What is the difference between crayons and oil pastels?

Crayons and oil pastels are two different kinds of coloring components used widely in art works. Every child usually start learning art by using wax crayons before moving onto colour pencils for schools to oil pastels and water colours for their art hobby classes and so on.

Pigments and Different Kinds of Colors

The coloring component is called pigment. This is what is responsible for the color. Red, Yellow, Green and all the different colors are caused by this pigments. When pigments are mixed with different mediums, different kind of colors are formed. Mix pigments with water- you get water color, mix pigments with oil- you get oil paint, mix pigments with egg yolk- you get tempera. With the component you are mixing raw pigments is called ‘binder’. Different types of colors are formed this way which are used by artists as per choice.

Difference Between Pastels And Crayons

• In wax crayons, as the name suggests the binder is wax. And in case of pastels, the binder is non-drying oil and wax. It is the binder which makes the difference.
• Pastels tend to smear and smudge and as a result, transfer very easily onto the artist’s hands or any surface that the colour comes in contact with. Crayons, don’t colour your hands. Well, most crayons don’t.
• With crayons, it takes a bit of an effort with a lot of pressure to completely cover the whole area. With oil pastels, however, there isn’t much pressure needed at all to colour the required sketch. It happens very smoothly.
• Oil pastels are very rich, soft and creamy. Hence, they are very easy to smear, blend in, layer, mix, shaded, all with the help of our finger. As opposed to that, crayons are harder and the two crayon colours don’t really mix together, very well.
• Crayons can be used for detailed drawings more often than pastels because of their pointed tips and because of their ability to stand alone without smearing or smudging.
• Pastels can give a 3D effect or a feel of a texture which is usually lacking in a picture coloured with plain wax crayons.

How oil pastel art look like

In the below video you will learn how to draw a beautiful Macaw bird with oil pastel. With oil pastel, you can able to create realistic color combinations by mixing multiple colors. With oil pastel, the color filling process is very fast and that is the thing you enjoyed most.

How crayons art look like

In the below video, you can see how to draw a beautiful sunset senary by using wax crayons. You aren’t able to smudge multiple colors very easily. You can’t able to draw on any surface with crayons instead of paper. But with oil pastel, you can draw on paper, board, canvas, glass, metal, wood, or rock.

Difference In Use

When you take a piece of thick white paper, and hold a crayon in one hand and a pastel in the other, you can check out the difference by yourself. However it is safe to say that

1. Pastels take up lesser pressure to draw a mark compared to crayons.
2. Two colors hardly mix in paper when crayons are used. Pastel colors mix up quite easily.
3. Using pastel colors is easy to form layers and blends compared to using crayons.
4. Crayons tend to leave more chunks in paper when compared to pastels.
5. Pastels might color artists’ hands which crayons don’t.

Conclusion

In the end, there is no right or wrong. What works for one, may not for another. And don’t worry about messing up, you really can’t in art. All is fair in love, war and art.

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