Grade
Artist
Binder
Very soft, mineral wax and oil
Count
24 colours
Lightfastness
Good to excellent across most of the range
Best For
Painterly blending, impasto, full coverage
Pros
- The softest, most pigment-dense oil pastel available
- Blends under a finger like wet paint
- Full opaque coverage in a single pass
- Layers thickly for genuine impasto texture
- Open stock available for replacing heavily used colours
Cons
- Very soft — crumbles, and fine detail is impossible
- Never dries; work must be framed under glass with a spacer
- Expensive per stick
- Messy in warm hands
Sennelier oil pastels were developed at Picasso's request for a stick that behaved like paint, and that origin still describes them exactly. The binder is soft to the point of greasiness, which is precisely what lets the pigment move under a finger or a blending stump.
Coverage is the other advantage. One pass of a Sennelier is opaque, so you spend layers on colour decisions rather than on building density — which matters because oil pastel accepts only a handful of layers before the surface goes slick and rejects more.
Our Pick
The oil pastel the medium is judged by — originally made for Picasso, and still the softest, most pigment-dense stick available. Sennelier blend under a finger like oil paint and cover in a single pass.
Buy Sennelier if you want oil pastel to behave like paint: heavy blending, thick impasto passages, and full coverage. The 24-set is the right entry, covering the wheel without the price of the larger boxes.
What we don't like
They are extremely soft, close to greasy, which means crumbling, dirty fingers, and no fine detail — these are not drawing sticks. They never dry, so finished work must be framed under glass with a spacer, and they're expensive per stick.
