Happy birthday! I started using them about a year ago and they’re so much fun! One tip Ive found very useful is to keep the oil sticks in an air tight glass container. Since they’re ridiculously expensive it always seems a waste to let a thick skin develop on them. Keeping them in an air tight container keeps them wet longer and keeps them from rolling away.

Oh Helen I hope you had a lovely Birthday week & wind in your sails. 💐😎⛵️ These looked yummy. And you have a nice pallet there. I luv how you go all in when you dive into something new 💪 I’m not afraid of messy, but don’t haven’t the energy for it all…so better you than me 😉That R&F Stil de grain was luminous on the test panel. Look forward to your new creations when you return 👋💜👋

what a stunning haul, really inspiring ☺☺

Happy Birthday! I hope your sailing went well with the weather 🥰 Well, I know what I don't need to spend my $$ on 🤣 Oil pastels are as messy as I want - I am glad I saw you use these, and they answered questions for me! Glad you had fun with them!

Look forward to seeing some paintings made with these sticks 😍

Birthday Blessings to you, Helen 🥳 What a fun haul 😃

Oh wow...I just looked up the R&F sticks here in the US and 😳 I hadn't thought anything could be costlier than Terry Ludwig soft pastels lol! Art supplies for ourselves are an amazing birthday present 😊

Happy birthday 🎉 those sticks look such good fun!

What a wonderful birthday gift… happy birthday!! Haha… WAY too messy for me, but I love watching others use the messy stuff. Can’t wait to see what you create 😊.

You have a great selection of colors to work with Helen! I can’t wait to see more work to come. Lovely. ❤ and HAPPY BIRTHDAY 🎉

Happy Birthday🎉 This is NOT my medium of choice, but I enjoy watching you play with them😊

Wishing you an early and happy birthday, Helen! 🎉 Interesting haul, messy, but fun to watch. I don’t use oil paints, or bars, or sticks, except maybe, sometimes, the regular oil pastels for some mark making in mixed media pieces. That said, some time ago, I attended an encaustic monotype workshop in my area. We used some of these R&F oil bars to “draw” on a hot plate, mixing them directly on the surface of the hot plate, and then printing the design on paper - very similar to gelli plate mono printing. Oh, that was so much fun!! Thankfully, all the materials and equipment were provided, so I only got to take home my own “creations”, beautiful abstract designs that I can subsequently use as backgrounds, or collage pieces, cards, etc. Can’t wait to see what you make next! Thank you! I always enjoy your content ❤

Happy Birthday from a fellow Taurus. I love your channel, it's very soothing to see you paint before I go to bed. 🤗

Wishing you a wonderful Happy Birthday 🎊 Helen! Wow that looks amazing & lots of fun. Definitely a glove wearing medium to play with. 😊 I am going to have to check out this new medium. Thanks so much for sharing this with us. Enjoy your trip & celebration 🥳!!

Looks like a lot of fun!

What a treat to enjoy for your birthday 💐 Have a happy one 🎉

Happy Birthday! Thanks for all your videos 😊

Happy early Birthday Helen! I hope you have another wonderful year ahead of you and a fun competition as well. I always like seeing you enjoy playing with your paint. It's sort of reminiscent of a child playing with their food, but they're allowed to. The combined two pictures look like a view out of a window, maybe getting close to sunset. The orange sun hitting the ground but the sky is still blue, slowly turning orange. Looks beautiful. Keep up the wonderful work!

We wish you a very happy birthday 🎁🎂🎊 and keep pure and healthy forever 🫶💐🌅

Wishes for a Happy Birthday ! 🎂Fingers crossed for your competition. I've tried oils in the past, but we didn't get along very well. I think you stared very well; those paints are pretty. Thank you for sharing your gifts!

happy birthday, dear Helen! i wish you a long, healthy and happy new year.

Happy birthday Helen!! I would love to try oil bars when I have my home studio set up 😊. They are so expensive yes!! Sennelier has some more affordable… oh you did get some!

