yeah i recently discovered them..... can someone please give me a couple pointers about how to use them most effectively? yeah.... it might be just simple as pie but.. yeah...

Ahh Oil pastels. I remember using them, alll you have to remember is that when blending them you have to place one color over the other and make them bleed together with either ur finger or a tissue. Also the amount of color you place on one another, affects the color outcome.

Also, use light first then dark. Because light colors can always be colored over with the right amount of dark, dark colors aren't as easy.

I am okay with them, and I took a few art lessons.

Start on the side that is opposite with the hand you draw with. If you don't you will get it all over your amr mand smudge it. (happen to me a few times)

Use a tissue paper to rub the pastels in to give it more detail.

also pratice and try real hard, try to do soem cominations.

Example: smear diffent colors of blue for the sky, then add a little white later for clouds.

You also might want to try, for effect, placing one single line of color on something for shading, then smearing it.

And if you DESPERATELY need to erase a color, you can scrape it off with the side of a spoon. This is only for colors that are slightly similar (Like Blue to purple, or brown to light brown) Whole different colors will only come out strangely. Especially when the scraped off color was red, and the color you wanted was yellow. It'd come out orangy~

Remember that after a day or so, the colors will harden and become less messy. It will still be messy, but not that much. In that stage, it might be harder to blend and erase.

What I'd suggest is to do the background first, get it how you want, and wait before adding in the rest. Also, you CAN just color over it once you've gotten most off. They're pretty flexible.

But if its the wrong color selection, what're you gonna do then? Its really, really, really bad to do background first, because A. It may not match up with the current picture. What if the background color and the color of the object not be good together? It takes a LONG time to fix the background again. So do the center first. Not to mention if you put color over color, it'll BLEND.
And B. Once the center picture is done, doing the background will be easy, and small mess ups can be easily fixed. by either coloring over, or scraping it off.

But if you do that first, you run the risk of a) not having it look fluid, and B) overrunning your center pic. Just plan ahead.

The chances are higher of it to "not look fluid" if you do background first. The Center pic is the center, where the artist and viewer looks at first, its where you start first. When you paint, you dont paint background first, you do it last to ensure there aren't any mess ups.

Overruning? What like the background color will mix with the center? That only happens if you dont have a steady hand, or if you spilled water or something on it. Besides, background last your able to color in the small crevices and then fix it up after your done with the finished piece. If worse comes to worse you have it bleeding with the outline. Thats it.

Usually when doing background first, its a higher chance of making it bleed under the central pic will make it either darker/lighter than the outcome. Which isn't good, and requires more effort to fix.

That's a point, although sometimes, like with sunsets, when you need a pretty staight line across the canvas paper, it helps to do background first, then the object. Smear the lines slightly to give it a sort of glow, and remember to keep it with siilar coloring to the backdrop.

It just depends, I suppose, on the individual's style; different things work for different people.

yay! thanks yous guys.. i shallnow try some pastel thingies sometime soon, splee for you smurt peoples. :D