Review Van Gogh Oil Pastels

Hi!

So after some time drawing almost exclusively with graphite/charcoal, I decided I wanted to try to apply some color on my drawings.

I was inspired by this oil pastel artist on youtube: TylerArtShack. Unfortunately I think he has left YouTube for good, since the last posted video is from  2 years ago...

And so I decided to buy a set of oil pastels without wasting a crazy amount of money (yes I know Sennelier oil pastels are the best but they are also too expensive). After a few searches on the web, and particulary after seing Robert Sloan's guide to oil pastels* I decided to go for the student grade oil pastels.

The image above is a landscape I have done based on one of the Virtual Instructor tutorials, I think it came out pretty good and I thought using oil pastels was not as difficult as it may seem on a first impression.

Now, concerning the oil pastels themselves I've got to say they are quite nice, especially considering the price I paid for them which was around 16 euros (for 60 oil pastels! In dollars is something like 18 $).
My two only complaints so far is the card box and the fact that they produce a bit of "crumbs", The card box is not very handy and sometimes it's kind of difficult to take the oil pastels out and off course the "crumbs" are sometimes quite difficult to take off which can be annoying.

Overall they kind of deliver what it's promised and perhaps even a bit more: student grade oil pastels at a competitive price, they don't claim to be artists grade. Also most of the oil pastels are actually lightfast (I believe you can get a chart with the properties on the official website) which is great. So I would recommend them if you are a beginner or want some cheap oil pastels for sketching for example.

I was also working in a flower painting, here is close up from one of the details:

When I get a bit more practice with oil pastels I will then perhaps invest a bit more money and buy a more expensive set of artist oil pastels. But for now these ones do the job just fine!

*Robert Sloan's Guide to oil pastels:

http://www.explore-oil-pastels-with-robert-sloan.com/vangogh-review.html

He also has some very usefull tips on how to get rid of "crumbs" in here:

http://www.explore-oil-pastels-with-robert-sloan.com/crumb-control.html

Virtual Instructor Website:

http://thevirtualinstructor.com/