A set of rembrandt half sticks. At least on Amazon, there are sets of 90 and 120.
Now, it does cost a bit to start up. You have to have lots of different colors, because you can’t really mix them like you can with paint. But once you have your basic supply purchased, you should only have to replace individual sticks as they wear out.
Anyway I would go with Rembrandt half sticks, at a minimum 90 colors. They are kind of a medium soft, soft pastel. You can cover large areas with the pigment and yet make fine lines easily.
There are pastel sets to be had for under 20 dollars, but I just don’t feel you will get the performance you want out of the cheapest set, too much filler and not enough pigment.
As for paper, I would purchase some sanded paper. I get a lot of my art supplies from Amazon or Jerry’s Artarama, they seem to have the best prices. I personally like the UArt sanded paper, it comes in different grits, I tend to like the middle range of 400-600. If you will be doing very detailed portraits, you can get a finer grit, higher number, or if you are doing landscapes and want lots of roughness, you can get say a 240 grit.
Some people like painting on paper that isn’t sanded, like Canson Mi-Teintes.
There are advantages and disadvantages with those papers. Sanded papers are more costly, but you can use and reuse the paper, scrubbing off the old pastel, even washing it. Canson is affordable, but holds fewer layers of pastel and once you use it, you can’t easily scrub it off and reuse it. And it can be a frustrating paper for beginners because it’s harder to make corrections on.
On the other hand, if you use your fingers to blend, a 240 grit paper might just take off enough skin to make your fingertips bleed.
You can spend thousands of dollars on pastel supplies if you really get into it, but you can also get an adequate start for a couple hundred dollars, split between pastels and paper,
The Fine Art Store, based out of NY, offers sample sets of soft pastels so you can get one pastel from various makers and see which pastels have handling characteristics you like before investing in a set. I can’t remember if they offer paper samples as well.
A lot of people love the Dakota art store for pastel supplies, they kind of specialize in pastels. I haven’t ordered from them because they are on the West coast and I live in Virginia and am impatient when waiting for orders.
Hope this helps, I am excited for you in your journey to discover pastels and hope to see paintings you do with pastels, soon! 😀
P.S. oil pastels are a completely different animal from soft (chalk) pastels and the two can not be combined or used together. The harder pastel sticks are chalk pastels but with more binder and less pigment. For example, nupastel sticks. They are useful for beginning a painting, sketching and doing the first layer. After you purchase a basic set like Rembrandt’s, the next purchase should be a set of something like nupastel sticks. The final purchases would be super soft pastels like Terry Ludwigs, Sennelier, Schminke, etc. for the final layer and some pops of brilliant color.
P.P.S. If you just want to practice and not frame or sell your work, some artists use cheap sandpaper from the hardware store. Like 1,000 grit, super fine, and dark instead of light in color. I noticed one Russian artist in particular doing great paintings on black fine grit sandpaper. Here is a link to one of her videos:
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