Happy birthday Helen 🍾 - good luck in the competition ⛵️ That was great fun to watch! I’m totally one of the people who was cringing at the mess but, oh! The loveliness of those blended colours makes the mess totally worthwhile! Just gorgeous! Something for me to think about in the future perhaps. Buying the R&F blending stick to work with the sennelier colours might be a cheaper way to get into it. Also, love how the Sennelier stick looked like a giant lipstick! 😀. Enjoy them & thanks for sharing 😊

Happy Birthday, Helen! Hope you enjoy your day! Those sticks look very messy, as you said. I’ll be interested to see what you create with them. I’ve never tried oil paints and I’m not sure I would try these. I’ll live vicariously through you with them! I love that you jump into trying new things. ❤🎂🎉

I’d like to see a gel plate video x

Happy Birthday Helen 🎉. A fun to watch swatch and play. The colours and the way they blend are beautiful however, when you said some of us maybe thinking they are way too messy, I had just thought that they wouldn’t be a medium I would add to my art supplies. 😆 I’m trying to get that smooth blended effect with my abstracts using acrylic. It’s fun to see how the different mediums give varied effects and would be interested to see how you use each one to see the blending of colour, tone and textures they each have compared to one another. Just a thought. Looking forward to seeing you work with these in your beautiful art 😍🙏🏻😍 Have a fabulous birthday week 🥳🤗🥳

That was fun to watch. Love the earth colors. Happy Birthday, Helen! 🎉

Fig me, you weren’t joking Helen at the cost of them there oily sticks!!! They do look luscious texture and pigment pay off wise, a very special birthday treat indeed. Happy birthday!

🎉Happy Birthday! I would create such a disaster with those - I'm bad enough with oil/soft pastels. They do look like such a lot of fun, though! Imagine just going wild on a massive canvas. I had a look on Jackson's at the open stock R&F sticks out of interest, and they're definitely an investment! As always, I'm most drawn to the rich jewel tones in the upper price series. Why can't I just love earth tones 😂? It's not something that I'd purchase as a hobby artist, but for a professional artist, I can see how they would be amazing to work with, such rich silky pigments.

Happy birthday, Helen! Those are gorgeous!

Happy Birthday 🎉

SOOO MESSY! They look like a lot of fun! Happy Birthday & happy sailing! 🤗💖✨

Aaww Helen - happy birthday for next week - its my birthday next week too and im also picking out some art stuff as gifts - oil sticks are great fun but im still getting to know them - didnt know about the blending stick though ❤

Happy birthday, Helen! What a wonderful birthday present for yourself. I've been curious about the oil pigment stick, but they are very pricey. Loved seeing you play with them!

Happy birthday! Today is my birthday. Look forward to see what you do with these supplies. Love your vjdeos

They look great fun, albeit somewhat messy! I hope you enjoy using them.. I’ve recently watched some of Andrew Barrowman’s videos where he uses oil sticks plein air, wonder if you’ve seen them too. Hope you enjoy your birthday and have a safe sailing trip.

❤️❤️🎊🇦🇺 happy birthday🎉

I am always covered in paint or mud or something so the oil bars are no problem for me to watch! I wouldn't bother with gloves either!

Happy forthcoming Birthday!🥳🎂🎉 I hope you fair well during the sailing competition. Although you purchased different brands, the range of colors are excellent. Incredibly you didn't receive duplicates. I'm unsure about the mess but they appeared to lay-down so smoothly, with the aid of the R&F Blending stick, that I'm tempted to try them. I cringed whilst watching you use them.

