work in progress, 11.6, on floor…

The now out-of-print book Oil Pastel: Materials and Techniques for Today’s Artist by Kenneth Leslie had something useful that is hard to find anywhere else: a recipe for oil pastels.  While searching the web, I found a few recipes floating around but when you read them you find out they are actually instructions for making soft pastels (come on guys – at least learn the difference!).

After doing some more thorough searching I did find a post by someone who’s tried Leslie’s recipe and made her own adaptations:
http://www.wetcanvas.com/forums/showthread.php?t=380215
I found this after I’d tried the following and written up most of this description, so I did it slightly differently.  Her instructions are really good, so be sure to look at them if you’re interested in trying this.

Reading discussions online, people tend to agree that oil pastels are made with inert (nondrying) oil.  Similar products made with drying oils tend to be called paint sticks or oil bars.  For my first attempt I followed Leslie’s recipe using stand oil, so the result would basically be a  big paint stick, but that’s just a matter of definition.  The important considerations are: how well does it work as an art material, and do I enjoy using it? Also, is it worth it?  Do I gain something from this that I couldn’t buy in a store?  I’m hoping to make my own custom colors this way.  I don’t think I can hope to make something with a consistency as smooth as a store-bought product.

I feel obligated to mention some safety precautions if you want to try this:

1. Powder pigment is hazardous to inhale.  Wear a dust mask and latex or nitrile gloves.
2. Some pigments, like Cadmium, have extra health considerations – don’t use them unless you know what you’re doing.
3. Wax and oil are flammable – obviously, don’t expose them to open flame.
4. Don’t make art supplies somewhere where food is prepared (no kitchen!), and choose a place with adequate ventilation.  Any pans etc. that you use need to be dedicated to art activities and never again used for food.

Lacking anywhere in my home with sufficient space and ventilation, I took a small table and extension cord out to the back yard.  Here are my supplies:

Okay, I’m not the most organized organized person, but here is what is necessary:

1. If you aren’t going to use the stove (and for health reasons, you should try not to), you need a cheap hot plate, I got mine at Target.
2. A double boiler, dedicated to art purposes – I got a cheap one off ebay, but if you can’t find one, you can melt the wax in a can placed in a pan filled with a few inches of water.
3. Some extra cans (or other containers) for mixing. Use a pliers to bend a small spout onto the edge of each can for easy pouring.
4. Aluminum foil to make molds for your paint sticks – roll the aluminum foil around a cylindrical object, close up the bottom end and place standing up (Leslie places the bottom end in modeling clay, but I just propped mine up in a can). Placing more foil over your work surface makes cleanup easier, since wax tends to drip.
5. Piece of glass and a palette knife
6. Dust mask and gloves
7. Turpentine
8. Stand oil
9. Pigment powder (I used Indian Yellow, Ultramarine, and Prussian Blue)*
10. Wax  (I used “naturally white beeswax pastilles” sold by Gamblin, but there is probably a cheaper way to buy suitable beeswax. These had the advantage of already being in small pieces; if you buy a chunk, you will need to break it into pieces.)

*Books on encaustic painting note that Prussian Blue pigment can release trace amounts of cyanide gas at high temperatures, but state that this won’t matter as long as there is good ventilation.

Procedure

1. Pour some powder pigment on the glass.  Pour a bit of turpentine into a well in the pigment (basically just enough to wet it when mixed) and mix it into a paste using the palette knife. Put the paste into a can.
2. Heat the wax in the top of the double boiler until it is melted – use only the temperature needed to melt the wax, about 150°f.  Add the stand oil and stir.  According to Leslie, the ratio should be about 1 part oil to 3-4 parts wax. When the wax and oil appear smoothly blended, pour some of the mixture into the can with the pigment paste and stir again (The ratio of wax/oil to pigment will vary by pigment used, so it is hard to judge – 50/50  is recommended, but I used less pigment than that).
3. Pour this mix  into your molds and leave it to harden for several hours.

Results: Mixed

My resulting art supplies have the consistency of very big crayons – too much wax, too little oil.  I had trouble judging the volume of oil that I was adding to the wax because stand oil is so viscous – next time, I need to measure ahead of pouring.  I’m happy about  the colors – I wanted some earthy greens and yellows and that’s what I got.  Unlike an actual crayon, you get good color intensity when you make a mark with these, despite the fact that I didn’t get the pigment ratio near 50%.  Crayons, however, are not what I was aiming for.  When I get a chance, I’m going to remelt these and add more oil.

