HISTORY
Pentel is a Japanese brand with over seventy years of experience. It was founded in 1911 by Yukio Horie, a brush craftsman. The company was initially called “Horie Bunkaido” and was settled in Asakusa. After the Second World War, he created Dainippon Stationery, where he initially only sold the products of other companies before manufacturing his own ones, which included pencils and pigments.
SPECIFICATIONS
Pentel pastels are short and appear wrapped on a paper that matches the colour of each pastel. The paper includes the name and number of each colour, the name of the brand and the category “oil pastels”.
PERFORMANCE
Pentel oil pastels are smelly and non-toxic. They are creamy and highly pigmented. Their colours can be blended, although not as successfully as the oil pastels from other brands. Drawing with markers or pencils on top of the pastel colour is perfectly possible.
Pentel oil pastels are thin and small, but not too fragile. However, it is not too easy to handle them because they are not chunky enough.
SETS AND PACKAGING
These oil pastels come in sets of 12, 16, 25, 36, 48 and 50 pastels, being 50 the maximum number of colours in the chart. The 50 pastels box is great because it is inexpensive considering the amount of pastels it includes and it allows to experiment with a big variety of colours. The pastels come in carton packages that include a plastic tray where all the pastels are displayed arranged by colour. On top of the tray there is a plastic sheet that prevents the pastels to fall when transporting the package.
COLOUR CHART AND DEMO
Here is the list of the names of the 50 colours in the set:
29 White (2 units) / 12 Yellow / 1 Lemon yellow / 41 Naples yellow / 5 Chrome yellow / 2 Yellowish orange / 3 Orange / 34 Light pale orange / 4 Pale orange / 36 Salmon pink / 35 Pale vermillion / 15 Rose / 39 Rose madder / 10 Vermillion / 37 Scarlett/ 38 Lake carmine / 11 Red / 20 Old rose / 40 Hyacynth violet / 13 Purple / 92 Violet / 7 Pale brown / 6 Yellow ochre / 33 Ochre / 8 Brown / 27 Dark carmine / 43 Indian red / 9 Vandyke brown / 55 Pale green / 17 Yellowish green / 53 Olive green / 21 Green / 52 Light ultramarine / 25 Ultramarine / 54 Light Prussian blue / 24 Prussian blue / 46 Yellowish grey / Light grey / 26 Grey / Deep grey
Here are some of the illustrations that I completed with the Pentel pastels (inspirational source: Art Arena)
WHERE TO BUY
The box of 50 oil pastels can be easily found in Amazon and in physical shops. For once, they appear to be cheaper in physical shops than online. The are quite cheap in general: the box of 50 pieces is normally under 10 pounds.
Pentel oil pastels in Amazon UK
CONCLUSION
Pentel oil pastels aren’t the best ones in the market, but they are a fantastic alternative and a value for money, both for adults and children.
Oil pastels are bright and vivid, and they produce beautiful backgrounds in a relatively fast amount of time, to later draw on top of it with markers or other tools. All in all, just in the case of the pastel pencils, I would say they are not my thing or, rather, I need to use them more often in order to feel more comfortable with them. I don’t seem to enjoy art materials that imply stains or smudge. Oh, well…
PROS, CONS AND RATING
The best: vibrant colours and cheap price.
The worst: too thin bars.
Rating: 7/10
MORE INFO
Learning to draw 