The Art Journal Fridays prompt for Leap day was to take a leap and try something different. I tried using oil pastels for the first time. I’m not sure if I really like them. They felt like drawing with something that is a cross between a crayon and a tube of lipstick. Very crude and lacking in any fine control. Maybe if I was working on a larger scale that wouldn’t be an issue. They are also very smudgy. That’s not a big problem since I’m used to smudges with charcoal, but I did end up using over 4 coats of fixative just to make the drawing safe to handle. It just wouldn’t stop feeling gooey. I read somewhere that oil pastels never really dry and can still shift years later, a quality I don’t want in a journal that gets handled a lot while it is being made. I might try this medium again later, but I think it would only be for something very loose like gestures. I also won’t be using oil pastels inside a bound journal, yuckkk! However, oil pastels might be good for mindless stress relief drawings that you do and trash…
