Talens Oil Pastels - Move It

Yesterday I borrowed some oil pastels. I’ve no idea how to use them, or whether they’re hard, medium or soft. Nobody in the painting club uses them, and for the teacher they’re an absolute no-go.
I’ve watched a few videos with tips and made some notes.

In short: it should be possible to use them on all sorts of paper, cardboard and wood. Is that right?
That might depend on the type of pastel (quality) and the type of paper. I’ve since learnt that you can achieve brilliant results with very cheap oil pastels if you use pastel mat (intended for soft pastels).

Talens offers twelve colours in this range: white, lemon yellow, orange, vermilion, Bordeaux, ochre yellow, burnt sienna, light green, pine green, ultramarine, Prussian blue and black. As you can see, there’s no brown included; this means the colours will need to be mixed in some way. Although it appears possible to mix the pastel with oil and paint with it, or to use a palette knife, I decided to skip this for my first attempt.

I wanted to find out just how big the difference is between soft pastels and oil pastels.

Trying a toothpick to scratch and blend





Baking paper to keep my hand clean
The holder of the pastel sponge to blend and scratch





Adding more oil pastel





The ugly stage





Blending with toilet paper





Thin layer





Sketch with oil pastel

Soft pastels versus oil pastels

It is much harder to blend oil pastels than soft pastels. Applying a thin layer is pointless at the start. I wasted time trying to blend them.
Unlike soft pastels, oil pastels are mess-free. There’s no dust. Blending with a finger is tricky; I managed it with a bit of toilet paper, but it was difficult with a toothpick if the layer of oil paint was too thin; the holder for the soft pastel sponge worked just as well as a palette knife. I wanted to keep the palette knife oil-free.
Oil pastels have a distinct smell, whilst soft pastels produce dust. Both can cause allergic reactions.
The type of paper certainly influences the result. I’ve also used this paper for paintings with soft pastels. It works well enough, especially when it comes to experimenting with what’s possible and working more quickly (not that I’m quick).

Whilst painting, I did consider giving up at the start. The whole process took me a bit longer than expected. I think you need different oil pastels for different techniques to achieve a good result. This box doesn’t provide any information that’s important for artists.
I assume it’s intended for children or as a student-grade product. I can’t say whether it’s worth the price, as I don’t have any other oil pastels to compare it with. Because they’re difficult to blend, I assume these oil pastel sticks are medium to hard in consistency.

I haven’t used the soft coloured pencils (Derwent) much in this painting, but they work better on oil pastels than on soft pastel chalks.

_{4-7-2026
Materials: paper - coloured A4, Talens Panda oil pastels, Derwent fine art coloursift pencils.}