Oil Pastels

One of the many goals of the Brown Room year is to explore new tools, techniques...languages.  Recently, I realized that we had never used oil pastels together, and there are so many wonderful possibilities for them.  Personally, my favorite technique is to blend them, but as we discovered, there are quite a few things you can do with watercolors to represent your imaginative ideas.  

“I brought my pastel colors. I counted them and they are twenty.”
​- Saul, 3.8 years

“I’m thinking about a garden for my flower.” - Saul 
What colors were you thinking about for your garden? - Elyse
“Three types of green.” - Saul ​

Sauly, one thing we can do with oil pastels is blend them. - Elyse
“Blend them? In a blender.” - Saul

Do you remember when we mixed paint to make new colors? We can do that with oil pastels too. - Elyse

“It’s a different type of orange.” - Saul
​
It is.  That’s why we have different materials, or different tools, that we can use to make different kind of images. - Elyse

“Red really, really, really works.” - Saul 
It is very bold.  Very bright. - Elyse
“Everywhere I go, the red goes.  I’m making a volcano. Now I’m drawing a volcano. I don’t know if volcanoes  are good enough fire.  Fire is most in a dragon.  The fire that is coming out of the volcano is fire, fire. I don’t know if a dragon is going to be a fire measure. I don’t know if the volcano is enough red.  I’m drawing it all over my paper.” - Saul 
Is all of that red the fire from the volcano? - Elyse
“No, even more is hiding inside of the pastel.” - Saul 

“I’m making it all over the place fire. It’s not exploding.  Now the fire is turning itself into one big house.” - Saul 
“I’m making all of the fire from the volcano. The fire stopped shooting.  It took a rest.” - Saul 
I think I’m going to add a sun to my volcano. - Elyse
“Why? To make it more dry? ‘ - Saul 
Well, I was hoping to blend my orange and yellow.  My favorite thing to do with oil pastels is to blend them. - Elyse
“I don’t like to blend them, I like to make them into fire.” - Saul

“So, this is the fire. I’m drawing the fire and the fire engine should come. Now do you see all of the fire? The black is making the fire to stop.  Well, the black is the sun. Do you know why the sun is black?” - Saul 
I do not. Can you tell me more about that? - Elyse

The Sun

“Well, I don’t know about his yellow sun, but yellow suns do not have any time so I turned it in to a blue sun. They don’t have any time to turn into a yellow sun.  They have to turn into a blue sun.” - Saul 
Sauly, how does time change the color? - Elyse
“Well, I made a rainbow.” - Saul 
Can you tell me more about how time changes the color?  - Elyse
“The blue is making the sun.  It’s turning the fire into sun.” - Saul 
How do you make fire into a sun?  - Elyse
“You add yellow to it. This is the sun! Look! Look at the sun! I know the sun because you can’t eat the sun because it’s just a picture of the sun.” - Saul 
Could you eat the real sun?  - Elyse
“Noooo…it’s not the real sun.  It’s just the picture of the sun. You can’t eat sun.” - Saul
Can you imagine how hot it would be? - Elyse
“It would be hot in your mouth.” - Saul 
“I made two pictures on the one piece of paper. One is called the sun and one is called the fire. The fire is under the sun. Now you can’t see it because it disappeared. You can even draw on the back [bottom] of the pastel.” - Saul [top right photo he is showing both sides]

Black Paper

Switching to black paper really altered the way the colors popped from the paper.  

“It’s so beautiful that it can even make an elephant shape. And now it’s an octopus shape.” - Saul

“Books on top of books (oil pastels), and this, when it runs, we have to take one out to see if it’s any good.” - Saul