I figured I couldn't use soft pastel sticks as the paper didn't have enough tooth.

But by the time I'd blocked in the colours with Panpastels, I was quite dissatisfied with the look. The colours looked so washed out and insipid. I couldn't replicate the bright, bold colours I'd achieved with the oil pastels.

So I whipped out my Nupastels instead, and went over the Panpastels. MUCH better. The blues were bluer, the whites were brighter, and the the black stick was slim enough for me to draw details with.

This is the final result:

And here are the two paintings side by side (oil pastels on the left, soft pastels on the right):

 

Here are my thoughts:

The soft pastel painting definitely has a smoother and more seamless blend - this is most obvious from the sky and sea. It has a more ethereal glow. The blending of the water ripples is also better, partly because I haven't mastered the art of blending light oil pastels over dark colours without muddying the surrouding area. The details on the soft pastel painting are sharper, but the colours on the oil pastel painting pop more. I'd say the soft pastel version is more refined. Though to be honest, I'd expected the differences to be greater.

BUT (and this is a big BUT), I took only one-and-a-half hours to draw the oil pastel painting, whereas the soft pastel one took me double that time. In fact, halfway through the latter, I was so bored I wanted to throw in the towel, and would have done so except I didn't want to quit in the middle of an experiment. Blending soft pastels simply takes longer. Oil pastels is really a quick draw medium.

For this reason, I suspect I'll be reaching for the oil pastels more if I want to draw landscapes because the slight differences don't justify doubling the effort. Landscapes usually don't interest me enough to invest many hours into painting them. This is just a personal preference, of course, and might change in time. Who knows?

Which painting do you prefer? I'd love to know what you think!