Schmincke Pastels

Schmincke
"MELIORA COGITO – I strive for the best".

This venerable and old German pigmentist offers the ultimate in soft pastels. I consider them indispensable for my palette.

The collection is 400 colors, which are 80 hues, with 5 values of each. In addition, they field 5 pearl based sticks. A PDF color chart from the manufacturer is here.

I like their B,D,H,M,O logic, which is Black, Hue, and three tints of the hue. Easy to follow, really.

My own take is that the Schminckes are rather grayed up colors, but consistent as the day is long. They are large, soft and creamy. As a matter of considered opinion, they rate as the softest pastel sticks made.

One has to be thoughtful about the use of the softest pastel known to man. Effective for highlights, they will otherwise fill the tooth of your paper quicker than the "harder" brands.

I rely on their yellow spectrum, which is intense even in it's gray-yellow lights. That is saying something, since many yellows by other manufacturers can leave you wanting. Having trouble finding your proper olive greens? Look to Schmincke for those, too.

Unison Review

Perhaps the most consistent brand on the market are the ones made by Derek Hersey & company: Unison. Hand-made in the Northumberland area of England, these well formed pastels offer a full range of colors in two sizes, regular and large. They measure 2 1/8ths" long by 5/8ths" diameter (54 mm × 16 mm), or 2 3/4" x 5/8ths", respectively. My research has a "full set" being 390 sticks.

Our friends at Dakota Pastels rate Unisons as the fourth softest brand, under Schmincke, Great American, and Sennelier.


I definitely include Unisons in my own list of very soft pastels, but one always knows what one will get for handling: perfection. The flip side is the lack of very intense colors. I am more often surprised when a hue is intense. Some of the greens are, and the middle value red is fine. Lighter ultramarines are clear, but mostly they are valued for their grayness, in my opinion. More intense colors, for my part, are found with Diane Townsends or Senneliers. The review at Wet Canvas differs.

If you value the full range of expression with colors, from grayed-down to full chroma, you have a great start with Unisons. The brand has done a fine job of asking it's hues to remain true to base pigments, with little reliance on white. Hersey prefers blended hues, rather than the tint and tone route that creates thoroughness, but lacks a natural basis. I would say an artist who must refer to nature has a great ally in the Unison line.

As with most brands, they are boxed attractively in many types of sets, but I would beware of being too enamored of some sets if you are going to be a serious pastel artist. What I mean is, the landscape or portrait selections will be a selection made by someone whose choices may baffle you, and you'll buy a few of these (expensive) sets and be more or less stuck with colors you don't want, or repeats of many colors.

My advice is to get color sets, because you will enjoy the necessary ranges of values in a given hue. An economical way to get complete sets of colors may be to buy sets of half sticks (other brands, here), or try Terry Ludwig's Maggie Price Set which is a complete (more or less) set of hues, each hue having six values. Then, fill in with open stock.

The Red Corner work below relied heavily upon Unison greens for both the subtle greens in the foreground that counter-pose the intense reds, and also for the green highlights there. The number 2 Red Unison probably played a big part in this work, as well.

Red Corner
Pastel
Casey Klahn

See their well presented color charts online, beginning here.

The best blogger review of Unis is Katherine Tyrrell, and access to these reviews is best made by going to her Squidoo Lens, Pastels, and page down to reviews. She offers six reviews of her home brand at first, but page down and catch two more reviews of dark and light sets of Unisons.

Alistair Boddy-Evans, at About.com, also has much love for the Unis. See his interesting review of eight favorite brands here.

Hersey tells his story here.

I would like to highlight the delightful work of new blogger Carolyn Bannister, who posts some still life work done with Unisons here and here.

Poll Results

With the polling closed, I have to admit to a three-way tie. Vivien commented that she favors Unison but her vote didn't tally, so I see it as Unison, Windsor & Newton and Ludwig in a tie. If that's wrong, Vivien, let me know. This happened once before when I tried to conduct a poll about blog content, and so I'm getting a dim opinion of the value of these things.

