Paul RubensProfessional Soft Pastels, 36 Colors Chalk Pastels, Non Toxic Handmade Soft Chalk Pastels Set for Painting, Drawing, Blending, Crafting, Ideal Art Supplies for Artists, Beginners

As an experienced pastel artist who own all the top brand pastels I can highly recommend these to all pastel artists including professional ones. These are luxurious dry, soft pastels very similar to Sennellier. This box has both neutrals and a range of values in warm and cool reds, oranges and blue. There are also super dark cool green, blue and maroon ( almost identical to eggplant). Paul Reuben’s has another set with the brights and greens are present there. If you only wanted this set you can easily mix greens as there are yellow and blue , darks and light. It’s hand made, colour fast, highly pigmented. There is irregularities in the stick sizing but that is proof of being hand made. A colour chart is provided and the boxing is high quality. For the price you really can’t go wrong.beginners need to remember these are soft so don’t use for your under layers or you will fill the tooth of your paper. Best used on proper sanded pastel paper for great results.

I’m brand new to the world of soft pastels. I’ve tried this set with the Unison landscape set and they are such a pleasure to paint with. I’ve used both sanded and regular pastel paper and the pigment is saturated and so easy to blend and layer.

I have many brands of Artists soft pastels and prefer them on the softer side of the spectrum. I was pleasantly surprised by most of the pastels in this set. They were not as soft as a Sennelier but certainly much softer than Rembrandt. Some of the darks, especially the reds are a bit coarse but that’s true with Unisons as well. This set includes some colors which I was wanting to add - especially some vibrant fushias, reds and greens. Definitely worth it for the bargain price.

I love this set. The colors are bright and high pigmented, they are soft and blend well. I purchased from Italy, the package kept the pastels safe and the shipment was surprisingly fast.

These pastel sticks are wonderful. The colors are vibrant, with the subdued colors adding nice value as well. The texture of the sticks is nice, not too hard, not too soft. Reasonable pricing and nice packaging. I would recommend to others.

The sticks are small. I’m not sure how far this set will go on Clairfontaine sanded paper. I recommend thinking of this set as a sample kit.

I had previously bought the 36-color set and like them very much. This set has beautiful colors, some of which I didn’t have at all (like the dark purple!!…most sets don’t give you a dark purple). These pastels lay down very nicely. I would consider them an excellent medium to soft pastel. Definitely not as hard as some other brands out there that claim to be ‘soft pastels’. A good deal, and I’ll bet most pastelists, any level, would enjoy these.

I honestly don't have much experience with chalk pastels so I can't make a meaningful comparison between this and other brands. (I did try a small set of Rembrandt pastels and find them very scratchy and unpleasant; these are far superior!) I have been using them for about 5 months now and am really happy with them; they blend well, and most of the colors are quite soft. I like that it came with a color chart, although the 72 set is in kind of a weird order as you can see in the pic. I also see some mistakes with the pigment info on some of the charts printed here in the listing, like listing two yellow pigments for a dark purple pastel. So I wouldn't take them as gospel.My big complaint would be that there are far more yellows and reds than there are blues and greens. I'm actually really happy with the selection of pinks, magentas and purples in the 72 set I bought. But look at the pic - there's an entire row of yellow, a row of orange, a row of red (but with very few true reds), a row of purple -- and then just one row of blue and green, basically. So, to me these sets are lacking for landscapes. I do like the turquoises they included. It just seems like the Sennelier sets are much more balanced in blues and greens; maybe I will get some of their small sets to replace my blues when I run out.I also got a set of the Reubens oil pastels... and weirdly, my oil pastel set has too few yellows! It's also super orange/red heavy. So I would say the weakness of this brand's pastel sets is it doesn't seem like the color palettes were crafted that thoughtfully. But both types of pastels are very lovely to work with and blend so nicely.