"Paris collection" soft pastel set from Sennelier - Expensive! Very expensive, but worth it

As I started with the soft pastels, one of the most popular recommendations for the start set was the Sennelier Paris Collection set, which includes 120 halves of standard Sennelier pastel crayons. To be honest, I was very sorry to invest 160 EUR in a hobby that does not bring any income and, perhaps, will not even last longer. I tried my best... I bought several other sets, but in the end, I gave up and bought the "Paris Collection". It's been about 4 months since the purchase, I've drawn about 20 works, and I am in love with it.

Sennelier soft pastels are professional handmade pastels. From this it follows that it is really of high quality, very pigmented, has a huge palette of colors (more than 500 colors!). The "Paris Collection" set includes 120 colors, which is generally enough for the job. Like all sets, it lacks complex grays and complex darks, but they can be bought individually (and not necessarily from Sennelier).

The fact that the pastel is made by hand introduces one big drawback - the crayons are crooked. Since it is often necessary to work with the side part, the fact that not the entire surface of the crayon lies on the surface is annoying.

You should also not forget that although the pastel is extra-soft, in fact, not all crayons are really extra-soft (as I understand it, it depends on the pigment that is at its base). There are 10 such pieces in the set, mostly dark and brown. Moments like this make me want to go back to my cheap non-handmade pastel Laughing out loud.

The fact that the set includes halves of ordinary crayons (half about 2-2.5 cm long) I consider as a plus: consumption in pastels is quite economic, and some colors are not so often used, so why pay more? If some piece of chalk is over, this is a sign that you can invest and buy a whole piece.

Another minor drawback is that, since they are halves, they lie unwrapped. The box itself says exactly what colors are in this set as a whole, but how do you identify them? especially after you used them several times? Remembering the number and buying the right crayon blindly for a replacement is unlikely to succeed (well, for me, for example, that's exactly the case).

I drew with pastels on smooth pastel paper, on honeycomb, on abrasive, with underpainting - everything is super if you are used to extra-soft pastels.

Here are few works made in pastel from the set on different types of pastel paper.

On abrasive paper CANSON Mi-Teintes Touch:

Montana, 2022

On CANSON Mi-Teintes honeycomb paper:

Vintage Purse, 2021