The Top Five Soft Pastels in 2013

This post reviews my poll Which is your favourite make of artist grade soft pastels? which ran on my website Pastels - Resources for Artists during 2013.

Here's the chart of the results for 2013

It's the same Top 5 Pastels again - plus a tweak!

The top Five Soft Pastels, according to people who responded to the poll, were as follows.  Links to more information about the pastels are embedded in the name

1. Unison Soft Pastels (British) - repeating the pattern of all previous polls - Unison consistently come top.  At the end of the day, pastel artists recognise very high quality products and vote with their wallets!
2. Sennelier Extra Soft Pastels (French) One of the oldest and possibly the smallest pastels with one of the largest chromatic range of pastels - now offered in 525 shades
3. Schminke Soft Pastels (German) - Some of the smoothest pastels in existence. As I indicate on my website I've bought this very popular pastel in four different countries on three different continents!
4. Talens Rembrandt (Dutch) A very popular range which comes midway between soft and hard and one which many people start with - I know I did!
5. Joint 5th place
• Terry Ludwig (American) I always think of Terry Ludwig as being very like Unison in the sense of being an independent artisan supplier of soft pastels - who started small and has got bigger through the patronage of very many pastel artists.
• Girault (French) 
6. Girault got into the "top five" by virtue of Terry Ludwig having slipped slightly. 

Here you can see a table which gives the relative percentage share over the last few years - according to the poll.

BRAND OF PASTEL	2013	2011-2013	2011	2010	2006-2009
Unison	23%	18%	22.1%	21.9%	19.6%
Sennelier	17%	13%	14.7%	13.3%	15.9%
Schminke	13%	9%	6.6%	15.2%	11.7%
Talens Rembrandt	10%	8%	11.2%	9.4%	9.4%
Terry Ludwig	5%	6%	6.6%	6.1%	11.7%
Winsor & Newton	-	6%		4.7%	6%
Girault	5%	5%		5%	3.1%

As you can see the top four brands are now beginning to pull away from the rest of the pastel brands. I'm guessing this in part relates to the demise of the Winsor & Newton Pastel which can now only be obtained as discounted pastel sets.

Unison has had its best ever year and Schminke is regaining some of the ground it lost in 2011 and 2012.

Of the remainder PanPastels is growing a loyal band of followers and is doing well to achieve 3% of the vote.

Girault crept into Joint 5th place as a result of a slightly worse result by Terry Ludwig.

I've now posted a new Poll for 2014 - but will also be announcing it in a separate post tomorrow.

Past Polls about Soft Pastels

I've been running this poll for a while

• Unison is still favourite artist grade soft pastel (2012 results)
• Soft Pastels: What's your favourite make? (2011 results)
• Which is your favourite make of soft pastels? (2010 Poll Results)

Unison Pastels - Colour Charts

I came across an offer of three handmade laminated colour charts for Unison Pastels made by Unison Colour this morning.  It struck me I'd never done a post about Unison Pastels colour charts - so here it is!

Colour charts - and colour charts for pastels

Colour charts are available in a number of different ways.

• printed - needs to be matched to CMYK colours to get the colours right
• digital file - to be viewed on screen hence needs to be matched to the RGB colours (but then it will be wrong if printed out as it won't be set up for a CMYK colour scheme!)
• handmade - "as is"

See my Colour Theory for Artists site for the RGB (light) and CMYK (print) processes referenced above.

Inevitably, a printed colour chart is easy to produce but does not always match up with real colour.  This is one of the reasons why Old Holland Oil Colours have a hand painted colour strip on each tube of paint - so that the purchaser of an expensive paint can see the real colour when laid down.  It's why some manufacturers produce hand-coloured paint charts.

However when it comes to pastels there's a problem.  A hand-coloured chart cannot be stored either by the retailer or the consumer as the pastel will be rubbed off.  One pinned up in a studio will come to no harm - but these are probably best produced by the artist for the colour range they use.

