Sakura ESP25 25-Piece Cray-Pas Specialist Oil Pastel Set

This is the best quality of oil pastels you can get at this price. Super blending, light fastness, deep colours, shades. May be little behind Sennelier, but much ahead of any other brand that I have used. Worth every penny. Shade variety should increase to give other brands a run for money. Am happy at my level

First time I used it to add smooth skin tone on portrait painting and I must say it is really good than other pastels in this price range.This is my second review and I must say it is fantastic colors. I usually use Sennelier. Because they are soft and smooth like butter. But these colors are quite harder than sennelier. And this result to do fine details and also they are enough soft, so that you can easily blend them on papers.

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Excellent product, professional quality oil pastels, very vibrant color range with +++ light fast rating. Mid price range (very reasonable when compared with Sennelier), good buy for serious oil pastel users.

Nice

Now I want some particular shades as they are already decayed because of over use. I think they are unavailable.

The set arrived in fine shape. The sticks are large and full pigment loaded. They blend nice and layer reasonably are creamy but don't go on goopy. Very pleased with them, seeing there are not many professional oil pastel brands available in the market for those that want quality and don't want to be forced to purchase Sennelier oil pastels all the time. Very pleased will buy another set-

I usually try to do better and take a photo of these, but the picture is exactly what you get. Black, white, yellow ochre, burnt sienna, cobalt blue, ultramarine, prussian blue, viridian hue, middle green, cad. yellow, cad. orange, cad. red. If you want to know exactly the pigment looks like, go look at the Sakura watercolors, they are exactly the same as those shades, since they are made by the same company (and I own a set so I know from experience).I bought these for $21 and already the price is raising again (currently at $23). I would say they are a great deal for $20. But if they keep pushing past that mark, I might look beyond Amazon to any online art store or locally. Dickblick sells them online $1.50 per stick to give you a general idea on pricing.These are lovely. First night I got these I already burned through a lot of them working for a few hours. They are very creamy, but hard enough to still hold form. I bought the Jr. set of these to have a wider range of colors, and went through the trouble to return them and get the much smaller set of these--and I definitely think that was the best choice. I look forward to more colors when I have the opportunity to afford a larger set of these, but these are great to have for now.The lightfast rating on ALL of these is 3. I have no idea what system they are rating off of, but I generally get the impression they are implying that they all past light fast regulations (they're all printed on the side of the stick).I have really enjoyed working with these. The difference in material in these compared to the cheaper sets is very noticeable. When I add solvent to the other ones the colors drastically faded. But with these there is no change. Brilliant!

Here's what you get for spending a lot less money than what other brands of artist quality oil pastels cost:-- Lightfastness ratings on every stick (they tend to be pretty good, actually)-- Very high pigment density (probably the defining characteristic of 'artist quality' colors, along with lightfastness)-- Handling characteristics somewhere between Holbein and Sennelier (buttery and low-crumbling, yet not like lipstick)-- A good color range (I think there are 88 colors in the entire range)-- Large sticks in popular square shape-- Available as open stock, with good prices (I think Blick has them for about $1.79 per stick, with mix-and-match price breaks)Most of the colors behave exactly as expected, but Specialist is far less expensive than all other professional brands. Other colors are downright jaw-dropping in how well they look and feel, most notably the metallics, blues, and blue-greens (the blues and blue greens have the appearance of translucent oil paint or a very high-end oil pastel or oil bar). The cadmium reds are actually red, with no detectable off-primary coloration. The yellows are eye-popping, even on very bright paper.The sticks have a slightly hard feel, but are creamy and buttery, especially once the tooth of the support has been filled. Specialist colors have an odd kind of velvety texture, too, almost similar to working with soft pastels. I find the overall feel of Specialist oil pastels to be somewhat similar to Holbein, but have their own unique handling quality that I find very pleasant. There is enough pigment stuffed into each stick and they are soft enough to easily make very appealing impasto strokes.Sakura does not use a siccative in their formula for the Specialist line, unlike several other artist-grade oil pastels (so, they will never really dry, oxidize, or bloom). Sakura seems to really understand how to price-point their products. Their Expressionist oil pastels, though very pleasant to work with and probably the best for the money in their respective class, cannot compare with the look and feel of Sakura's Specialist line. I've used Mungyo Gallery Artist Extra Soft oil pastels and they are very nice to work with, but Mungyo has almost nothing to say concerning the lightfastness of the pigments they use. Lightfastness data for Mungyo Gallery Artist Extra Soft just isn't available. Mungyo claims that their product is "fade-resistant," which does not inspire confidence. That's too bad, because the Gallery Artist Extra Soft oil pastels have a nice look and feel for the price.Anyone interested in trying a professional quality product would do well with Specialist oil pastels. They cost less than half what other brands cost, yet give you that same experience of working with soft, densely-pigmented sticks. I will definitely be adding sticks of open stock to my collection. Highly recommended.

原色の色が美しいです。柔らかくて72色のオイルパステルを持っていますが72色もあるのに原色のハッキリした色がなくて思い通りの色がだせませんでした。こちらのオイルパステルは柔らかくないですが他のオイルパステルと併用すれば表現の幅が広がると期待しています。硬さもあり細かい表現もできそうです。丸型のオイルパステルは絵に集中していると転がり落ちてしまうので角型であるのも嬉しいです。細身であるし柔らかいオイルパステルと併用が良いと思います。

前々から欲しかった50色クレパスに大満足しています。