Tabby kitten playing with wool - free oil pastel painting tutorial

original oil pastel ACEO

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Step-by-step instructions or how to paint this kitty in oil pastel:

Materials used: 1. neocolor oil pastels by caran d'ache

2. cray-pas (sakura) expressionist and/or junior artist oil pastels

3. a small sheet of black card (this particular painting is 2.5 x 3.5 inches, but you can try any other size that you feel comfortable with)

4. very sharp black, brown and white prismacolor pencils (or any other good quality pencils)

Step 1. Outline your kitty with white pencil. Make sure not to press it hard as this can damage the surface of the card and leave marks. If you are unhappy with some lines do not erase them as this can also damage the surface of the card and pastels would not layer in the same way on such spots. Instead lighty cross out the lines that are wrong and put in new ones.

Step 2. Take white neocolor OP (oil pastel) and paint all the light bits of your kitty. I always start with white as I work on a dark surface. Take brown, yellow and orange neocolors and paint where those colours are dominant. At this stage of work do not get carried away by trying to put smaller details, just put in basic spots of colours.

Step 3. For the eyes - take black and generously outline contours. Use light blue neocolor for the insides and then apply blue cray-pas OP to create blending from black to light blue. You can keep adding more black or light blue neocolor OPs and blue cray-pas and keep blending until you are happy with the result. With black cray-pas OP put in the pupils. Take white neocolor and add sparkle. You can also lighten up some light blue around the pupil by gently tapping the white over it.

Step 4. For the nose use salmon pink neocolour and a few spots of dusky pink or purple and then white. To gently blend it use light pink cray-pas OP, however make sure that your strokes are tiny as you don't want to mix all four colours in one mess!

Step 5. Now you can use black pencil to define nose and mouth area.

Step 6. Now that neopastels have settled a bit you can use cray-pas OPs over the fur to define it with thin stroke take shades of dark brown, orange, and white and with gently but firm strokes follow the direction of the fur.

Step 7. For the wool use black cray-pas to outline the thread, then use turquoise cray-pas (or any other colour of your choice) in between the black lines. Take a very light shade of turquoise neocolor and with gentle strokes define the texture of wool.

Step 8. Using VERY sharp black, brown and white pencils define the fur. Put in a few dots on kitty's cheeks with dark brown neocolor. Use sharp white pencil to define whiskers. You might need to go over them several times to ensure visibility.

FINISHED PAINTING: These are my first oil pastel step-by-step painting instructions. If you found them useful please leave your comment. Thank you for looking.

Tanya BOND