Artspal Soft Oil Pastels Set of 48 Vibrant Colors, Smooth and Soft Oil Pastel Crayons for Artists, Beginners, Teachers, Students, Great Blending and Layering for Art Supplies, Art Painting, Drawing

very nice and soft pastels, its easy to work with

Great product!

for the money, excellent

I was not a huge fan of this brand of oil pastels, but I do have to start that with a caveat. I graduated with my Masters in Fine Art in Painting and Drawing over 15 years ago, unfortunately the same year that a car accident disabled me. It took a while to find my way back to creating again. The last time I worked with oil pastels was in Undergraduate School 20 years ago and there were so few choices back then - CrayPas, and midway through Undergrad their Expressionist series came out. Then there was the beautifully intense, buttery smooth, but financially unattainable (college budget) beyond the small trial packs - Sennelier. Of course I was an art supply snob, but you have to work with what you have. I learned with a light touch that even inexpensive supplies can perform - I once did a self portrait in CrayPa Expressionists that my drawing professors could not believe was oil pastels - the drawing looked so much like soft pastel! A light touch is everything. But quality products do help.I was so excited to see the new cornucopia of available brands of oil pastels in all different price ranges! It was honestly quite overwhelming. Getting 48 colors for less than $18 seemed like it was worth a shot. I collected a range of different sets over the course of weeks as I sought to find the right pastels for me. These were not a horrible fit, but they just did not reach my new higher standards after sampling so many newer brands of oil pastels.I bought brands that were not as expensive and brands that cost more. Of the first sets I tried, this was pretty low on the ranked list of oil pastels that worked for me. I liked how smooth they were when laying down color. They weren’t too tacky or sticky. But they were a bit too clumpy,they shed too many chunks, the selection of colors was not diverse enough, and the pigments were not high enough quality for me. I should have guessed by the price, but you never know and reviews for inexpensive products tend to rate better than more expensive products because expectations aren’t so high.These sticks did not layer as well as I would have liked. Usually smooth sticks like these are easier to layer, but the clumps got in the way, no matter how light a hand I used. Clumps are oil pastels’ speed bumps. I also found that the pigment load was too light in these sticks, or the pigment quality was subpar. Also something must be lacking in the binder or filler products, because these oil pastels were too transparent. Too much paper showed through even with a thick buildup of layers on top. These are not the right set for serious artists. My drawing quality suffered from the texture, transparency, and lack of vibrant pigments in these oil pastels.I’m sure these oil pastels would be great for hobbyists, students, or artists on a budget just playing around in their sketchbook for fun. They also aren’t bad for learning if someone is new to oil pastels. The smaller amount of colors could spark creative play and the discovery of mixing new colors. I already know how to mix any color, so for me, there was not enough saturation and the colors were too earthy. Again, pigment quality is something that serious artists look for in their supplies, and as I mentioned, I am a supply snob.

Good soft pastels

Very nice set blends well over canvas, on paper and other media

I actually had never used oil pastels before despite having played around in most art mediums at one point or another, so when I had the chance to review these, I was excited to try something new.Even though these are called "soft oil pastels" I wasn't prepared for how much thickness you could get in your lines or create the texture of brushstrokes, it was really cool.The color variety was great and I was able to achieve most tones with a little blending. Not hjaving any previous experience with these, it's hard for me to say how these stack up against other brands as far as quality, however, the the price I have to assume these are a good beginner set. Regardless, I had a lot of fun using them and found the a great medium to mess around with.

My daughter was enjoying learning to use oil pastels at her elementary school, and asked to get some for use at home as well. The first set I got her only had a dozen colors but were easy to color with — however, she noted that they didn’t seem as smooth as the pastels she was using at school (which isn’t necessarily a bad thing, since the hardness or softness of pastels can allow for different artistic effects). Anyway, this set of soft oil pastels offered a vibrant array of colors, and they really are soft (relatively speaking, compared to the other set of pastels we had), more in line with the softness/smoothness of the pastels that my daughter was using at school (but with an even greater variety of colors than she had at school, so she’s impressed with all of the options).Another reviewer noted that these oil pastels, although fun to color with, aren’t as good ad higher-end, more expensive options — especially in terms of lightfastness (the ability for art materials, such as paints, to hold their color over a long period of time — e.g., some pigments or dyes will stay bright and vibrant for a long time, while others will dull and fade more quickly)… I haven’t experimented with these pastels for long enough to say if that is true or not, but it sounds like a reasonable concern and something to keep an eye out for — so if my daughter draws something with these pastels that we want to be extra careful about keeping in pristine condition forever, I’ll be looking into color-fastness preservation techniques (like with a lot of art and comic books, I know that you generally want to keep the art out of direct sunlight and/or have UV-protection glass over framed art, etc.; and there are are special art sprays — or even hairspray in a pinch — that can be used to help preserve chalk art. Some people laminate their kids’ art, although I don’t know if that would actually help with fading. Etc.). But it’s good to know that there are also higher-end oil pastel out there that have better lightfastness properties innately; if my daughter continues using pastels a lot, maybe we’ll look into an even fancier set for her one day. But for now, this set is impressive enough, with plenty of colors to create a lot of interesting art.