As the president of this bar, I will throw in the tie-breaker and decide for Unison to be the next brand reviewed, then probably Terry Ludwig and we'll see where we go from there. If I had been left to my own devices, I actually would've went with Schmincke!

Thanks to everyone who participated.

Which Brand to Review Next?

We have already looked at Roche, Diane Townsend and Sennelier brands of pastels. Where to from here? My first idea was to proceed down the line of brands, my favorites being first. But, I have arrived at the land of neutrality, where I am about equal on the next few.

Which brand do you wish me to critique next? Please see my sidebar for a poll on the brands that are in my palette, and that I am able to review, and vote your choice. The brands up for review are: Schmincke, Unison, Ludwig, W&N and Rembrandt.

Sennelier Critique

Blue Branches on Red
14” x 10”
Original Pastel
Casey Klahn

Sennelier Extra-Soft Pastels “à l’écu” have a wide, wide range of colors. 525 current in the line. Go here to see a run down of the types of pastels, their sizes and sets available. I think a friend of mine said that she bought a full set with prize money, once. Other than that, I noticed once that Daniel Greene uses a full set. Personally, I have a hard time seeing myself using a full set, but if Santa is willing...

I know that I have some discontinued ones (high key greens) in my palette. Once, I bought their 100 landscape set when it was being updated with different colors. As soon as it arrived, I broke each stick in half and peeled the wrappers off of the halves that went into use, and stored the remainder in my back-up boxes, by hue and value. Then, I shed a tear at how easily the hundred sticks disappeared into the whole of my collection. I have a hard time finding which ones are actually Sennies.

To get a feeling for this experience, the next time you get home from the grocer, take that new gallon carton of milk and jab it through the bottom with a butcher knife. See? How's that feel?

That's part of a pastel artist's life, though. Ruin the tools; rid yourself of the precious. Now, you might be free to actually create something. It reminds me of this hilarious scene in a World War One movie where Bill Murray is a medic sergeant who gets a spankin' new ambulance donated by school kids from America and the green driver is so proud to arrive at the front lines with this gem. Murray pulls out his revolver and starts shooting out the headlights and blowing holes in the doors. Google reminds me this movie was titled The Razor's Edge, and few others liked it but me. I am so weird.

This over dramatization I bring to you for a reason. Art is wholly about discarding the precious. Who cares if Senneliers crumble a little every now and then? This is the price you pay for very clear ultramarine blues.

I learned something from Lisa Bachman's post about the darks available from Sennelier. I am more prone to establishing big areas of dark, and so I favor the bigger Diane Townsend Terrage sticks. These sticks are so dark, I have a hard time getting them back in their proper place in my palette. Good to know that Sennelier makes dark darks, too.

I reach for the Sennies to establish really bright and pure color passages in my paintings. An example can be seen in this detail from Blue Branches.

Lisa Bachman

Pastel Tools & Me Sennies

Lisa Bachman, who doesn't use Cockney, posted today her review of Senneliers. Go have a look, and she gets into some good details on the darks.

The pastel world did suffer from a lack of darks for some time, I understand. But, I do know that when you buy a box set of pastels, even a 100 count landscape set, that you will likely still be missing dark darks. So, heed well Lisa's illumination of her favorite darks. And, I use the Cockney to, hopefully, bring down my reading level score.

Sennelier Extra-Soft Pastels “à l’écu”

Sennelier Extra-Soft Pastels “à l’écu”

The three French brands of pastels, that I know of, are all color-centric. I love that focus. The three are Henri Roche, Pastels Girault, and Sennelier. In this second of my series on pastel brands, we will inspect the renowned Sennelier.

Chemist Gustave Sennelier founded in 1887 what would become the premier artist's paint resource of France. His store front was strategically placed within spitting distance of Paris' great museum and academy, the Louvre and the École des Beaux Arts. Of course, the Maison Sennelier faces the Left Bank of the Seine River, and Gustave's paint lab became eventually "the" place for the Avante-Garde of Impressionism.

