Paul Rubens Haiya Oil Pastels Review + demo

Hey you guys! Welcome or welcome back to my channel. Today we are reviewing the Paul Rubens Haya oil pastels. These were sent to me by Paul Rubens to try out for the review. What I have is the 72 color set and I actually think that the color selection is very similar to the first one they sent me. That one was a completely different set with different properties but other than that I think the color selection they've just added on to at least to the ones that they sent me before. I think this one is just better because it's more expanded. This is probably my favorite collection of colors from all three of the oil pastel brands that I have. The Artex ones I believe is more of pastelly light and bright colors. These ones have a lot more of a range to them. There's actually a good selection of browns here and some grays which I think are gorgeous. They're perfect for portraits which I of course do a lot. They also have a good selection of pinks and skin tone colors which I didn't expect too much because I think that these were marketed to be for florals. So I was happily surprised when I found some of these earth tones in here and also a mixture of the grays. I'm really impressed by the colors they have here. There's also a good variation of reds which I'm particularly excited by just because I love reds. There's not just pinks and purples in here. There's also a variety of warmer reds which I am just so happy to have. There's also a good selection of blues and greens. I just think that this is the most complete collection of colors I have. So just off of that I would recommend these over the Artex ones or even the first Paul Rubens ones that I've tried. I think there's more of a range that you can get from this set over those two. The oil pastels themselves come in this nice little packaging. It comes in this box and they're all separated by these plastic containers. I actually prefer this plastic one over the foam ones just because the foam ones sometimes soak up the color and they get muddy after a while especially if you move your colors a lot when you're painting. So I prefer these holders for them. It's also nice to just store them in their containers which is what I do. I think I will eventually move this around more in the same way that I arrange my gouache paints, mix all of my brands together, just arrange them by colors. But yeah I prefer having just putting them in these containers. I'm really happy that this one is the plastic one. And so I'm just gonna jump right in and talk about how I feel about the actual oil pastels. And again I want to preface this by saying that I've only ever used three oil pastel brands so my eye for the quality might be limited so I'm just gonna be comparing them to the other two that I've had. So as a recap I think that the Paul Rubens oil pastels were great. I do think that the color options are a little bit limited now that I've tried these and I also think that they were just not as soft as the Artex ones. The Artex ones have very vibrant pastel colors which I would love but I wouldn't recommend it by itself if you didn't have a good basic set of oil pastels already. Those ones are also just so buttery soft that sometimes they're hard to be precise with them. One of the main things that were hyped about these were the bullet points which well I'm really happy that they have it and they did actually help a lot when you're trying to be precise with your paintings. It's a kind of factor that doesn't really last as long especially when you get to use your pastels more just those shape isn't gonna hold up the more you use your pastels. So it's a good thing to have but also my favorite thing about this is just the feel of them. Out of all of the brands that I have these are my favorite oil pastels to use just because they're they feel almost as soft as the Artex ones but they're also good for those first layers. Sometimes I feel that the Artex ones are hard to layer over because they're so soft that sometimes it feels like you're disturbing the first layers when you're laying down more on top. Sometimes I would have to wait maybe a few days for the for the under layers to dry-ish and sort of solidify themselves before I get to add more. With these I don't have to wait even at all they're just are the perfect blend of being soft but also not too buttery that they end up being hard to layer. My favorite favorite thing about these is when I blend them out with my fingers they don't just much around everywhere. I don't know if you guys can see it in the video but after I've laid down my colors and when I started blending them out it doesn't feel like the colors are just moving everywhere especially you can see it when I'm blending out the hair that when I blend them out they just stay exactly where I want them to go they don't smudge out to the rest of the colors especially the hair so very dark color next to the bright skin tones and they never really smudged when I didn't want them to. When I blended out the hair it just filled out the holes that I had with my paper so that was just really amazing to feel because I didn't really feel that with both of my previous pastels. After I blended them out I tried to see how they would feel when I use my palette knife to lay them down because the way they felt when I was blending them out with my fingers they didn't