Unison Pastel Colour Charts

Normally I access colour charts for Unison Pastels by looking at their website.  Unison have colour charts available as a printed chart (which you can obtain by emailing them) and on-screen colour indexed charts.  Both sets of charts are for their:

Unison Pastels - Colour Charts

Colour Sets

• Orange 1-18
• Red 1-18
• Red Earth 1-18
• Yellow 1-18
• Brown Earth 1-18
• Green 1-36
• YGE 1-18
• BGE 1-18
• Blue Green 1-18
• Blue Violet 1-18
• Grey 1-36
• Additional 1 - 18
• Additional 19-54
• Dark 1-18
• Light 1-18
• Special Collection
• Portrait 1-12
• Turquoise 1-6
• Natural Earth 1-18
• Heavenly Shadows

AND for their

Selection Sets

• Starter 8
• Portrait 8
• Landscape 8
• Bright 8
• Light 8
• Dark 8
• Starter 18
• Portrait 18
• Landscape 18
• Starter 36
• Portrait 36
• Landscape 36
• Starter 72
• Landscape 72
• Portrait 72 (UK & EUROPE)

AND for their

Half Stick Sets

• Half Stick 16 Set
• Half Stick 30 Set
• Half Stick 63 Set

Retailers' sets

I never buy retailer's sets unless I can see the index number itemised for every colour in the set - on the basis I've probably already got them!

JACKSON ARTS

A couple of special selection sets are available via Jackson Art where they provide good images of the colours - but no listing as to the index numbers of the colours chosen.

John's Set is apparently a set of the last colours that John Hersey made prior to his death.

The Ann Oram Set of 30 Half Sticks is new and you can read about it here on the Jackson Arts Blog - New Ann Oram Unison Soft Pastels Set.  Ann Oram taught a still life worksop at Unison's in Northumberland in 2012.

Colour Chart by photograph: 
Unison Pastels - Southwest Colors 

DICK BLICK

Dick Blick in the USA are excellent at listing the sets and associated index numbers of all pastels in each set that they stock.  They also list a number of sets which are available in the USA but not in the UK (see below)

Colour charts are available via photographs of the different sets in which the colour index number can be clearly seen. I'm not sure they have photographs for all the sets they retail.

Here, for example is the Southwest Colors set which is one I nearly bought in 2006 when making a trip out to the South Western States of the USA (see USA Sketchbook - Southwestern States (2006))

The sets they list include:

Portrait Colors: African American | Asian | Caucasian | Latino | Mediterranean | Native American | Portrait Eye Colors

Landscape Colors: Desert Sunset | Northern Sunrise | Polar Ocean | Tropical Ocean | Southwest Colors (includes the Turquoise set of 6)

Artists Colors: Brenda Mattson Portrait

JACK RICHESON

Jack Richeson has a printed color chart of all 402 colours (pdf file) that he stocks.  He uses it to relate the Unison names for Colour Sets to the sets he stocks.  On screen it looks like a pretty good match with the colours in the Unison sets.

Glyn Rand Colour Charts

This morning I discovered the existence of the handmade laminated colour charts for Unison Pastels made by Glyn Rand. He emphasises that his  product is neither affiliated to Unison Colour, nor is it endorsed by them.

A handmade chart gets round the difficulties associated with the RGB/CMYK processes which have to translate colour in reality into another medium of vision or print.

By completing the charts using the pastels and then laminating the charts, these should in theory be the best match with various Unison Pastels.

However there is a BUT....

Actually there are two BUTs....

Unison Pastels - Glyn Rand Colour Charts (Size A3 x 3)

The "But" is because my conclusion about this product is essentially "Nice idea, shame about the execution - and the price".

Why?

BUT.... #1

Well, the charts are NOT set up diagrammatically to provide a clear index of each 18 colour set.  Instead of 18 colours in a vertical column Glyn has chosen to go with just 16.  This means that:

• the colour sets are spread across different columns.  
• all the values are mixed up.  If looking for a light tone and colour you can't scan the bottom of the chart and the light set - as the lights are all over the place.

