Oil Pastels

So as my art supply addiction grows worse I have decided to expand my blog into more than just water-soluble crayons. Not only do I want to write about ALL art supplies but also I am fairly broke at the moment and have to restrain myself from purchasing any new stuff for just a little while longer.  But I do own quite a few things already that I can review!

So oil pastels. I love them. I started off creating art using oil pastels and have always had a certain fondness for them. I am not going to bother reviewing most of the brands in detail because there is already a wonderful Oil Pastel review site here: http://www.explore-oil-pastels-with-robert-sloan.com/oil-pastels-reviews.html . But I have done a few reviews on ones he hasn't covered as well as a small comparison chart of the brands that I own.

So for this little comparison I did two colors of each brand and blended them with my fingers to see how they compared. The top 3 (from best to worst) were Sennelier, Neopastels & Mungyo Gallery. 

Sennelier is almost in it's own category as none of the others compare to anything like it. They are like oil paints in a stick and they are extremely expensive (but worth it if you really enjoy oil pastels). 

The Neopastels & Mungyo Gallery are both very similar with the Neopastels being slightly better at blending. But besides the huge price difference (Mungyo are much cheaper) there isn't much of a difference.

After that I would rate the "cheaper" brands from best to worst: Twisty Stix, Cray-Pas Specialist, Cray-Pas Chubbies, Maped, Niji, & Pentel.

It's interesting to me how Cray-Pas Specialist is listed as Artist's Quality and they are nice but I preferred the creamy texture & blending of the Twisty Stix by International Arrivals which isn't listed as being an artist's pastel. 

The remaining four brands are the cheaper ones, being waxier and harder to blend with the fingers. They are all decent, though if you are starting out. I usually always start an oil pastel painting with the cheaper brands as the first one or two layers and then build up with the more expensive brands.

I would recommend that if you are starting out with oil pastels that you buy a cheaper package to try them out as well as one stick of Mungyo & Sennelier just to see the huge difference in the way they work. If someone just bought a package of Pentel and based their whole opinion of oil pastels on that, it wouldn't be accurate because they are like 2 different mediums for sure.

Overall this is a wonderful medium that I love because the colors are so bright and it is almost like painting rather than drawing.

Below is a rooster I painted using all of the brands. It's good to mix and match :)

For full reviews on oil pastels that I've written (that haven't been covered elsewhere):

Maped ,Twisty Stix and  Cretacolor Aquastic (more of a watercolor crayon to me but still considered an oil pastel)