Exploring Neocolor Pastels

A couple of weeks ago I bought a set of Neocolor wax pastels from Caran d'Ache after seeing lots of people use them on Instagram. I really enjoyed the consistency and feel of them, but the selection of colours definitely wasn’t doing it for me. I always find a rainbow selection of pencils or pastels really uninspiring and usually try to buy colours individually. There’s something about that standard rainbow selection that just doesn’t work for me, every colour is really bright, really intense and they’re all fighting with each other. To me a good colour palette should have subtleties, colours that are bright and muted, light and dark, and warm and cool.

So I was very excited to try the Neocolor collaboration with Beya Rebai. The collaboration consists of two sets of specially chosen Neocolor pastels, one in warm tones and one in cool tones. I bought both and they are so lovely to use. So many beautiful subtle colours and endless colour palettes that can be created by mixing and matching both sets. Very cleverly the cool set includes a warm pink and red to provide contrast and the warm set has a zesty yellow and a deep grey to provide some balance. I did a little swatch of each colour first, then played around putting some different colour pallets together. I then decided to do a couple of little sketches testing out the capabilities. I’m so pleased with how these poppies turned out, they feel so vibrant and free, you can just see them blowing in the wind. I’m really excited to see how I can combine these with watercolour and gouache, incorporating them into my style, and also adding a freshness to my sketchbook.