By Matt Fussell
The video featured on this page is a time lapse of an hour long live lesson that aired in the member section of this site on December 13, 2012. To see the video in real time, complete with commentary, visit oil pastel portrait live lesson.
For this demonstration, I went a little out of my comfort zone when it comes to drawing. Most of the drawings that I do around here are focused on representational drawing methods. For this portrait, I wanted to go a little abstract. I think that the oil pastels lend themselves to drawing in this manner. You can really create marks that resemble paint brush strokes with the thick oil pastels. After several layers of colors, the oil pastels begin to blend and mix in a similar manner to oil paints.
Instead of local color, I chose to be creative with my color choices. I chose to use complementary colors, purple and yellow. In order for this to translate, I needed to make sure that the values of these colors were accurate. In fact, you can use any colors that you want in a drawing or painting, as long as the values are right, the image will translate. I also focused on using the warmer yellows for the highlights and the cooler purples as the shades.
I was pleased with the results of this exercise. Especially for a drawing that was started and completed within an hour. I will probably revisit this type of drawing in future videos.
The featured video is a time lapse of the tutorial...
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