Neopastels
Caran d'Ache
NEOPASTEL
Soft & Vibrant Artist Quality Oil Pastels
Caran d’Ache has crafted pastels since 1952. Over 30 years ago, its Geneva workshops developed NEOPASTEL™ to give artists a buttery, richly pigmented oil pastel that performs in the studio and on location. Today the range spans 96 professional colours, each formulated with extra-fine pigments and a balanced wax–oil binder for smooth, even laydown.
Soft, velvety texture that glides without crumbling or excessive dust—ideal for bold coverage or delicate veils of colour.
High pigment concentration for saturated hues and excellent lightfastness across the range.
Water-resistant, solvent-friendly: blend and thin with white spirit/odourless mineral spirits for painterly washes, or work dry for dense opacity.
Versatile mark-making: scumble, blend, smear, layer and sgraffito (scratch back through layers) with clean, controllable edges.
Practical format: round sticks, approx. 10 mm × 68 mm, with protective wrappers, colour number and lightfast rating printed on each.
Swiss-made consistency—reliable cores that keep their shape and sharpen neatly for detail.
The creamy, dust-free texture of Neopastel extra-fine oil pastels makes them perfect for finger-blending rich gradients on dark papers.
With high pigment concentration and excellent opacity, Neopastel colours stay vibrant on black supports, allowing artists to softly smudge edges, push colour into the tooth of the paper and create dramatic highlights and shadows without the need for fixative.
Caran d’Ache Neopastel oil pastels can be liquefied with a little odourless mineral spirits or white spirit, letting you turn bold pastel strokes into smooth, painterly washes on canvas or textured paper.
Their soft, velvety oil-pastel composition is water-resistant yet soluble in white spirit, so artists can layer, blend and glaze colour just like traditional oil paint while enjoying the control of a stick format.
Neopastel lends itself beautifully to sgraffito techniques, where thick layers of oil pastel are scratched back with a craft knife or tool to reveal underlying colours.
Because Caran d’Ache Neopastel pastels are soft, highly pigmented and won’t dry out or crumble, you can build multiple layers, then carve in bark textures, grasses and expressive lines for energetic landscapes and mixed-media drawings.
Made from very fine pigments and inert oil, Neopastel oil pastels offer exceptional covering power and effortless blending on toned and kraft papers.
Colours can be layered and mixed directly on the surface, then softened with a fingertip or colourless pastel to create subtle transitions in foliage, skies and backgrounds without producing pastel dust.
Caran d’Ache Neopastel’s opaque, matte finish is ideal for experimental mark-making on dark supports, from bold blocks of colour to stamped shapes and linear accents.
These professional artist oil pastels are soft, water-resistant and turpentine-soluble, so you can combine direct drawing, stencil work and textural overlays for graphic illustrations, sketchbook studies and expressive abstracts.