This would personally drive me absolutely potty and I couldn't look at them - I like my colours rigidly organised according to colour and tone because that allows me to work in an effective way.

In fact every pastel artist I've ever known had all their pastels organised on two dimensions - by colour and tone.  I can't think of any reason why any of them would want a colour chart which wasn't organised in the same way.

BUT.... #2

Personally I think the price of £30 for the three charts is a bit steep when one considers that a laminating machine for A3 paper only costs around about £30 on Amazon!  I don't think a product should ever prompt one to think about buying the kit required to produce the end product rather than the product itself!

If you've already got a lot of Unison Pastels - as I have - I'm drawn to conclude that :

• if you're not bothered by tonal values being all mixed up and don't think you'd have any use for a laminating machine - have a think about the charts
• produce your own if:
• you don't like your tonal values mixed up.....
• and/or think you could find a laminating machine useful

More about Pastels

You can read more about Pastels on my websites

• Pastels - Resources for Artists
• Pastel Paper and Pastel Boards
• Unison Pastels - Resources for Artists
• Pastel Societies - Resources for Artists

Soft Pastels: What's your favourite make? (2011 results)

Opinion Poll 2011:  What is your favourite make of soft pastel?
Source: Pastels - Resources for Artists

Which was your favourite brand of soft pastels in 2011? 

On the right you can see the chart which presents the results of my opinion poll which asked this question in a year long poll held in 2011 on my Pastels - Resources for Artists website.

Favourite Soft Pastel - Poll Results

The top five soft pastels favoured by the 258 people voting in the poll in 2011 are as follows.  (The figures in brackets underneath are the results from the polls held in 2010 and 2006-2009 respectively)

Unison - 22.1% 
(21.9%, 19.6%)

Sennelier - 14.7% 
(13.3%, 15.9%)

Talens Rembrandt 11.2%
(9.4%, 9.4%)

Schminke - 6.6% 
(15.2%, 11.7%)

Terry Ludwig 6.6% 
(6.1%, 13.5%)

(Links are to the manufacturers websites)

As last year the results mean that it's same top five again - and again it's a slightly different order

• Unison remained way out in front of all other brands and even grew its market share.  
• Sennelier, Talens Rembrandt and Terry Ludwig all saw small increases in their popularity.
• The major loser was Schminke with a dramatic drop in its popularity

It's interesting to also note that PanPastels have done well for a new product - recording just 0.8% in 2010, they've now grown to 2.7%.

Art Spectrum Pastels also saw a similar increase from 0.8% in 2010 to 3.1% in 2011.

Just in case anybody thinks there is any sort of European bias going on here, both this blog and my pastel resources site get at least half their visitors from the USA and a good representation from Australasia as well!

258 people responded to the poll in 2011 compared to the 361 voting in the 2010 Poll.  However given the numbers responding, and the generally consistent pattern of responses it's reasonably certain that this poll indicates the pattern of overall preferences although minor changes year on year might be to do with sample size.

I'm guessing here but I think it's very likely that maybe the lower number of respondents reflects fewer people buying pastels in the current economic climate.  That's because my pastels website has remained as popular as ever (with much increased traffic!)

Previous poll results

This follows on from the two previous polls I've held on my website Pastels - Resources for Artists. You can find their results reported in:

• Which is your favourite make of soft pastels? (2010 Poll Results)
• Opinion Poll: Which is your favourite make of soft pastels? - which analysed my poll which ran from 2006 through to the end of 2009

Unison Pastels

If you want to know more about Unison Soft Pastels try consulting my resource site below

Unison Pastels - Resources for Artists

Unison produce a really great range of highly pigmented sets of Soft Pastels in colour values which are completely addictive. Recently Unison topped a poll to find artists' favourite brand of soft pastels.

Which dark soft pastels are the best?

Soft pastels in very dark colours present a challenge which some manufacturers have tried to address.  This post is about soft pastels in dark colours, shades and tints - and a new opinion poll.

