Before I proceed I wanted to compare media sided by side to see what I liked better. Not only how it looks but how I liked working with it.

The Top two are the most popular Hard Pastels Cont’e Crayons and NuPastel. The NuPastel’s Red was more pinkish and the darks aren’t as dark. The Cont’e is more brilliant, less waxy. The Carbothello Pastel Pencils was the most brilliant, which surprised me because it’s the hardest, harder pastels contain more binders. Pencils are much easier to use too, sticks don’t always land on the paper where you expect. The Semi-hard would make a nice underpainting for soft pastel.

Out of the two soft pastels I have, Mungyo and Rembrandt are very similar, I would like to try Sennelier’s soft. Of the Oil pastels, NeoPastel and Mungyo Gallery, the Neo’s are slightly more brilliant, if one pushes hard the Mungyo’s are more likely to leave crumbs on the paper.

Conclusion: For illustration I’m leaning toward Carbothello’s for the precision of the pencil and intensity of the color, if I used any of the other pastels I would have to make the illustrations bigger. I like the Cont’e crayon for life sketching and drawing, because it’s broad but still precise with the square stick. Between the soft pastel and oil pastel, I like the looks of the oil pastel, to me a bit bolder and I like making marks with it.