These firm pastels are great!! They are highly pigmented and are great for underpainting. Let me tell you a little secret for the new pastel artist wanting to practice but find pastel papers are just too darn expensive. Purchase some Liquitex Clear Gesso (purchased here on Amazon) and you can turn anything into a drawing surface for your pastels! You can apply the Clear Gesso to cardboard scraps, watercolor paper, cut up cereal boxes, basically anything can be made into a pastel drawing surface! It must be the clear gesso and it will give the surface a tooth to hold the pastel. I have a little experience with pastels, and this tip has saved me a fortune in practice!! Practice first, then put your creations on more expensive papers and surfaces! I think you will be amazed!!

3 of the pastels arrived damaged, and 3 were missing entirely

Great set of pastels! Perfect gift for an artist in your life. They are so pigmented and come with a variety of colors. I used these for a life drawing class and came with lots of skin tones! Wonderful pigment to blend, easily blended with fingers or blending tools. Great for beginners-experts, just overall a great product.

My art professor told me about these. I was using cheap chalk pastels before and she said don't worry about the price too much because they are worth it. And she is right. They are smooth and blend wonderfully. I used them in most of my senior works for my grad show.

Thoroughly enjoying my nupastels. I'm a newbie with these but learning tips and tricks thru YouTube. They are chalky, apply as many layers as you'd like, these blend easy and hues are beautiful.