Are oils more expensive than pastels to purchase?
Both professional grades of oil and pastel are costly to purchase. When working in pastel, an artist must have all the shades, tints and tones of each colors in a stick form. With oil paints, you can mix many colors from just a few tubes of colors. One can crosshatch somewhat with pastel (lay one color over the other to create optical blending) but really one needs the full range in values from light to medium to dark in any one particular color. My favorite types of pastels are: Girault, Sennelier, Unison, Art Spectrum and Nu Pastel (only to sketch out the work). I begin with the harder Nu Pastel and immediately go to the Girault and then the others join in. Each has a plethora of colors in their sets which range from a few hundred to over 500 depending on the brand. Edward Degas and Mary Cassatt assisted in popularizing pastel. In 1983, Sotheby’s Auction House sold two Degas pastel paintings for over $3,000,000 each. Both oil and pastel are used by me regularly although I will admit
