Sennelier Pastels - Basic Colors for Portraiture

[Darla Dixon]

I'm hoping someone here has some experience with pastels, and could recommend a basic list of colors for beginning with them in portraits.

I bought the Portrait Highlights publication from American Artist, and if you have it, see the article on page 52 by Andrew Manry Kenyon. He says he uses a 525-piece set of pastels by Sennelier.

I really like his portraits, and I think that these pastels they would be a nice fit with my style.

What I can't figure out is, are these oil pastels or the dry pastels? Looks like dry, looking at the pictures, but not sure.

Since I can't afford to start out with 525 pieces of something I've never worked with, I hope someone could give me a basic list of Sennelier colors necessary to begin.