Playing with oil pastels

After the need to "play with materials" hit me, I dug out my venerable box of pastels (bought in Calgary in 1977 - they still have the $3.75 sticker) and picked up the nearest magazine -

False-colour version of an Aboriginal painting
- I learned that blending is the secret for rich surfaces

 Having plunged in, I then watched a few youtube videos of people drawing apples: layering and blending. Turning back to the magazine, I perversely came up with this page of Gandaus, funerary carvings from north Pakistan -

Overlapping colourful lines

Trying a thin, smooth paper

 Bravely I took the pastels along to the Wallace Collection (for a one-person Drawing Tuesday) -

Starting to get the hang of it

A "crowbill" cover from the oriental arms section 

And elsewhere -

After a work by Alfred Jensen seen in an exhibition

These two are from the art sketchbook walk course -

After a few days of "play" I was feeling happier with the medium ... even after finding a box of assorted makes of oil pastels, including quite a few Sennelier, which are veryvery oily -

They aren't half messy though! I used these rediscovered old pastels to scale up a small section of one of the pages done in a gallery -

Ah, the pleasures of playing! And all this colour, after working mainly with ink and monochrome, is rather refreshing. Further, lurking on my shelves were two boxed sets, unnoticed during the studio reorganisation. I've had them for years and never used them, just got used to seeing the boxes. The square sticks are Carbothello, watersoluble "coloured charcoal";  the other, Neopastel, is both blendable and "aquarellable" -