Fine colors were purveyed to the likes of Cézanne, Degas, Gauguin, Monet, Bonnard, Soutine, Picasso, Modigliani, Kandinsky, Dali, van Gogh. If the walls of his storied Maison could only speak, how they would celebrate the conversations shared by these giants! The artists interacted with Sennelier in order to fulfill their needs for new colors.

Next posts: Details and critique.

Diane Townsend Pastels Review

Pinks & Greens
7.8" x 6"
Soft Pastel
Casey Klahn

The pastel market is exploding. That includes the tools of the pastelist: sticks, paper, and accessories. The assortment of different brands available to the artist is mind-boggling. I want to start a series detailing the brands that I favor, with a review of each and some insight into how they effect my technique.

In the Studio with New Diane Townsends

Pastel Review. First, we will explore my favorite brand which is Diane Townsend Artist's Pastels. These handmade jewels come in three styles: Soft Form, Terrages and Thin Line. By way of explanation, consider the Soft Form to be a classic shape, Terrage ("Earth Gesture") to be a large rectangular shape, and Thin Line to be as described by their name.

The DT website lists the sizes of the handmade pastels as follows:

Terrages, approx. 1 and 1/2" long and 1" across , and 6/8" thick
Soft Form approx. 1 and 3/4" long and 3/4"thick
Thin Line approx. 2"long and 1/2" thick

Diane Townsend Soft Forms and Terrages

I attended a workshop taught by Diane a couple of years ago. I consider her a master of the medium, and an artist whose work I respect tremendously. She is an academic whose grasp of art history and of Modern Art makes her a pleasure to learn from. The workshop covered abstract pastel work, and was certainly a watershed for my own expression in the medium. She is a friend as well as a teacher.

The reasons why I favor the DT pastel line has as much to do with my own style and palette choices as anything else. Aesthetically, there is no pastel tool on the market that comes close to her pastels. They are a joy to hold and to use, with properties that appeal to me such as their large size (even the Soft Form is a fine size), their softness and their ability to cover well when I wish to be bold with my gestures.

Diane has been making her own pastels since 1971. The backstory is that she learned her formula from an Italian conservationist who had translated a Renaissance-era recipe for pastels. The emphasis for Townsend's pastels is on the color, which is true of only a few lines of pastels available. Other biases of pastel manufacturers can emphasize consistency of hand and thoroughness of palette, and some make a technical decision to produce sticks with greater hardness.

The Thin Line product compliments Judah Catalan's gestural style, and the Terrages were created to suit Wolf Kahn's expressionistic style.

Hand. DT pastels are as consistent as Unison (the king of consistent handmade pastels) and are in the middle of the pack for softness. Dakota Art Pastels has rated them with five major brands being softer. One reason they are relatively hard (for a soft pastel) is the addition of some pumice in the three lines. Pumice allows the pigment to invade the tooth of the artist's paper. I find them to work just fine on my sanded papers, as well. The relative hardness works for me and steers me towards using DT pastels for much of the painting, as compared to Schmincke, which are too soft for heavy usage.

Another review has DT Pastels as inconsistent, but I haven't found that to be the case at all. The only instances I have had of crumbling have been mechanically caused, and not spontaneous like a certain other well-known line. I reform them by spraying the crumbled pieces with water and hand rolling.

I favor the emphasis on color first. That alone will bring out the intensity that I value in my palette, and seems truer to both my expressionist and my natural leanings. Very dark tones that are clear and true to their hue are essential to my own style. They are dark enough that I have to record the numbers of the darks on my palette so that I can get them back to their hue family properly. These are the best dark darks I know of on the market.

Links:
http://townsendpastels.com/
Retailers
Scroll to the middle of this Dakota Pastels page for a softness comparison of major pastel brands