Exploring Oil Pastel

I recently gave 6th-grade students the opportunity to use oil pastels. I love the look of oil pastels and the students find the medium to be very engaging.  The only problem was I wasn't prepared. I wanted to give the students the opportunity to use various methods of using oil pastels on their work. I quickly did what anyone would do, I looked at The Art of Education page for some help. Sure enough, they had something waiting there for me.

Tracy Hare had written an article several years ago on 7 different techniques for oil pastel.  These were a great start. 

Now I just had to figure out the best way to manage the tools, and teach my students these 7 exciting ways to use oil pastels. 

I got my supplies ready. My co-worker Mary Farber suggested that I use Portfolio oil pastels.  She was right, they are really smooth.  I then took the oil pastels and put one of each color into a little bucket. The buckets were distributed to each table to share.

In this lesson, I also had scratch sticks, Q tips and mineral oil available for students to use. 

Then we set to work.  I bought them through each method showing them under my doc cam. I loved the results of their oil pastel notes in their sketchbook. 

Right after having success with this lesson, I sat down to make a flipped lesson for my next quarter students.  This is going to be great! I filmed so that the techniques could be seen close up.  I explained the process of each method.  I will be able to take a bigger role in checking for understanding now that I have this lesson in a digital format. When I'm demonstrating, it's hard to walk around the room as well. But when I have pre-recorded my videos, it makes it so much easier.

I put a lot of effort into this lesson and would like to share it with you as well. This lesson had all 7 techniques demonstrated, it has a supply list, and how to set up the page.  This lesson also has several student samples. I had my students working in their sketchbooks, but you could use the handout I have provided in this lesson as well.  Please visit my Teachers Pay Teacher page if you would like to learn more about this lesson.