Posted By baja318 on 03/02/2008 8:12 PM
Sennelier all the way...they are expensive but sooo worth it. I'm sure those oil pastels you picked up of your kids' were much like the ones I used in high school. When I graduated and had to buy my own supplies, I did some research and chose Sennelier...they're like butta. I swear by Sennelier, for paint, soft pastels and oil pastels. I'm like a Sennelier commercial, they should sponsor me. lol. You can get them at DickBlick, Jerry's, Pearl Paint. Good luck!
Senns are fine oil pastels and well liked by my OPists. However, I adhere to the axiom expoused by Kenneth Leslie in his now out of print book on oil pastel that here is no "best brand". The central criterion should be that the OP is of artist quality and has archival properties that are good. Other than that, claiming one brand is best is misleading because each of the major artist quality brands now available (Specialists, Erengi ArtAspireres, Caran d'Ache NeoPastels, Holbein, and Sennelier (Van Gogh, possibly) ) have distinct working characteristics that serve specific purposes depending on what effects you wish to accomplish. The article cited on the wetcanvas forum clearly indicates this. Many OPists will begin with an underpainting that may utilize the firmer, drier Specialists. Block in major features with Erengi, Neops or holbein and save the use of Sennelier for the final layer detailing and highlits since it is the softest and most easily disturbed after application. Those that tend to use stroke based approaches may find different brands to their liking compared to those which like to do sophisticated blending that Senns are so well suited for. Also, in regard to the formation of "mud", if you are using Senns only, you must be very careful to allow layers to age at least overnight so they can "harden" before attempting to layer on top of them. There are also many tools that may be used as "blenders" to achiever the fine detain some OPissts produce in their work. An excellent link to threads dealing with OP tools and techniques is
http://wetcanvas.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=434
For many threads and topics regarding OP, refer to
http://wetcanvas.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?s=&forumid=390
Hope this information is useful.
Bill
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