“Beachside Sunset”
Barbara Farland
Oil Pastel, 2018

I made a promise to “show my work” in a blog post a couple months ago, so here’s the latest. It’s no masterpiece and it’s quite elementary in subject and composition, but I was itching to test out a technique I saw on Facebook posted by The Artful Parent.

The post’s author claimed that oil pastels are easy to blend using a cotton swab dabbed in some oil. Perhaps this is an obvious or well-known technique to most, but I had never been exposed to it. I pulled out my eight pastels (a cheap set of crayons that are part of an even larger set of other cheap art supplies) and, after about thirty minutes of experimentation, I had “Beachside Sunset.”

The blending process was quite fun! Though I prefer the more cohesive blending effects of soft pastels, I appreciated that the mess was very minimal with the oil variety. Again, I only invested about half an hour in this particular piece of art, so perhaps a slower pace and a little more practice will only grow my preference for oil pastels.