In my post “Buttery Next Steps” I mentioned that oil pastels have a shelf life- Paul Rubens goes from buttery and smooth to sticky and less pleasant. My conclusion is that they are a use it or lose it material.

I’d like to amend this to, it depends on how you store them.

I store all of my art supplies in my basement studio in latching totes. They aren’t perfectly air tight, nor are they watertight, but they are close. I store my work art materials in less expensive non-latching totes. 

In both cases I use a variety of sizes. A large difference is that at work, while in use the materials often sit without a lid but in the tote. While at home, my oil pastels get the lid put on them every time I’m done using them.

The work oil pastels are mostly, but not every box, much stickier, especially with an unwrapped stick than the oil pastels at home. Even the same brands have differences. While the Paul Rubens pastels at work were sticky and kind of gooey in how they moved the home version was just as slippery and soft as the day I bought them.

The difference is drastic.

This image was made with the “work” oil pastel. The layers are thicker and stickier.

This image was made with the “home” oil pastels. I used Mungyo and Paul Rubens. The layers are thinner and smoother, though there is still texture. The texture is intentional.

I’d like to also point out the temperature differences in my home studio versus my work studio. My home studio is cooler than the outside temp in the summer and remains pretty cool all winter. Humidity is controlled by a dehumidifier in the summer. My work studio… Is warm all winter and humid in the summer though we have 2 dehumidifiers running it’s humid. The AC is controlled by others, and doesn’t always work for the basement printshop.

These are Mungyo gallery oil pastels. They are the only pastels in my air tight container that got harder over time. they were also much more firm than other brands.

The differences in the 2 locations in terms of heat/cold and humidity are pretty drastic. I think my tendency to keep my personal oil pastels in an air tight container, born largely out of organization and storage needs rather than thinking about how the materials would act or survive if in an air tight containers

Mont Marie. Soft silky smooth, even after over a year of storage. Also, available in a tin and not quite as smooth as Rubens or Lightwish.

​I chose air tight (mostly) containers because I want all my paper stored in air tight containers. Sometimes I forget to empty the dehumidifier and paper can mold but also it can retain smells. I’m not sure there is much worse than opening up a package of musty smelling paper.

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