Difference Between Oil Pastels and Oil Paint
The oil pastel is a type of pastel where oil based binding element like mashed paraffin wax (or petroleum wax), stearic acid and coconut oil are used. It creates a painting with a velvety texture and a lot of lusciousness.
The word "pastel" originates from the Medieval Latin pastellum, which means "woad paste," and the Late Latin pastellus, which means "paste." The word pastel first appeared in
French in 1662 and originated in northern
Italy in the 16th century and were used by
Jacopo Bassano and
Federico Barocci. Pastels have been used by artists since the
Renaissance, but it gained a huge popularity in the 18th century when a number of well-known artists like
Edgar Degas,
Mary Cassatt and
Odilon Redon made pastels their primary medium.
On the other hand, Oil paint is a type of slow-drying paint that consists of particles of pigment suspended in a drying oil, commonly linseed oil. Oil painting is the most preferred painting style and practiced by most artists around the world.
Oil paint was invented long ago. Oil paints were first used in Asia as early as the 7th century AD. The oldest known oil paintings are
Buddhist murals created almost at 650 AD. The paintings are created by walnut and poppy seed oils. The paintings are located in cave-like rooms carved from the cliffs of
Bamiyan Valley of Afghanistan. Later it was used by most famous artists like
Vincent Van Gogh,
Leonardo da Vinci,
Pablo Picasso.
Oil pastels are a mixture of mashed paraffin wax (or petroleum wax), stearic acid and coconut oil as a binder, and various color pigments. The oil pastel is produced in a variety of forms, including winter pastels and summer pastels. The winter pastel includes more oil than the summer pastel does, which makes it softer than the summer pastel.
On the contrary, The oil paint is made by mixing color pigments with drying oils like poppy seed oil, walnut oil, linseed oil, safflower oil etc. The viscosity of the paint may be modified by the addition of a solvent such as turpentine or white spirit, and varnish may be added to increase the glossiness of the dried oil paint film.
Oil Pastel painting may create a luscious, velvety texture with a deep, rich, splendid glow without the use of a lot of tools because it can be done with just the pastel itself. Pastels are easily bendable, and can be blended with fingers, a blending stump, or a cloth. The final color effect of Pastel colors are more similar to natural dry pigments than any other painting technique.
But, Oil paint allows the artist to achieve a broad range of opacity and intensity in their work. It lets you to layer multiple colors and blend them together to produce a stunning piece of artwork. Moreover, due to the slow-drying quality of the oil paint, an artist can develop a painting gradually and can make changes or corrections easily.
The pigment in oil pastels can be painted with using a brush soaked in white spirit, turpentine, linseed oil, or another type of vegetable oil or solvent after it has been put to a surface in dry form. As an alternative, oil can be applied on the drawing surface beforehand or applied directly to the pastel. Pastel paintings are found to be damaged over time because of issues with oil drying, brittleness from stearic acid, and discolored top layers. Beeswax is applied over the painted painting to protect the pastel painting from these problems.
In opposition, To make oil paint thinner, faster or slower drying, it is typically blended with linseed oil, artist-grade mineral spirits, or other solvents. "Fat over lean" is a fundamental principle of oil paint application, which states that each new layer of paint must contain more oil than the layer behind in order to allow for appropriate drying.
Other media, such as cold wax, resins, and varnishes, can be combined with the oil. With the help of these additional mediums, the painter can modify the paint's translucency, shine, density as well as its capacity to hold or hide brushstrokes.
Because the medium is mixed and blended directly on the working surface, unlike other painting techniques, pastel painting can be difficult. As a result, there is no way to check the colors on a palette before putting them to the surface. Pastel errors also cannot be covered in the same manner that a paint error may be. Because pastels are not firmly adhered to the paper's surface, they must be handled with extreme caution. Pastel, on the other hand, adheres to the paper's surface and is easily filthy unless protected by a glass or a fixatives consisting of glue or gum solution.
Instead, The oil paint dry out slowly and so it allows to modify or correct the error easily. Also the oil paints mix readily, allowing for subtle color changes as well as the creation of many light and shadow elements. Oil paintings can be thinned using turpentine or other thinning chemicals, allowing painters to layer their work. Oil colors used by professional artists are created and designed to resist chemical reactions from exposure to water, ultraviolet light and oxidization.
The majority of the fixatives used for making the npastel painting more durable are toxic. In the same manner, some fixatives such as beeswax are used on pastel painting for elonging its lifetime , and so it is not vegan friendly either.
Yet, Despite the fact that some oil paints are non-toxic, it is not recommended to apply them directly to the skin because some of the pigments could be poisonous. The oil paint could irritate your skin if it gets on it. Similarly, most oil based binders are extracted from animal fats and so some oil paints are not considered as the vegan friendly painting media
Credit to @remy Pastel Painting