9x12 oil pastel, Ben Hunt Cabin, Hales Corners, WI 9/23/15

I met up with my buddies in the Milwaukee Sketch at Ben Hunt Cabin. It's been quite awhile since I've seen the Tuesday evening crew, Al, Tim, Roger, Juanita, Bonnie, Carol, and Amy. I talked to Bonnie and she was working with water soluble oil pastels so I brought my oil pastels. Here's a picture of what I was painting more or less.

I was thinking about switching to acrylics but I really feel like playing with oil pastels even though you have to mat and frame them. They never really dry. Although I've read about people putting a Sennelier fixative on top followed by an acrylic clear coat. That would be interesting to try.

 I like to work from light to dark so I can scratch back into the lighter underlayers.I didn't use any black just combined red and a dark green to ge the darker colors. Used very light peachy pink, gray, green, brown and red for the logs. The gray was used to blend and round the logs. Then scratched back to get details.

Al had a good suggestion to make the line more irregular where the grass lawn meets the prairie. You can see how the picture is improved by making a darker shadow area in the lawn and making the lawn edge more irregular.

Here's a link to Oil Pastels 101 . They say that "other advantages of oil pastels (besides being dustless) are their size, portability and ease of use - especially for plein air applications. Many artists use oil pastels for field studies because the color ranges are just as vibrant as traditional oil paints, but much more handy for carrying around."

I have found that to be true. I like that they are very portable and not very messy. It's easy to grab my tackle box of oil pastels that I have sorted by value and color, the bag with my rags, tape, 9x12 Strathmore Acrylic linen canvas paper pad, drawing board, and stool and go out painting. Clean up is very easy. Just put away the pastel sticks so I'm done and ready to go.