Common problems are:

• Some brands can feel abrasive and scratchy.  Dark shades and tints of soft pastels have a reputation for not being the softest of soft pastels.
• Other brands are 'too hard' and fail to release their pigment load easily
• It can also be very difficult to get hold of good rich colour in dark shades.  Dark should not mean that colour disappears.

Some manufacturers have addressed these problems by creating specific dark sets of soft pastels. These aim to balance the quality of pigment colour (ie colour not black!) with softness and the effective release of the pigment onto the support while also offering a good range of dark colours.

Many a pastel artist has developed a quest for set of pastels which are both soft and dark

I started out with a set of Rembrandt Pastels and found the dark shades to be a tad too hard for my liking.  I addedin Daler Rowney Soft Pastels and liked those - but they disappeared a bit too fast for my liking

I then got a set of Unison Darks and was smitten.  These are very dark and yet have good pigment colour - but are also not abrasive or "too hard".

My set of Unison Darks - photographed when still relatively pristine!

I've also tried out some dark Terry Ludwig pastels in a pastel workshop.  Some pastel artists comment that these work better on abrasive supports rather than paper where to some they feel a little too greasy.  There are two sets of dark Ludwig Pastels:

• Intense Darks #1 set is red/sienna/ochre/brown oriented
• Intense Darks #2 set is blue/grey/purple/mauve oriented

You can also get a set of 60 Intense Darks

Terry Ludwig - 60 Intense Darks

Diane Townsend has a set of 12 dark soft form pastels. she also lists the individual colours whcih means they could be bought singly.  These are Deborah Secor's favourite dark pastels and she says they cover Wallis paper really fast.  She recommends the dark green for those doing landscapes.

Diane Townsend - soft form.  Dark 12 piece set

Sennelier have a set of 24 dark tones.

Sennelier Pastels - Set of 24 dark tones

Pan Pastels have a set of extra dark colours available as 3 sets of 5 colours each - extra dark shades, shadows and earth colours


Daler Rowney now have a dark set - 8 Set Dark Selection Code 153 902 008 - you can see a picture of them here

Girault are said to have a dark set but I've never seen one and can't find one on their website.  Others may have developed specific dark sets and if so I'd love to hear about them.

Which dark pastels do you like best - and how do you buy them?  

Please vote in the NEW OPINION POLL Which is your favourite brand of dark soft pastels? in  Pastels - Resources for Artists

I'd also love to hear about your favourite brands of dark pastels either in connection with the poll or by commenting below.

ALSO How do you like to buy your dark pastels?

• as a specific set of dark pastels (which can be quite expensive) 
• or in singles from open stock

Do please let me know what you think by commenting below

More information

Links to dark sets

• UNISON COLOUR | Pastels - Unison Dark Set
• Terry Ludwig Pastels: 30 Intense darks #1
• Terry Ludwig Pastels: 30 Intense Darks #2
• Diane Townsend - set of 12 dark soft form pastels
• Mount Vision - dark sets of pastels

Links to reviews

• (Review) Making a Mark: Unison Pastels: the Darks and the Lights
• Wetcanvas Pastels - Recommendations for darks - sets or individuals

Links to more information about pastels:

• Pastels - Resources for Artists
• Unison Pastels - Resources for Artists 

The NEW 2011 Pastels Opinion Polls

This is an invitation to pastel artists to vote for their favourite brand of pastels in 2011.   

You can find two BRAND NEW 2011 Opinion Polls about artists' grade pastels for 2011 on Pastels - Resources for Artists.

• Artists have already started to vote - see 2011 Poll: Which is your favourite make of soft pastels? This poll focuses on artist grade soft pastels which are available at the beginning of January 2011.   This is the second of my annual polls and the third poll I've run which has sked this question.  See the end for links to previous polls.
• My resources for pastel artists site also has a second poll on hard pastels further down - see 2011 POLL: Which is your favourite make of hard pastel?  This includes some additional brands compared to the poll I ran last year.

