What are the differences between oil pastels and crayons?

The main component of crayons is paraffin wax, and the accessories include stearic acid, pigments, calcium carbonate, and even clay. Therefore, crayons are relatively hard in texture, with average coloration, and it is difficult to stack colors like in oil paintings. Oil pastels, on the other hand, use various animal and vegetable oils, mineral oils, glycerin, etc. to blend with some paraffin wax and pigments. It can be seen that the core of oil pastels is the oil part, which is also the reason why oil pastels have excellent coverage and coloring power like oil painting pigments. Besides the differences in composition, there are many other differences between them.

1. Painting force

When using crayons to draw, we need to use a relatively large force to draw a complete color area. However, oil pastels are relatively easy and smooth, suitable for large - area color application.

2. Mixing of colors

The colors of oil pastels are very rich, soft, and have a creamy texture. Therefore, it is relatively easy to mix colors, and it can be easily blended by rubbing with fingers, similar to the feeling of rubbing the lead core to blend color layers in sketching. However, crayons are relatively hard, so the colors are not so easy to mix. Of course, when using oil pastels, your hands may be easily stained with colors, but this is generally not the case with crayons.

3. Piling - up feeling of oil paintings

Because oil pastels are relatively thick, they have a sense of layering and piling - up like oil paintings, which crayons may not be able to achieve as well. Oil pastels can cover the pictures drawn by crayons and many other surfaces. But crayons can only be used to draw on paper.