feel too soft so I was kind of scared that they wouldn't work the same way when I used my palette knife with them but after I tried it it really was still great being laid down that way. You can see how softly these colors lay down on the paper. I feel that they weren't this soft with my old Paul Reubens brand but also I didn't feel like I needed to lay them down with my palette knife this early. With my Artex pastels I felt like sometimes I would have to use my palette knife just because when I laid them down straight on with my pastels it was hard to control and also they were just so soft and easy to blend onto each other that sometimes it would be hard to use the pastels once they've blended out. With this it was easy to go back and forth between using my palette knife and my fingers and also just the pastels themselves on paper. I do also want to talk about the paper that I use when I do my oil pastels and maybe it's also a factor that I haven't really thought about but I use very smooth paper when I draw with oil pastels because I like being able to blend them out but also I like using the palette knife when which sometimes with more toothy paper it just feels it holds on too much onto the pastels and it gets hard for me to lay down more colors. It's also a reason why I use my palette knife because sometimes sometimes when oil pastels are too soft like they are with the Artex because of the paper that I use it gets hard to lay down more layers. With this the process isn't as limiting because they aren't too soft but they're very blendable that I can just switch back and forth between the different ways that I lay down my pastels. I believe you can see it when I'm trying to get the exact colors of her face right. I did a lot of switching routine using my palette knife to lay down the exact colors that I needed and also sometimes just going with my pastels straight onto the paper because this painting sort of looks very simple but I actually did have to try a few different ways to mix in to get her exact skin tones right before I was happy with the colors that I have. And so talking about the picture that I'm drawing I am drawing Harriet from the movie Emma. I've done so many Emma fan art that I actually haven't noticed that I'm gonna be uploading to back and forth Emma fan arts on YouTube because after this I will be uploading my colored pencils Holbein colored pencils review which is again another photo from that movie but we're just gonna go along with it. Talking about the exact photo that I chose to draw I think that I was subconsciously picking a painting that had the colors that were already present in the set that I have so it really just made the whole thing very easy. The whole process is just really smooth. I didn't have to wait days between each layer and I also just had all of the colors that I needed. I really think that these colors are the best selection that I've had so far. I thought it was because it was my biggest set but looking back I think that the Artex soft oil pastels have the same amount of colors but these ones have more of the more usable colors for me personally as a portrait artist so I would definitely just recommend these over that. There is one very curious thing about these and that is some of these pastels get so greasy and I don't know if this is a defect in these pastels because not all of them get greasy maybe a handful of them are but I haven't been paying too much attention to see if these were the same colors that get greasy. I think that most of them are just a very vibrant colors like my most vibrant red is so oily it's super greasy when I touch it. Also the same with my most vibrant orange and some of the the darkest vibrant blue that I have it's very greasy but it was really curious for me because I again have used a lot more oil pastels now than I did before but I've never experienced them being greasy to the touch like this. This is the first brand where I have felt this and I don't know if this is normal it is very distracting because when you get just very greasy fingers when you're painting it's not very fun and I don't know if that's a deal breaker for you guys but yeah just something to make note of but yeah just something to make note of. Other than that I really love this set definitely my favorite oil pastel sets that I've tried. I love the color selection there's a good variety in each of these colors I don't think I've talked about the different blacks and grays in this I've talked about the grays but there's maybe five or six colors that I could consider black but with different hues so I think that in itself it's so exciting that's perfect for portraits but it really just speaks a lot to how amazing the color selection is on this. I also just love the feel of the pastels they're very soft but it doesn't smudge around when you blend them out with your fingers and yeah those are really just the main things that I look for with my oil pastels and these ones just check both of those boxes. I'm curious to see if you guys have tried this how you feel about this and especially the greasiness of some of these colors I've never tried that and I don't know how normal that is but yeah other than that I love these pastels and that is it for my review of them. Thank you so much for watching this video thank you to my patrons for supporting me and I will be seeing you guys again soon!