Pastels in the Sennelier Shop
(across the Seine from the Louvre) in Paris

The purpose of having an Annual Opinion Poll is to identify which are the most popular pastels in 2011.  This nables:

• new brands to be reflected in the poll
• people who have experimented with more brands and new brands since voting to change their preference if they want to

All past votes which applied to choices available in the past no longer apply. You can now vote again.  Don't forget to check all the options before you vote. The pastels are listed in alphabetical order.

The Annual Poll can also provide feedback to the manufacturers about preferences which will hopefully provide an some incentive to continue with a good selection in the marketplace and products which continue to improve in both quality and lightfastness over time.

If any of the marketing people from the different pastel manufacturers are reading this and note that their new brands in the pipeline are NOT included please contact me with the date your product is due to be in the marketplace AND on your website.

Previous posts:

• Which is your favourite make of soft pastels? (2010 Poll Results)
• The NEW 2010 Soft Pastels Opinion Poll
• Opinion Poll: Which is your favourite make of soft pastels? This analysed my poll on my website Pastels - Resources for Artists. This ran from 2006 through to the end of 2009 and excluded newer pastels

Which is your favourite make of soft pastels? (2010 Poll Results)

Which is your favourite brand of soft pastels? Below I detail what  are the results of my opinion poll which asked this question in a year long poll held in 2010.

Back in January of this year I had a couple of posts

• Opinion Poll: Which is your favourite make of soft pastels? - which analysed my poll on my website Pastels - Resources for Artists.  This ran from 2006 through to the end of 2009
  
• The NEW 2010 Soft Pastels Opinion Poll - which announced a new survey.

2010 Poll: What is your favourite make of soft pastels?
on Pastels - Resources for Artists.

I can now tell you that a total of 361 people voted in the 2010 Poll: What is your favourite make of soft pastels? on Pastels - Resources for Artists.

You can see the results on the right.

The top five soft pastels favoured by those voting in the poll are as follows:

1. Unison - 21.9%
2. Schminke - 15.2%
3. Sennelier - 13.3%
4. Talens Rembrandt 9.4%
5. Terry Ludwig 6.1%

(Links are to the manufacurers websites)

Just in case anybody thinks there is any sort of European bias going on here, both this blog and my pastel resources site get most of their vissitors from the USA!

This compares to the 2006-2009 poll results which indicated that the top five soft pastels are

• Unison 19.6%
• Sennelier 15.9%
• Terry Ludwig 13.5%
• Schminke 11.7%
• Talens Rembrandt 8.2%

This means it's the samw top five - just a slightly different order.

• Unison retains its top spot and has apparently increased its market share over other pastel brands (in terms of expressed preferences) through an increase from 19.6% to 21.9%.
• Schminke have had the best result in terms of moving from #4 spot to the #2 spot 
• Terry Ludwig appears to have lost the most ground falling from #3 to # 5 (13.5% to 6.1%)

If you want to know more about Unison Soft Pastels try consulting my resource site below

Unison Pastels - Resources for Artists

Unison produce a really great range of highly pigmented sets of Soft Pastels in colour values which are completely addictive. Recently Unison topped a poll to find artists' favourite brand of soft pastels.

Storage for Unison pastels

Lesley Crawford's Unison Pastels - open boxes

Those who own Unison Pastels know that their size and shape means that they don't always fit easily into conventional pastel boxes with slots - and some pastel storage boxes can be very expensive.

Plus the nice bit about Unisons is that you can buy sets relating to a colour and it's nice to be able to keep them all together.  I've still got mine in their original boxes with the foam inserts!

Lesley Crawford wrote to tell me about she stores her brand new Unison Pastels. 

I was researching storage boxes, and found these when I googled plastic boxes. They were called boxes for peel-off stickers - something to do with card making I think.

I picked up twelve plastic boxes on eBay for £13, including postage and packing  I made a corrugated tray, and each box will take 60 Unison pastels,   They arrange neatly in two rows of 15, 30 to a tray, so 60 in a box

They all fit neatly onto a table when opened, and stack with a very small footprint if I need to put them away, and being so light and small are ideal to transport.

It's as if they were made for Unison pastels. I won't tell you how many boxes are filled yet!!

