Painting flowers using Sennelier, Mungyo Gallery and Cray-Pas Expressionist oil pastels

After I'd drawn a rhododendron using oil pastels, I became intrigued by the medium. Previously, oil pastels seemed to me like a kid's medium, since many of us used these as crayons as students. But I found that I could draw flowers with them, something I couldn't achieve with soft pastels. There's just something about their blendability without being overly smudgy that made it work, along with their vibrancy of colour.

So I decided to paint a series of flowers using oil pastels. Here they are - a lily, a lotus and an orchid. The lotus is technically mixed media though, the background is using oil pastels and the flower itself is using soft pastels, specifically NuPastels. 

I use three brands of oil pastels - Mungyo Gallery Artists' Soft Oil Pastels, Sakura Cray-Pass Expressionist and a small box of Sennelier oil pastels.

I love the Mungyo the best. They give bright, unadulterated colour and glide on smoothly with very litttle crumbs. Cray-Pas is much drier and can appear patchy, so they're better for the underlayers or dark backgrounds when I don't want them to take the attention away from the main subject.

As for Sennelier, these are super soft like lipstick. While some people might love this trait, I find them a little too soft. They're sticky and in Singapore's humid weather, easily take on a melty texture. When you apply the colour, they appear similar to paint, if that makes sense. They're really great if you want to achieve a painterly look, not so great if you like to paint details. I love the colour payoff, but can only use these for the topmost layers. Trying to layer colours on top of these tends to create a mushy mess if you're not careful. Though I would love to get more individual sticks of pink - Sennelier has some great pinks which I imagine would be absolutely lovely for flowers.

As for paper, all the paintings above were done on Canson Mi-Teintes, the smoother side. This paper works really well for oil pastels - the slight texture gives enough tooth and the coloured pads means you can dispense with colouring the background if you prefer.

I'm loving the ease of oil pastels and the relatively less mess they create compared to soft pastels. I also like how coloured pencils can draw on top of oil pastels for details. Though I haven't tried using them for other subject matters, so the range is a little limited for me for now. Will need to experiment more!