Blogmas Day 16: Trying A New Medium

I saw this suggestion for a blog post and thought I might give it a go.

I have had some beautiful Sennelier oil pastels for a number of years, but I’ve never really gotten to grips with them, so I thought I would give them a go for the purposes of Blogmas.

I watched a selection of YouTube oil pastel specialists, and reassuringly, all of them recommended Sennelier. I love painting with oils but they are difficult to manage in a small space/with a cat so I was hoping I could get some oil-type artwork out of my system with these pastels.

It took me an age to decide what to draw, as although I fancied a grown-up winter landscape, I just don’t have the patience for anything too painterly and subtle so I wondered about something folk-art-y, or abstract, or a bird, but nothing grabbed me. I really wanted to do a nude but as I no longer attend a life drawing class, I have no images to work from and the online life drawing images are all rather staid and posed. Having said that, I didn’t want to start an online search for nude images as frankly I have enough problems with the algorithm thanks to the ridiculous things my children send me to watch so I didn’t want to add naked people to the mix.

I am drawing baby seals this weekend with Wild Life Drawing, and I have some reference images. I thought the smooth skin might look good with the oil pastel texture, but I have no tools for detail apart from cotton buds, so I was a bit dubious about getting the adorably cute features. Hmm. I used my Fabriano sketchbook which has nice smooth pages but is robust enough to take a bit of blending.

Anyway, here is my baby seal. What do you think?