Above and below are photographs of Lesley's pastel boxes.

Pastel boxes open on Lesley's desk

The boxes seem to be something called Peel Off boxes by Weston Boxes.  They sell for £4.60 for a pack of 5.  There's also a range of transparent boxes in lots of different sizes.

Lesley's taken a look at the link now and agrees they look very like them.  We compared prices.  She got 10 boxes from eBay for £13 and I priced them with Weston Boxes as being

• 2 packs of 5 boxes @ £4.60 per pack = £9.20
• postage = £4.25 (missing from the website bit I asked them!)
• total =  £13.45

An alternative storage solution can be seen in Product Review: Really Useful Boxes (for art media and crafts)

For more information about Unison Pastels (which are the most popular pastel in the poll I run) see Unison Pastels - Resources for Artists

Plastic boxes full of Unison Pastels - and stacked

You can see Lesley's pastel art on her website http://gaia-art.co.uk

If you've got a good solution for storage 

or anything which is a cost-effective solution for anything to do with art 

DO let me know by leaving a comment and a link or contacting me (see right hand column). 

Unison Pastels - Resources for Artists

I have a new resource for pastels artists!

The results of the opinion poll to find your favourite brand of pastel - which ran on Pastels - Resources for Artists from 2006 until this week - clearly showed Unison as being the most popular brand of pastels.

In honour of this achievement I've now created a new information site Unison Pastels - Resources for Artists. In this you can see

• images of the full range of available pastel sets - some of you who are familiar with Unison may well be surprised by the range of sets which are now available
  
• find out a lot more about them
  
• obtain details of how to get hold of them via Amazon or regular suppliers of art materials in the UK and USA

...just click a link below and go straight to that topicto find out more

• An introduction to Unison Pastels
• Unison - the favourite make of soft pastels
• Unison Pastels - Starter & Signature Sets
• Unison Pastels - Half Sticks
• PORTRAITURE
• Unison Pastels - Portrait Sets
• Unison Pastels - Skin Tone Sets
• Unison Pastels - Eye Colour Set
• Unison Pastels - Red Sets
• LANDSCAPE
• Unison Pastels - Landscape
• Unison Pastels - Green Sets
• Unison Pastels - Saturated, Sunrise, Sunset and Shadow sets
• Unison Pastels Blues / Ocean
• Unison Pastels - Blue Green and Blue Green Earth Sets
• Unison Pastels - Yellow & Yellow Green Sets
• Unison Pastels - Orange Set
• Unison Pastels - Brown Earth
• MONOCHROME VALUES
• Unison Pastels - Additional Values and Greys
• Unison - Dark Values
• Unison Pastels - Light Values
• Pastel Supports
• UNISON SUPPLIERS
• Unison Suppliers in the UK
• Unison Suppliers in the USA

Plus you can provide Comments and Feedback

An invitation to review Unison Soft Pastels

I want to expand this new resource to include consumer reviews of Unison Soft Pastels by pastel artists.

If you've ever reviewed Unison Soft Pastels could please let me know and I'll add your review to this blog and to resource site. At present, I've included this review Pastel: Unison Review by Casey Klahn

If you've never written a review, aspects to consider for soft pastels include:

• range of colours (tonality, saturation and brilliance/subtlety)
  
• pigment load (and release)
• how robust / how easy to break
• how easy to blend
  
• mark-making qualities and consistency on supports
• 'feel' when making marks on different supports (and which support you find works best)
  
• supports you've used and results
• lightfastness - and tests you've done or changes you've observed when pastels are exposed to light
• quality of packaging (sets only)
• value for money (taking size and usability into account)

Comparisons with other pastels you are familiar with can also be helpful.
I'm particularly interested to receive reviews from anybody who has tried the special sets and those which only seem to be available in or from the USA.

Do let me know what you think either on this blog or the site itself.

Links:

• Unison Pastels - Resources for Artists
• Pastels - Resources for Artists
• Making A Mark reviews - Opinion Poll: Which is your favourite make of soft pastels?