Learn how to draw with oil pastels!

Oil pastels are a crayon-like art medium with unique qualities that set them apart from other tools. With their vibrant bright colors, versatile components, and creamy consistency, oil pastels inspire artists to push their creative boundaries and explore the different styles of art that they have to offer.

Faber-Castell’s Oil Pastels are created for aspiring and student artists. The smooth color laydown of the pastels makes them easy for beginners to use and experiment with. Our Oil Pastels are available in sets of 12, 24, and 36 and each comes in cardboard boxes with trays used for storage. Each oil pastel is a part of our unique color matching indexed system. The color index system is unique to Faber-Castell products and affords artists the advantage of mixing color mediums in a predictable palette.

Although our Oil Pastels are perfect for beginners, the quality is not compromised. Our oil-pastels are lightfast and acid-free with excellent color opacity. Available in 36 different rich colors, our pastels have twice as much pigment versus competitors. Their pigments make them powerful and their soft contents make them easy to blend with other colors and media.

Oil Pastel Techniques

Now you know about oil pastels, but how do you use them? The versatile components that make pastels so unique also allow them to be used on a variety of surfaces. Use pastels with colored paper, card stock, pastel paper, glass, canvas, polystyrene, and even plastic. For beginners, we recommend starting with colored or pastel paper.

There are many techniques you can use when creating with oil pastels. On a beginner level, use oil pastels to simply draw and blend with your fingers. Use a spatula or palette knife to blend while adding texture to your artwork. Alter your oil pastels by adding an oil medium such as mineral oil or baby oil to create a paint-like consistency. Finish your work or the layers of your work by sealing it with a fixative spray.

The vivid colors of oil pastels are ideal for art techniques and styles such as the sgraffito technique and the encaustic technique. The sgraffito (the Italian word for scratch) technique is when artists create an oil pastel layer of bright color, cover that layer with a darker oil pastel shade, and then scratch the dark surface to reveal the vibrant initial layer. With the encaustic technique, artists apply oil pastels to an encaustic iron and then smudge the iron on paper or canvas. The heat of the iron creates a timeless hot oil texture.  

Learning how to create with oil pastels opens a world of artistic possibilities. With a smooth laydown of vivid colors, Faber-Castell Oil Pastels are made for aspiring and student artists while delivering high-quality results.