Oily practice (1)

Hellooo~~ I am back~ and I have no other medium with me in the lab aside from the oil pastels my cousin gave me so.... I can only do oil pastel drawings while I'm unwilling to go home XD
Sooooo Mermay and me were definitely not destined to be. I did try to continue my drawings but I just couldn't ;;-;;
I have been gone again and my goodness do I hate mining season and my depression tag teaming on me. I can barely catch a break as is and IDK how I even survived this episode this time. Though I'm still in a slump but not as bad as it was last week. I think I'll be fine again. But IDK. I just want to live in the mountains but I'm too broke for that right now.

I was surprised he gave me like 2 sets of these and they were unused. He used to be my drawing buddy and wanted to get back to art but he never found the time to so he gave me these when he moved houses. I appreciate it though and I thought I should finally put them to use because they'd been sitting on my desk for 2 months now and I feel guilty for leaving them there to dry up.

First subject of interest: Cute froggy

Duration: 2 hours
Materials: Oil pastel, orange marker for the base color

I didn't think I'd still have it in me to get this detailed with an oil pastel drawing because the last time I ever used pastels was during pandemic. Then after that, I never really bothered using mine because I got a job they they just dried up because I left them open and oil is pretty volatile too.

Here's my sketch layer and base color. I wanted it to be a bright froggy.

Then I filled out the eyes first, then I went to the darkest shade of green I have because one thing I know about oil pastel is that it's exactly like oil paint. You start with the darkest shade then work your layer up to the lightest. Pretty similar to my usual art style, yes but then I don't layer my usual art this translucent as I do with oil pastel

From the darkest green, I moved up what colors I have tat were lighter and when you use pastels, you can either smudge blend or you use our lighter color to blend into a shade you need and that's usually at I do because I hate getting dirty from smudging plus smudging takes too long sometimes so I tend to avoid that.

Then I added the rest of the colors, worked in a bit of highlight and a bit of shading. Lucky I had the pastel pencil I bought last year. It really helps me give it definition so it just doesn't look like a blur of colors

I did buy a white gel pen for better highlights but when I looked at it, It didn't seem to need such strong highlights as I thought so I think I'm happy with this.

I will try to resume my activity before my tempt at Mermay ever happened but I think I'll practice pastel some more. I enjoyed this practice drawing.
That's all from me for tonight! It's Sunday evening here and I have work again tomorrow ;;-;;
Good luck to all of us for another work week!