Can You Mix Oil Paint With Oil Pastels?

If you often work with oil pastels, you might wonder if mixing them with oil paints is possible. Undoubtedly, artists who love experimenting and getting out of their comfort zone enjoy blending the two mediums.

You can mix oil paint with oil pastels—to create unique and eye-catching effects. However, you should use the medium as an accent and apply it thinly over your oil painting. Painting over pastels may prevent the oil paint from drying or cause flaking.

Pastels are a vibrant medium and make a great addition to your oil painting with their abundant and eye-catching colors. In this article, we’ll go over some of the methods you can use and some other considerations that should be kept in mind while combining the two media. So, Can You Mix Oil Paint With Oil Pastels? Yes, but let’s take a look at the how.

Mixing Oil Paint With Oil Pastels To Create Unique Effects

You can mix oil paint with oil pastels, and it’s a great way to get some unique effects. But how do you go about combining the two mediums? What do you need? 

First, you’ll want a mixing palette that lets you mix wet and dry paints before applying them to your canvas. Then, you’ll also need an oil-based medium or solvent, like linseed oil or turpentine, and clear gesso.

For oil pastels, I recommend Mungyo Gallery Soft Oil Pastels. Mungyo gives you this fantastic product in an incredible array of colors. Their softness is pleasing to work with, and they blend exceptionally well. This product is a great set to start with if you want to skip the kid’s brands and use semi-professional-level oil pastels. 

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Now for oil paints, I highly suggest you use Winsor & Newton Winton Oil Color Paint from Amazon. This product has good pigmentation and is excellent for starters with oils. Use only the paints as-is, dipping your brush in linseed oil if it becomes claggy, and don’t use much media.

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Once you have all these things, it’s time to start mixing and painting!

• Get yourself some clear gesso and apply it over your canvas. I recommend the Mont Marte Premium Clear Texture Gesso from Amazon. This medium will give the surface texture that will allow your oil pastels to stick better than if you painted with them directly onto your canvas.
• Once your surface is ready, grab your oil paints and apply them like normal. If you’re using a large palette knife or brush, try using very light strokes to avoid getting too much paint on too many areas at once—you want to leave plenty of room for those pastels!
• Now go ahead and add some of those oil pastels now! Use them very lightly—so they don’t overpower everything else on the canvas—they should be accents here and there.
• Additionally, you can perform a clever trick with turpentine and linseed oil. Add the desired pastel color after mixing these two ingredients in equal portions. Stir the mixture thoroughly with a Q-tip and use this on your painting.

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You Can Paint on Top of Oil Pastel, but Don’t Overdo It

You cannot paint over oil pastels with oil paint without making special preparations. Pastels are composed of pigments mixed in with a bit of oil and wax. The resulting slippery surface is water resistant, so even if you can get your oils to stick to it, they won’t be able to dry completely.

Nevertheless, using oil pastels very lightly on top of oils can work, but you need to do this in minimal amounts to be effective.

Other Guidelines To Follow When Mixing Oil Paint With Oil Pastels

We have already established that you can mix oil paints and oil pastels, but here are some other standards to follow when doing that:

• Use your secondary medium sparingly: Oil pastels and oil paints are compatible, but in a mixed media painting, one medium should be dominant and the other used as accents or details only.
• Use your oil pastels for accents only: Oil pastels never completely dry, so it is best to use the medium as a detail or accent color. You can use it on top of already-dried oil paint or thinned paint, so it dissolves into the medium. Thick oil pastels never fully dry and will always be workable and unstable; painting oil paint over it will likely result in the oil paint layer cracking and flaking.
• Use oil pastels thinly: Your oil pastel is excellent as an underpainting or drawing for an oil painting if using them as a first layer. The medium in the oil paint will help dissolve the oil pastel and blend it in with the oil paint as you paint over it.

You Can Also Mix Oil Sticks With Oil Paint and Oil Pastels

Oil sticks, which some manufacturers sometimes refer to as paint sticks or oil bars, are essentially sticks of oil paint. Compared to oil pastels, they feel and smell more like oil paint. They contain pigment mixed with wax, linseed, or safflower oil (rather than mineral oil, as in oil pastels) and non-drying pigment and come in a handy crayon shape.

Since oil sticks are oil paints in stick shape, you can easily use them with oil paints—and they will still dissolve if you use the same medium and thinners you use for oil paint.

Oil sticks and oil pastels also go well together, mainly if you use the oil pastels for finishing touches and accents. When both media are wet, you can combine them, but the archival quality will suffer. The ratio of oil stick to oil pastel in the paint will also affect how quickly it dries.

When purchasing oil sticks, I recommend the brand Jack Richeson Shiva Oil Paintstik from Amazon. It has no offensive odor and has rich, creamy, buttery consistency. Cleaning up using soap, water, or baby wipes is also easy. What I love about them most is they are “self-sealing.” They form a protective film so the color won’t rub off or dry out!

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Final Words

So, yes, you may mix oil paints with pastels. However, you must follow a few guidelines to ensure that you do it correctly. If you want these two to work nicely together, use only a tiny amount of pastels because the additional wax in pastels can prevent the oils from drying.