Warson Soft Pastel Pencil, Black and White

A pastel pencil is soft pastel in a wooden barrel: the same chalky, opaque colour, but sharpened to a point so it can draw a line rather than a smear. It is what you reach for when a pastel drawing needs an eye, an eyelash, or a hard edge that a stick simply cannot give.

It works on textured paper — the tooth is what holds the pigment — and it will barely mark smooth stock. Sharpen it with a blade rather than a rotary sharpener, which snaps the core, and either fix the finished drawing or keep it behind glass, because pastel never truly dries and will lift onto anything that touches it.

Black and white together are the two ends of the range, and the pair that does most of the work in any tonal drawing — one deepens a shadow, the other puts the light back on top of it.

• Soft pastel in a wooden barrel — sharpens to a point
• For detail and hard edges in a pastel drawing
• Needs paper with tooth; sharpen with a blade, not a rotary sharpener
• Fix or frame the finished work — pastel transfers