What a fun medium to work with! Can you spray an oil fixative on it to harden it when done? Thanks for another great video and have a very Happy Birthday!🎉❤

Happy Birthday Helen! 🎉🎉🎉 I watched this vid the whole way through. I like oil sticks and have used them some and wanted to see how you would use them and what you thought. I have the Jack Richeson & Shiva brand's along with a couple of the mini sets of R&F. The R&F are def the priciest & most luxurious of what I have but not sure how they compare in price to Sennelier. The quality of R&F sticks is tops and they're highly pigmented. They're also popular for use with wax for encaustic painting. R&F also makes hard color blocks...these are made primarily for encaustic painting & must be melted and/or mixed with wax to use the color . They're very expensive and not for casual use...unless you've just got money to burn. For the WN oil bars, it does seem that they've been discontinued. I think that art supply manufacturers are discontinuing/reducing lines of their slower or less popular sellers due to the high cost of just about everything these days. I've noticed in almost every brick & mortar store I go to these days, especially for art supplies, that the shelves are much more lightly stocked and there is less to choose from than before all the lock downs & closures of the pandemic. And now bc people are back to their lives, they're just not buying as much of the arts & crafts supplies that became so popular during Covid. Wishing you much successful & fun creating. 🎨🖌️🖼️😊

Happy birthday! Mine was in this month. My husband took me on a shopping spree to Blick. It was wonderful!

I don't think I'll be trying those anytime soon, too messy and sensory annoying, but they're a perfect medium for you Helen. I can't wait to see what you create with them. On another note, I googled Bromley because I thought their catalogue looked interesting, and it's available to download for free. So I did. I don't have access to all of the brands you get and it's interesting to see what I might be missing out on, especially in the watercolors. It looks like they would send things to me but the cheapest, under 3kg postage would cost me nearly $63 New Zealand dollars (£29.89) . I'd have to buy a lot to justify that postage. Happy birthday for next week 🥳 Enjoy your sailing, I used to enjoy it when we had a 16ft trailer sailor before we had kids. I met my hubby when I was a sea cadet, a long time ago.

Happy Birthday, Helen! 🎉I hope you have a wonderful time with your sailing competition next week! These are beautiful but too messy for me. I will love seeing what you create with them though. I have heard of R&F with their encaustic sticks but wow the price put me off going into that form of artwork. I hope you really enjoy these!!

Curious... I saw something very similar to the R&F oil sticks on Taobao. It's similar in design and packaging, same 38ml amount and there a transparent stick for blend too. It's made by a Chinese company so it's much cheaper, of course. But R&F is made in USA, so surely they can't be the same thing... 🤔 That aside, I very much enjoyed your video. You have provide great information about this interesting medium. Your sample paintings, despite being just shapeless colours, were so beautiful! I just like looking a colours artfully arranged together.

This looks very fun! And I love the color of the 2nd painting. Is that the earth color set?

Happy Birthday! Tell us how long it takes for them to dry. You make it look like play time!

I’ve only seen the oil sticks used when the artists had canvases that were big like 6 foot plus. Used for mark making over a painting. I’ve never seen anyone worry about removing a skin. :)

Hi Helen. If you’re interested Sennelier Mondays Live on KZfaq have some oil stick demos (-: Marion

Happy Birthday, Helen! Nice choice of a present. 😊 I like the idea of oil sticks, but I am sure they are not for me. They are very messy, and it is quite a waste of material when they dry, which will happen definitely for me, as I don’t draw as often as I wish to.

Do you the landscape artist Andrew Barrowman and his video Channel? You can see him use oil sticks there.

I’ll just give myself a medal 🥇 😂

I’m intrigued, if scared of the mess 😂😂😂, once dry on the paper/substrate are they fixed or do you have to seal them?

Helen: i dont have a plan 24:15: look mountian sunset scene 😀 Me: artists are neat 😶

I'm cringing not at the messy-ness of them, but the price! Are you sure you wouldn't prefer diamonds for your birthday? Might save your husband a few quid. 😂 As I've said before, when it's your only hobby then by all means treat yourself. But this is like me buying a Gary Mills Centrepin Reel; all very nice, but far too expensive when cheaper ones are just as useable if not far better in some cases. Have a nice birthday, though it seems like every week is Christmas for you. 😂 PS: I do say this in jest. Please don't take it as a serious criticism. I just had to hide from my wife the fact I'd bought a £28 set of F-C colouring pencils. She'd kill me otherwise.

I don't like them

Early Happy Birthday 🎂 Helen 🎉, hope you have a wonderful day xx . Those oil bars look extremely creamy and buttery xx