Neocolor I Water-Resistant Wax Pastels, 15 Colors

I recently purchased the Caran d'Ache Wax Pastel Colors Set of 10, and I am beyond impressed with the quality and performance of these pastels!The colors in this set are rich, vibrant, and highly pigmented—perfect for creating bold and vivid artwork. They glide effortlessly onto paper, providing a smooth, buttery application that makes blending and layering easy. Whether you're working on detailed drawings or larger color areas, these pastels deliver consistent and even coverage.These wax pastels are incredibly versatile. They work well on both smooth and textured papers, canvas, wood panels and are great for mixing, shading, and adding depth to your artwork. I will definitely keep these at my studio...♥

I was so curious about artist quality crayons and I needed something that would help me fill large areas with color. The 30 set has a very good color range and you can blend and is very smooth going on the paper- not waxy. I was very pleased to find none of my sticks were broken.

I have had neocolor ii (the water soluble) for years and I love them, but hesitated to buy these as I wondered how different they were from crayons. I finally bit the bullet when I saw a used set here on Amazon for cheaper than the usual price. I am sorry I did not get some years ago! They are essentially crayons, but go down completely smoothly, and have brighter colors. They are supposed to be lightfast (wish I could find a chart online) which would be nice, though I think I will use mostly for journalling and sketching in notebooks. They match the corresponding neocolor ii's which will make them versatile. They are expensive, but so lovely to work with that eventually I will probably get some more and I won't mind paying full price.Note: they are probably overkill for children under 12 or so and I don't know if I would recommend them for colorists because they are crayons, really--you couldn't color within fine line with them. I think they will encourage me to do looser and more expressive drawing because of that, and I want to repeat, I like them very much.ETA: they don't seem to break a lot with normal usage but they do break when you drop them! Be careful. I broke my ochre pencil today. but not too badly. and I did drop the whole set and nothing else broke.

The box came in in great condition and was shrieked wrapped. However to my surprise the wax pastels were all broken from the tips. I am assuming that they don't fit on this box and the foam inside is causing them to break from the tip. Other than that they are very much water resistant, very vibrant and lovely.

I can't knock Neocolor, colors are vibrant, the crayon feel is familiar in your hand, they blend well - you can produce instant art out of the box. They come in two formats: Neocolor I (wax based, so water repellent, but can be blended with other liquids) and Neocolor II (water based, so you can brush or sponge over to aid blending). I utilize both. They're a little pricey, often a little delicate, 30 pack is I feel the best bang for the buck. I wouldn't mind a better case, perhaps something with a handle. But the results and ease of use makes them so neccessary.

When I opened it, a couple of the tips were broken off. I opted to let it go, and put the box away for a couple of weeks until I have time to use them. When I went to take a crayon out, it broke into multiple pieces as I went to lift it out. I then realized at least half of them were broken in multiple places, and you didn't really see the breaks until you tried to use the crayons. The return window is closed so they are useless.Lesson learned: Pick up each crayon as soon as they arrive.The return window was a month, I think, from ordering, and they took 10 days or so to get here, so beware.

I'm so impressed with these. I wondered if they were just glorified crayons at first, as they are pretty firm for pastels (firmer than the Neocolor II Aquarelle ones, even), but two things impressed me: they blend beautifully (I was able to make a lovely color wheel with only 3 colors), and yet they don't smear into each other. I was adding yellow to a narrow space between an area where I'd already laid a lot of green, and it didn't pull any of the green into my yellow! I've never had that little color transference before. Even when I wipe my finger across a page with thick, layered color, nothing comes off *at all*. (I do this to the aquarelle ones and definitely pick up a little pigment on my finger.)Oh, and the pigments are all beautiful, vibrant, and quite rich. (The Aquarelle ones are *slightly* more vibrant, but barely noticeable in my opinion.)I used these as a base and laid colored pencil on top to fill in and clean up the edges and details, and the two work seamlessly together. Since they are both wax-based, this is no surprise, but I still felt it was worth mentioning, since that means these can act as a quick color base to lay under colored pencil pieces.I love these, and am excited to use them more!! Very much worth the money.

Yellow crayon was damaged (broken/and flaking tip), and actual container arrived really dirty with wax pieces smeared all over the inside of box and over the other crayons (I believe the damage is due to the packaging). Vibrant colors.