Oil Pastels: In or Out?

 

2/4/26 Haiya Paul Rubens oil pastels in Canson XL mixed-media sketchbook (photo reference)

Last year when I did my big downsizing of art supplies, it was easy to keep the things I use regularly or know that I enjoy using, even if I use them infrequently. It was also easy to get rid of things I knew I would never use. The difficult job was the whole middle ground: Things I wasn’t sure if I liked enough to keep, but maybe wanted to try again sometime.

This year my job is to go through that relatively small pile of uncertainty and decide, one way or the other. In that pile were a couple of sets of oil pastels I had purchased during the pandemic (during late-night retail therapy sessions to treat my probably common malady of boredom mixed with anxiety). Ironically, I tried them a bit during my own bout with COVID when I had plenty of sequestered time to experiment, but not much afterwards.

Do I like Caran d’Ache Neopastels and Haiya Paul Rubens oil pastels? Right off the bat, they have two strong disadvantages to my sketching lifestyle: They require a fairly large sketchbook, and they are messy, both on the hands and in forever transferring to other surfaces. That means I will never take them out to sketch on location. Anything that I can use only at home rarely gets used.

I decided to make a sketch with each product to remind myself of the experience. As I discovered the first time, I love the effects I can get with very soft and schmushy Haiya oil pastels (top of post). Using a smudging tool, the creamy, lipstick-like sticks can be blended as much as desired. I applied them fairly lightly, but I’ve seen demos online in which the product is applied and blended so heavily that the results can look like oil painting.

The Neopastels are much drier and not as easy to blend (sketch below). I immediately decided that I would not keep the set, although it was several times more expensive per stick than the Haiya set. But I was still unsure about the latter.

2/4/26 Caran d'Ache Neopastels in Canson XL mixed-media sketchbook (photo reference)

Since Mary Jean and Roy had both played with oil pastels, we decided to devote an art play date to sharing and exploring our various oil pastel products. To give the Haiya set one more try, I made the sketch below (it looks a bit abstract, but it’s an x-ray of my right shoulder, which was just diagnosed with adhesive capsulitis, or “frozen shoulder”).

2/13/26 Haiya Paul Rubens oil pastels in Canson XL mixed-media sketchbook (X-ray reference)

By the end of that sketch, I was almost ready to give up that whole set, too – but not quite. I compromised by keeping 10 colors from the set of 48, then let MJ have the rest. Roy got the Neopastels. My arty friends will make better use of them than I ever will.

While they continued making a mess, I retreated, with much relief, to the clean and tidy Caran d’Ache Neocolor II crayons (below) in my newly MacGyver’ed kit.

2/13/26 Third Place Commons (Neocolor II crayons in Hahnemuhle sketchbook)

Kids on the playground!