How I blend oil pastels with paper stumps // sketchbook portrait sketch #artshorts #art #artsanddesign

Hi everyone, this is part two of me testing this sketchbook with oil pastels. In the previous video I painted a very easy cloud scene and in this one I'm gonna do a simple portrait. I have a few comments about the paper to add to what I already said about it. I think that for sketches and for playing it's great, like it's fine but layering doesn't work as well as it does with a pastel paper like pastelmat. It's also not as easy to blend, like it's easy and you can do it but it's not as effortless. I've done most of the blending applying pastel over pastel and using a paper stamp instead of my hands because on the previous one I was blending with my hands and it took quite a bit of force to get the paint moving and you could see how badly my desk was shaking. So for this one I focused on using a paper stamp and I think it was easier with a paper stamp but I personally prefer a combination of the two if the paper allows. I found that drawing very fine details like the nostrils or individual hairs for the eyebrows was pretty easy to do just using the oil pastel sticks and then I only needed to refine a couple of things with a thin paper stamp so the ability to achieve such precise lines is a plus for this paper. I started blending with paper stamps after I had quite a bit of paint on the paper already so that I had enough to move around. When I want things to blend very well and I want to mix colors then I will apply more pressure with the stamp than when I only want to soften edges or make some texture marks. I would normally blend much much more with my fingers or the gloves but I think this paper works better with the stamp and it keeps my hands slightly cleaner. I don't have any preference for paper stamps and all I've got are very old and nasty. They are from random brands or off brands and are very beaten up but I keep using them over and over. They get dirty and nasty but I don't really care. You can see how they look just brown, red brown, muddy, just they are muddy. The tips get blunt but that's also useful because when they are new if they come with very sharp and hard tips when you try to blend you end up lifting more paint than blending it and you also make unintentional marks and dents when I don't want to make them so yeah. I mostly use medium sized ones that are softer either because they have they're very old and they have been used to death or because they came like that from the start. I cannot recommend any particular brand and I wish I could because that would make it easier for me to buy new ones but I don't really know. My preferred ones don't have any name on them and are at least a decade old. In order to not contaminate other colors and end up with a muddy mess I'm constantly wiping them clean on a paper towel or a scrap piece of paper or even on the tape around the painting. You can have some dedicated exclusively for lighter colors and others for darker ones and that helps, that can help a lot but I often don't do it and I just wipe them relatively well almost every time and that is good enough for me. Some people have recommended that I use silicone brushes or tools but I have tried a little one and I don't know if it's mine or what but I wasn't, I didn't like the marks that it was making and it was lifting paint so maybe yours are better but I prefer much more to use the paper stamps or my hands. With my hands the blending is smoother but the paper stamp allowed me to make very fine lines or corrections. Overall it was fun to play with the sketch and I didn't feel like I was fighting the paper that much. I think it could even be an option for more detailed pieces but honestly if I plan to make something nicer and spend more time on it I will go for a better paper, at least one that is thicker and heavier weight. I've included a clip where you can see that there is some oil transfer on the back although that's very very common but just keep that in mind but otherwise it has been fun to test and I will keep using it for doodling and just sketches like this. I have bought a few other papers to try and I think the next one is going to be either the Canson Velvet or maybe Hahnemühle Velour paper, we'll see. I don't know when I'll be able to record and share them though because I'm going on a trip to Spain soon to visit my family and I will be staying there for a while but eventually I will upload them on my channel at some point. My hope while I'm there is to be able to find some time to use soft pastels instead of oil pastels. I haven't used them for years now and I really miss them. I doubt I will be able to make much but at least I can hope and yeah that's it. It's a fairly short and simple video and simple painting but I hope you liked it. Have a lovely day and see you soon! Bye bye!