SKETCHING PASTEL CARRÉS

I wanted something portable to add color to my outdoors sketching and while Prismacolor hard pastels were good, they weren't great. A lot of folks use watercolors to add color but I wanted something dry. I enjoy sketching with conte crayon and thought I'd try their colors. Wow, these are exactly what I wanted! Brilliant color, smooth blending and little dust. The 12 color set in their plastic box it just the right size and content for me and with a 5.5" x 8.5" sketch pad weighs less than a pound. You get full-sized (conte crayon full size, anyway!) sticks of black, white, yellow, orange, pink, red, light green, dark green, medium blue, violet, tan and brown. Since they blend so well you can easily lighten or darken any color, and even make intermediate hues so these 12 actually go further than you might think. They also work well with charcoal and the hard pastels I've tried them with. They do exactly what I wanted them to do. The plastic case snaps closed securely but the foam holding the crayons inside is thin and doesn't look like it's going to last very long. Of the 12 crayons, four arrived broken. However, they happened to be broken into about the same sizes I would have broken them into for use anyway so it wasn't a problem for me. Your mileage may vary. I suspect that other customers may object and recommend that the manufacturer revisit the design of their packaging. Something with thicker foam, similar to their 4-crayon sketching kit, may be a better idea. I really like the thin plastic case for carrying along, though: it makes such a thin and light package. I guess you can't make everyone happy! Highly recommended!

Super smooth and blends great. The crayons are also lovely colors and super easy to use.

I purchased this for my daughter for her college art class and it was just what she needed. The variety of colors that were included were superb. Will definitely purchase again.

Superb product, but one star removed for production moved to China, where ethical labor practices cannot be assured. I prefer to use Faber-castell Polychromos hard pastels ( Faber-castell Polychromos Artists Pastels Tin Of 60 ), which are about the same price and are also lightfast, but Polychromos is apparently on its way to being discontinued (over the course of the last few years, the line was slashed from 120 colors to 60 and open stock has been eliminated). Polychromos is made in Germany, which is nice, but Conte has been making Color Carres Crayons for a very long time and I am more confident that they will still be around in twenty years. By using Conte, I probably don't have to worry about getting used to a new color line when the one I like just disappears. I like the colors in the Color Carre line, and they are rated for lightfastness, unlike Prismacolor NuPastel, which are slightly more affordable. There are many excellent pastel artists who use NuPastels, but I prefer to work with something that I can rely on (sometimes, pastel artists use hard pastels only for blocking in the base layer, a task for which lightfastness is less of an issue). Besides, I like the velvety feel of Conte Carre over the NuPastel, and there seems to be more pigment in each stick of Conte Carre. All-in-all, the Conte are very similar to the Polychromos, but are a little cheaper and will probably be around longer. I use a lot of Sennelier and Unison soft pastels and they layer beautifully over the Conte, though both are so soft as to make using the Conte Carre for final details a little problematic. It all depends on how you paint. Conte Color Carre Crayons are good performers as far as hard pastels go, top-notch really. I think that if you're going to spend this much on hard pastels, your only decision is between the Faber-castell Polychromos and the Conte, but the former line seems like it's shrinking every few years. At the end of the day, I recommend the Conte.

Conte crayons are great drawing tools with consistent quality, and this is a very good deal in a nice package. The box has drawers on 3 sides that make it easy to find and store the sticks; the drawers are all well padded so that the sticks won't break until I personally take them out and drop them on the floor while I am using them (inevitable, I'm afraid) and the design is nice. It will be banged up and less pretty eventually since I haul it around a lot and I am not gentle with my supplies, but I do appreciated the effort that went into making the package functional and cute. There is a good range of colors and the price is good for this many Conte sticks. It was worth the tiome I spent searching.

I have wanted to try these for quite some time. They arrived in perfect condition and then I promptly dropped them and broke them into little pieces 😢. But they really are lovely and I will be using the tiny pieces the best I can.

Because Conte Crayons are made with many of the same pigments I use to paint with, they come closest to my finished frescos. Using them to make at least one color cartoon makes sense. Their small size allows lines fine enough for the fresco artist, but I do wish that they also came in a fat variety the size of sidewalk chalk. When filling in expansive areas they wear out quickly. Ordering individual Carres is a bit more expensive and troublesome. This set came amazingly unbroken except for the white Carre which a fresco artist seldom uses anyway. I have loved Contes ever since my college days when my teacher introduced them to me. I never went back to charcoal afterwards. While they do not blend as easily as charcoal, the large cartoons I draw are essentially preliminary drawings, a master plan towards the finished work, so I do not waste much time perfecting them. Often I throw these drawings out when the fresco is done, which makes my wife sad. A few, the ones which came out better than the fresco, I keep. I also keep the smaller sketches if there was some detail I think will help on my next fresco. I hope you enjoy Contes as much as I do.

Seem fine. One of my favorite brands of pastels . So excited to see them come in this compact and practical drawer ( saves space). 😍

un regalo .piaciuto

Contés (Semejantes a los pasteles) de gran calidad. Son pequeños y finos pero cunden mucho. La caja es muy bonita y útil. Excelentes.

Não gostei, a caixinha, embora lacrada, veio amassada nas bordas e os bastões todos quebrados.

No conocía esta marca .. simplemente .. lo mejor de lo mejor para dibujar.. colores excepcionales , puedes mezclarlos de maravilla , difuminarlos , la calidad es superior en todos los sentidos .

Imballaggio super protettivo, spedizione veloce. perfetto.