Oil Pastels vs Soft Pastels: Which Should You Buy First?

Pick up an oil pastel and a soft pastel side by side and the name is about the only thing they share. The oil pastel is pigment held in a non-drying mineral oil and wax; it drags across paper like a firm lipstick, leaves a slight waxy sheen and never fully hardens. The soft pastel is almost pure pigment held together with a little gum or clay binder; it leaves a dry, matte film that sits in the texture of the paper and lifts off as dust the moment you brush it. That single difference — oily wax versus dry powder — decides how each one blends, what paper it needs, how you protect a finished piece and what a set costs to keep going.

For a first purchase the honest answer is that oil pastels are the cheaper, tidier, lower-commitment way in, and soft pastels are the medium most pastel painters end up preferring once they are hooked. The rest of this piece explains why, point by point, so you can decide with your own budget, space and tolerance for mess in mind.

Soft pastel blends because it is loose pigment sitting in the paper's tooth: drag a fingertip, a paper stump or a soft brush across two colours and they merge into a gradient. Many painters also block in an underpainting with harder sticks and brush over it with 70% isopropyl alcohol, which melts the pigment into a wash without filling the tooth — the paper has to tolerate liquid for this. The most common beginner mistake on the soft side is putting down far more colour than the surface needs and then rubbing it into mud; light early layers blend cleaner.

Oil pastel does not blend the same way. Its wax binder means colours mix through pressure and layering; a stump or your finger will soften an edge, and softer sticks blend far more readily than hard ones. Solvents such as odourless mineral spirits are optional — practitioners use them for a specific dissolved, painterly look or to lift a large area for redoing, not as a routine step. Baby oil or cooking oil gives a similar effect but never dries, so it slowly degrades unprotected paper; if you want to work wet, gesso the sheet first.

Dust is the dividing line most beginners underestimate. Every stroke of soft pastel sheds pigment onto the paper, the table and the floor, and that powder is not something you want to breathe: the working rule is to tap loose dust off the sheet, never blow it. Some pastel painters with allergies only work outdoors or by an open window, and a board tilted so dust falls clear of the picture is a common studio fix. Plan for a wipeable surface and a small dedicated corner — setting up a beginner art space at home matters more for soft pastel than for almost any other dry medium.

Oil pastel makes no dust at all, which is the single most repeated reason people on the oil side give for choosing it. The trade-off is that the sticks are sticky: wax builds up on your fingertips, the very softest sticks can be gunky and hard to control, and a finished piece stays tacky because the oil never dries. Cover it with glassine or tracing paper before you stack anything on top — the same sheet protects a soft pastel drawing in a sketchbook.

Soft pastel needs a surface with tooth to hold pigment, and the amount of tooth decides how many layers you get. On a sanded pastel card such as a 400-grit board you can build seven to ten layers with little trouble; on a clear-gessoed board about four to six; on plain drawing or sketch paper only a couple before the tooth is full and everything slides. That is why the sanded sheets earn their price, and why so much beginner frustration traces back to trying soft pastel on thin sketch paper. A practice trick from pastel forums: 400–600 grit wet-and-dry sandpaper from a hardware store handles much like sanded pastel paper — it isn't archival, but for learning it works. The soft pastels beginner setup is built around exactly this idea: a modest stick set on proper paper rather than a huge stick set on the wrong one.

Oil pastel is far less fussy. Practitioners' bare minimum is any paper of roughly 160 gsm (80 lb) with a bit of texture; a 200 gsm sketch pad, cheap watercolour paper or a mixed-media pad all work, and toned paper is a pleasant step up. Sanded paper is a luxury here, not a requirement — even smooth Bristol works if you let layers rest between sessions. Oil pastel also goes onto wood, canvas or gessoed board. If your budget is tight, the oil pastels beginner setup gets you painting on paper you may already own.

Both media follow the same first rule: firmer sticks go down first, the softest sticks go on last. A very soft stick will always cover a hard one; the reverse smears and skids. Cheap oil pastels are hard almost by definition, which makes a bargain set a useful underpainting layer rather than a bad set — the disappointment comes from trying to finish a piece with them alone.

From there the media diverge. Soft pastel painters generally work dark to light, saving the brightest lights for the last, softest strokes, and their layer count is set by the paper's tooth. Oil pastel painters generally work light to dark and keep the early layers thin so the surface doesn't clog. A piece left overnight firms up enough to take more colour the next day — a slower rhythm than soft pastel, but a forgiving one, since a scraped-back oil pastel passage can simply be reworked.

Per stick, oil pastel is the cheaper medium by a wide margin. A widely recommended mid-range artist set of 72 oil pastels sells for around $50, well under a dollar a stick, and practitioners say it stays in use even after they add premium sticks. A comparable mid-range soft pastel costs roughly $4 per full stick bought open stock, and the painters who use both call soft pastel one of the more expensive mediums going. Both reward the same buying pattern — a small firm set for underpainting plus a mid-range set for the bulk of the work — so a first purchase does not need to be a huge box.

The hidden cost of soft pastel is everything around the sticks. Sanded paper is priced per sheet, framing under glass with a spacer or mat is part of finishing a piece, and a can of fixative tends to get bought and then largely left on the shelf. If you are already wary of the art supplies beginners waste money on, the pattern here will look familiar: a giant soft pastel set on plain paper is the classic version of it, and it turns people off a medium they might have loved on the right surface.

Buy oil pastels first if you want to find out whether pastel-style colour suits you before spending real money: a mid-range set, a pad of 160 gsm or heavier paper and a couple of paper stumps is a complete, dust-free start, and the sticks stay useful later as underpainting layers. Buy soft pastels first if you already know you love the powdery, luminous look — the range of brands and colours is far wider and the finish is what most people picture when they hear the word pastel — but budget for sanded paper from day one and accept that dust, storage and framing are part of the deal.

Plenty of people keep both: a soft pastel workflow that starts with a hard-stick underpainting and an alcohol wash, and an oil pastel workflow for days when the room can't be dusty. Whichever you start with, the pattern that saves money is the same — a modest stick set, the correct paper and one white in the softest grade you can afford for the final highlights.