Oil pastel on paper 7″ x 5″

Here’s a small drawing from July, 7″ x 5″:

Artomatic is over, I’m going to deinstallation tomorrow, and I never even got to cover all the floors, because there’s just so much.  Anyway, here are some photos from one more floor.

Large work on paper by Eve Hennessa (http://hennessa.blogspot.com/). Sorry about the quality of this image, I managed to fail to get it square. She also does strange figurative sculptures out of aluminum foil.

“Lake Series” photos by Susannah Pegg: http://www.susannahpegg.com/

I sort of short-changed photography due to personal bias – I kept being drawn to painting and drawing, but there was a lot of good photography there that I should have looked at closer.

Large portraits by Asad Walker – I like how he captured expression while  using a single-color – these are eye-catching. Unfortunately his webpage doesn’t seem to work.

Mixed media work by Mei Mei Chang: http://meimeichang.com/home.html This image seems almost like a stream of consciousness, if that makes any sense.

I love these paintings by Valentine Wolly – they show images with weird visual distortion – but unfortunately I can’t get a good picture with all the glass (wow, that framing job must have been a real pain!) so you might want to go to her website : http://www.valentinewolly.com/index.htm

By Jody Isaacson and Andrea Hull – the top piece is a print, the bottom piece is made of wax.

A very subtle oil still life by James Halloran

Detail of a map-based work by Nikolas R. Schiller

Print by Meaghan Busch – again, the reflections get in the way, here is her website, though I can’t find this piece on it: http://meaghanbusch.com/home.html

Work by Novie Trump – again, I like this bcause I find it subtle – guess my vocabulary isn’t too creative today.

One of  Tim Tate’s reliquaries – not sure I need to post one because they already get a lot of attention, but they are so cool.

I was at Artomatic Friday and covered 3 floors, taking some pictures of my favorite things, if I could narrow it down.  Here are some of  my favorites from Floor 2:

A.R.T. installation by Michelle Herman – when you look in the microscope (where nothing is visible, so I thought the joke was on me), it activates the center screen to show the view upward from the viewpiece and the two other screens to begin videos.

Large paintings by Zachary Vaughn across from my space.

A rather minimal pairing with art by Matthew Langley on the left and J.T. Kirkland on the right, who instead of hanging art on his wall altered the wall itself by drilling lots of holes in it, which aren’t easily visible in this photo.

Art by John M. Adams (left) and J.T. Kirkland again, collaborating with Matt Sargent who did sound, though I couldn’t exactly hear it since there were multiple things going on in that corner of the building.

“Flying Together” – an installation by Philip Kohn.  When visitors walked into the space, it would film them and send their images floating through the clouds with lots of previous visitors.

I got a poem on my Artomatic wall from the poet Brash (an artomatic regular), I find that pretty cool though he/she posts a lot of poems:

(image removed because the poet has requested that her work not be posted)

Robin and I completely installed my display for Artomatic yesterday  – I had previously painted the wall, but we needed to hang the art, put my sign up, install and properly wire the lighting, and set up a table with postcards and a comment book.  We were there more than a few hours, but i forgot to check the time!  This was the last weekend before opening and people discussing last year’s event made it sound like it would get pretty crazy with a long queue for the freight elevator, but it wasn’t bad at all.  I guess the real bad day will be for people who are waiting to install until tomorrow (the last day).

Here is Robin contemplating picture alignment:

Here’s me re-considering picture alignment:

Here’s the final result:

The plywood walls are set up in sort of a shallow zigzag configuration – you can see an interesting painting by Michael Torra to the right.  In the left background, another artist paints his wall.  Because some of my art is dark and behind glass, it’s hard to see it at certain angles, but it shows up okay if you’re there in person. It was a lot of work but satisfying.  I’ll be back there again next week for my first volunteer shift.

I did manage to get a space in Artomatic this year, and got to pick a space on the “overflow” day about a week ago, here’s my space:

This saturday I went and painted it – it was a good day (unlike how the next two weekends will be) because there was no ballgame, so easy parking all over!  A very easy building to get to via subway, right over the Navy Yard station, but I’m not bringing my art via subway.  I’m jealous of anyone who could finish this weekend, but my art isn’t framed yet.

Wall in progress:

Pretty full of knotholes, which I filled with wood filler.  Hopefully the filler will stay in place for a month since it didn’t seem to be completely dry when I painted over it.  I also ran out of primer, and painted over it immediately, the finished wall looked good wet, though I’m not sure it would withstand close scrutiny: