Enjoyed this, Karen -- I went looking for "less expensive" set because I wanted to save my Sennelier set for when I knew what I was doing! After watching your test -- I applied your same parameters to the set I had settled on. It was the Faber-Castell Creative Studio soft pastel set of 72 half sticks. (abt. $29 on amazon). For me they came off with flying colors and those colors were pretty intense and very happy with light application. I looked at a lot of sets and this one looked to me to have the very best color selection. For me blending capability is an absolute must -- and these little sticks had that in spades.
Thank you for this great review, Karen. I took one of your workshops when you were in Austin TX and I have been hooked on pastels since. I've purchased only a few Terry Ludwig pastels because, yeah, they're pricey. My goal is to acquire your floral set, but I have to save up. I have cheaper pastels to work with, though I purchase one color here and there of handmade pastels in colors I need. You are an amazing and generous teacher. Thank you so much for reviewing less pricey pastels for us amateurs. I love your videos!!!
Thank you Karen! I loved the video so much I promptly ordered the same set from Jackson's. I love them & have so far done about 6 paintings using only this set...usually around 12/15. Yesterday I went back to my Sennelier & Unison's, and found them difficult (too soft) after my Daler Rowney's. I suppose it just depends on what you're used to! I find I have more control over the budget set! Oh, I meant to comment earlier, I'm sure that the oranges and purple in my set are different to yours Karen. When I see you using yours, I think one of the oranges looks more like a coral...mine is a definite bright orange, which will rarely get used! Would you say that one of yours is more of a coral? Happy painting......and keep up the good work! xx
I have only purchased 1 set of new pastels! All the rest of the pastels I have are used from e-bay and priced very affordable! Getting a range wide enough to paint a painting is so important because of mixing colors with dry colors! Thank you for sharing your expertise and I am looking forward to watching more of your videos and I am looking to you for that making your own pastels video!
Good info. Also might suggest half stick sets as a way to get more color. Love my sennelier. And dont you just love the Robert Henri book? Had for years and still pick it up for the joy of his purity. 💜
You do not have to spend a lot. I found 2 sets of pastel set on ebay, one 12 stick soft pastels and 12 in oil pastels for 5.99 including shipping. I didn't know if I liked the medium and am a senior on a limited budget. I had a pad of 12" x 18" black heavy paper I got at a garage sale. I will let you know how I do. I am experimenting as I have a large acrylic underpainting 36" x 24" I want to eventually finish with pastels. Thank you for sharing your talent with us.
Hi Karen! I’ve been a watercolour artist for years and just started my journey into soft pastels after discovering you. I took the plunge straight into Sennelier soft pastels and have already spent a small fortune. I think it’s worth mentioning that as a complete amateur using extremely soft pastels is quite challenging as I have already encountered the heavy hand sludge effect from over using them. Personally I wish I had started with a slightly harder pastel first but anyway hay ho! My real gripe is not being able to get your floral landscape set by Terry Ludwig. Jackson’s in the UK do not stock them!!! It’s so frustrating and unfortunately to import them from USA is so prohibitively expensive. Do you know of any other way of getting them in the UK? Adore your work and thank you for all your invaluable content.
Thanks for watching! I understand your frustration. I am not sure how they decide what to make available at Jacksons. I hope that enough artists will let Terry Ludwig know that my set is wanted over in Europe!!
I once read that it is important for the beginning to have a full tone of a few basic colours, a shade lightened with white and a shade darkened with black and grey, white and black separately. So yellow, orange, red, magenta, blue-green, and as needed shades of brown such as yellow brown eg ochre or natural sienna, brown burnt umber and something reddish brown e.g. burnt sienna or Venetian red as needed and greenish brown such as natural umber. Which is then already at minimum 21 pastels to be able to paint many different things.
I have a SoHo set of 120 half sticks. I enjoy using them. I would love to see you review this set. I recently purchased the Sennelier Paris Collection and am very disappointed with the open holes throughout the sticks that contribute to them crumbling with light pressure. The colours are amazing but the crumbling is an unexpected issue..
Terry Ludwig is like comparing cheap wood pulp watercolor paper to Arches. I have some cheap pastels and after Ludwig, I am disappointed in it all. So I am glad to see this review from you.
Late to the party here. LOL. I am just now starting pastels and I enjoy your videos. In this one you mention doing more reviews on sets. I cant seem to find them. Can you lead me in the right direction please?
Hi Sandra! Welcome to the wonderful world of pastels! Thanks for watching my videos. Some of the videos here including this one were first shared on my Patreon Page for the Patreon Insiders. I am going through all of these videos and releasing them here but in the meantime more reviews can be found on Patreon. www.patreon.com/karenmargulis It is a $4 monthly pledge for 4 years of videos and lessons!
Hi Karen, thank you for your excellent review. I have some of these Daler Rowney pastels and they are very nice, comparable to Rembrandts but tiny bit softer. What would you say make the TL pastels so popular. Are they really better than say, Great American, which look similar but larger and much more affordable at about 1/2 the price?
I think it truly depends on personal preference. They each have a different feeling. I find the GA pastels on the creamy side while the TL have a drier feeling. They are both excellent pastels.
This info is so valuable. I just wonder about light fastness. Someone put mungyos outside for just 2 days and they faded terribly compared to the covered half. I don't know what level these were as they have several. Just wanted your feedback on importance of light fastness. TY
The Daler Rowney website claims these have excelled lightfastness but I didn't test them myself. Lightfastness is important though as it can totally change the look of a painting.
Hi Karen,, ive been trying some.of your demonstrations but I'm finding that at 1 or two layers the tooth is saturated, you always use uart paper which is very expensive and im using water colour paper with some gesso pumice on top. I want to know is there a middle ground, not too expensive sanded paper that I could get? Thanks
I find that most sanded papers are similar in cost. I buy my Uart in sheets of 18x24 ad cut them to smaller sizes. This is much less expensive than buying it in the pdf!
What's the minimum number of colours a beginner could start with for a palette? It's really expensive to get started if you need a whole ton of them - you can't mix them like paints to get a colour you need.
Great question! I estimate that around 75 pastels are needed for a comprehensive set....a variety of values, colors, intensities from each color on a color wheel. I will be covering this soon on my Patreon page!
hello karen , like your youtube lessons ! Thank you for that ! I live in France and i pay €2.70 for a soft pastel sennelierstick ! That is cheap for a very good quality !
That's true Karen but I guess we make adjustments as we go along but for me personally, I'm just saying that I gave up other things to buy the best materials available to me to get the maximum best results! Then I could really figure out what I was doing incorrectly vs a fault in my materials
Hi Karen,, the link in the drop down display for fineartstoreonline.com isn't working. But I found it by typing in the google search option (it's under fineartstore.com ).... Just thought I'd let you know. Thanks :)
Can you coment those more mainstream brands like Cretacolor, Faber castell polychromos, koh i noor, Conté, because im from Brazil and we don't have available those specialized/fancy brands . Thanks a lot , great video and channel
Would it be possible to let us know what other budget pastels you are planning on reviewing? It would help my decision making process to know if I should spring for something now or wait and have all of them to consider. Thanks! Great review!
From the Daler Rowney website: Daler-Rowney Artists' Soft Pastels combine the finest available pigments with other ingredients to give the smoothest and most consistent drawing experience through a carefully balanced range of tints. Finest quality pigments. Excellent lightfastness. Smooth and consistent. Minimal tendency to crumble and dust.
Hi Karen, I hope you’re having a wonderful day :) I got all set up to try a monochrome landscape in blue, wanting to learn from your example, and I can’t find the video. Did you take it down? Or did I overlook it?
budget vs Schmincke vs Sennelier vs Ludwig etc. Use the right paper - LuxArchival and you wouldn't know the difference between $50 dollar pastels vs $600 dollar Henri Roche pastels (36 stick set). I've used lots of pastels and find Prima Color, Rembrandt and others better than the high end crap they push through these videos.
Karen, when will you be doing more of these "budget" reviews? You promised! I see in one of your replies that you had Mungyo set. I've been intrigued. Waiting to see.
I did review two other budget sets on my Patreon Page. I do plan to release them here on my channel at some point but if you are a Patreon member you can search for budget sets for the reviews!
That is so true! But just as not everyone can afford a high end car, not everyone can afford the best pastels. I always recommend buying the best you can afford!
I'm kind of surprised by this definition of budget, seeing how it's roughly the same price as Schmincke and Sennelier (especially if buying half sticks), and I don't see a lot of reasons to buy Daler Rowney over those. I'm also not sure if you ever ended up really comparing with other brands, which kind of makes me think that it's just a sponsored video. I hope it's not true, because that's the kind of thing I'd want a disclaimer about.
Thanks for your feedback! I wasn't recommending them over any other under $50 set. I was asked by a student to try them and if I would recommend them as an introductory set. I do recommend them for beginners over the senniliers because they are harder and easier to control. On my Patreon group I do reviews of the other brands in other videos. This was NOT a sponsored video. I never am sponsored. My videos are only my opinion. I just want to share my experiences and hope they are helpful.
Enjoyed this, Karen -- I went looking for "less expensive" set because I wanted to save my Sennelier set for when I knew what I was doing! After watching your test -- I applied your same parameters to the set I had settled on. It was the Faber-Castell Creative Studio soft pastel set of 72 half sticks. (abt. $29 on amazon). For me they came off with flying colors and those colors were pretty intense and very happy with light application. I looked at a lot of sets and this one looked to me to have the very best color selection. For me blending capability is an absolute must -- and these little sticks had that in spades.
I have the same set and they are really nice to work with and the colour range is good.
Thank you for this great review, Karen. I took one of your workshops when you were in Austin TX and I have been hooked on pastels since. I've purchased only a few Terry Ludwig pastels because, yeah, they're pricey. My goal is to acquire your floral set, but I have to save up. I have cheaper pastels to work with, though I purchase one color here and there of handmade pastels in colors I need. You are an amazing and generous teacher. Thank you so much for reviewing less pricey pastels for us amateurs. I love your videos!!!
Hi!! Its great to hear from you!! Thanks for keeping up with me!
I am fairly new to pastels and appreciate the information you share. Thank you!
Thank you Cindy!
Very informative review. I always learn something from your videos.
Thank you for showing us how to use new low budget pastels! The difference between the two papers was very helpful too!
Glad it was helpful!
Thank you Karen! I loved the video so much I promptly ordered the same set from Jackson's. I love them & have so far done about 6 paintings using only this set...usually around 12/15. Yesterday I went back to my Sennelier & Unison's, and found them difficult (too soft) after my Daler Rowney's. I suppose it just depends on what you're used to! I find I have more control over the budget set! Oh, I meant to comment earlier, I'm sure that the oranges and purple in my set are different to yours Karen. When I see you using yours, I think one of the oranges looks more like a coral...mine is a definite bright orange, which will rarely get used! Would you say that one of yours is more of a coral? Happy painting......and keep up the good work! xx
thank you Karen - I think your assessment is pretty spot on. Thanks for your advice
You are so welcome
Thanks for this. These reviews will be very helpful to those of us who are on a tight budget.
Thank you! I look forward to sharing more!
I love your reviews Karen. Please do more!
Thanks!! I am planning more!!
Karen Margulis exciting news! 🌺💐🌿🍃
Thank you Karen ,
I’m a newbie in pastel and have a few sets . Looking forward to your reviews !!
Thank you Renee! I appreciate you watching!
I have only purchased 1 set of new pastels! All the rest of the pastels I have are used from e-bay and priced very affordable! Getting a range wide enough to paint a painting is so important because of mixing colors with dry colors! Thank you for sharing your expertise and I am looking forward to watching more of your videos and I am looking to you for that making your own pastels video!
Thanks for sharing!! I appreciate you watching my videos!
Karen, I give YOU a 10 !!!! Thank you for your incredible videos packed with knowledge.
Wow, thank you!
Good info. Also might suggest half stick sets as a way to get more color. Love my sennelier.
And dont you just love the Robert Henri book? Had for years and still pick it up for the joy of his purity. 💜
You do not have to spend a lot. I found 2 sets of pastel set on ebay, one 12 stick soft pastels and 12 in oil pastels for 5.99 including shipping. I didn't know if I liked the medium and am a senior on a limited budget. I had a pad of 12" x 18" black heavy paper I got at a garage sale. I will let you know how I do. I am experimenting as I have a large acrylic underpainting 36" x 24" I want to eventually finish with pastels. Thank you for sharing your talent with us.
Interesting and useful for me! Many thanks for sharing.
Glad it was helpful!
Hi Karen! I’ve been a watercolour artist for years and just started my journey into soft pastels after discovering you. I took the plunge straight into Sennelier soft pastels and have already spent a small fortune. I think it’s worth mentioning that as a complete amateur using extremely soft pastels is quite challenging as I have already encountered the heavy hand sludge effect from over using them. Personally I wish I had started with a slightly harder pastel first but anyway hay ho! My real gripe is not being able to get your floral landscape set by Terry Ludwig. Jackson’s in the UK do not stock them!!! It’s so frustrating and unfortunately to import them from USA is so prohibitively expensive. Do you know of any other way of getting them in the UK? Adore your work and thank you for all your invaluable content.
Thanks for watching! I understand your frustration. I am not sure how they decide what to make available at Jacksons. I hope that enough artists will let Terry Ludwig know that my set is wanted over in Europe!!
I once read that it is important for the beginning to have a full tone of a few basic colours, a shade lightened with white and a shade darkened with black and grey, white and black separately.
So yellow, orange, red, magenta, blue-green, and as needed shades of brown such as yellow brown eg ochre or natural sienna, brown burnt umber and something reddish brown e.g. burnt sienna or Venetian red as needed and greenish brown such as natural umber. Which is then already at minimum 21 pastels to be able to paint many different things.
I have a SoHo set of 120 half sticks. I enjoy using them. I would love to see you review this set. I recently purchased the Sennelier Paris Collection and am very disappointed with the open holes throughout the sticks that contribute to them crumbling with light pressure. The colours are amazing but the crumbling is an unexpected issue..
Great suggestion! I will add the Soho set to my lost to review!
Daler Rowney makes the Blick Artists Pastels. Mungyo manufactures the Jackson's Hand Rolled Pastels.
Terry Ludwig is like comparing cheap wood pulp watercolor paper to Arches. I have some cheap pastels and after Ludwig, I am disappointed in it all. So I am glad to see this review from you.
Late to the party here. LOL. I am just now starting pastels and I enjoy your videos. In this one you mention doing more reviews on sets. I cant seem to find them. Can you lead me in the right direction please?
Hi Sandra! Welcome to the wonderful world of pastels! Thanks for watching my videos. Some of the videos here including this one were first shared on my Patreon Page for the Patreon Insiders. I am going through all of these videos and releasing them here but in the meantime more reviews can be found on Patreon. www.patreon.com/karenmargulis It is a $4 monthly pledge for 4 years of videos and lessons!
Hi Karen, thank you for your excellent review. I have some of these Daler Rowney pastels and they are very nice, comparable to Rembrandts but tiny bit softer. What would you say make the TL pastels so popular. Are they really better than say, Great American, which look similar but larger and much more affordable at about 1/2 the price?
I think it truly depends on personal preference. They each have a different feeling. I find the GA pastels on the creamy side while the TL have a drier feeling. They are both excellent pastels.
I love the video so much I am new to this channel 💓💖
Welcome and thanks for watching!!
Thanks
This info is so valuable. I just wonder about light fastness. Someone put mungyos outside for just 2 days and they faded terribly compared to the covered half. I don't know what level these were as they have several. Just wanted your feedback on importance of light fastness. TY
The Daler Rowney website claims these have excelled lightfastness but I didn't test them myself. Lightfastness is important though as it can totally change the look of a painting.
Hi Karen,, ive been trying some.of your demonstrations but I'm finding that at 1 or two layers the tooth is saturated, you always use uart paper which is very expensive and im using water colour paper with some gesso pumice on top. I want to know is there a middle ground, not too expensive sanded paper that I could get? Thanks
I find that most sanded papers are similar in cost. I buy my Uart in sheets of 18x24 ad cut them to smaller sizes. This is much less expensive than buying it in the pdf!
What's the minimum number of colours a beginner could start with for a palette? It's really expensive to get started if you need a whole ton of them - you can't mix them like paints to get a colour you need.
Great question! I estimate that around 75 pastels are needed for a comprehensive set....a variety of values, colors, intensities from each color on a color wheel. I will be covering this soon on my Patreon page!
@@KarenMargulis Thank you! But ouch. Don't know if I'll ever get started. Love watching you at work though. It's like magic.
Will these pastels be on sale trough the end of February? Which one do you prefer to use (never minding pricing.)
With no mind of cost my favorite pastels are Terry Ludwig.
Hi Karen would you review a set of oil pastels?
That would be fun. I have actually never worked with oil pastels before! I'll add them to my list!
Very helpful
Thanks for watching!
hello karen , like your youtube lessons ! Thank you for that ! I live in France and i pay €2.70 for a soft pastel sennelierstick ! That is cheap for a very good quality !
Thank you for watching! Sennelier are great quality and I have a set to review soon!
That's true Karen but I guess we make adjustments as we go along but for me personally, I'm just saying that I gave up other things to buy the best materials available to me to get the maximum best results! Then I could really figure out what I was doing incorrectly vs a fault in my materials
Yes this is the best way of course! But I actually had fun pushing the limits of this set. I was quite surprised at the results.
Hello are these still your choices. I want a good set . Soft medium hard. I found out I have prisma color nupastel. Nice like. Thank you.
Yes they are!
What you prefer for drawing with pastel , merge or just add layers ? .. specially oil pastel.... from iraq😬🇮🇶
Ali I don't use oil pastels so I can't comment on their use but I love layering with soft pastel and using wide marks instead of line.
Karen Margulis ok thanks 💛💛
Hi Karen,, the link in the drop down display for fineartstoreonline.com isn't working. But I found it by typing in the google search option (it's under fineartstore.com ).... Just thought I'd let you know. Thanks :)
Thanks for the heads up. I'll take a look!
Can you coment those more mainstream brands like Cretacolor, Faber castell polychromos, koh i noor, Conté, because im from Brazil and we don't have available those specialized/fancy brands . Thanks a lot , great video and channel
I will try! Thanks for watching!
@@KarenMargulis 😃 also, Cretacolor if possible! I have those too available to purschase 👍👏👏👏
They are great only on sanded paper then
No they are good on all papers but a bit easier on sanded. Thanks for watching!
Would it be possible to let us know what other budget pastels you are planning on reviewing? It would help my decision making process to know if I should spring for something now or wait and have all of them to consider. Thanks! Great review!
I don't have it planned exactly but I do have some Mungyo and a small set of senneliers on hand to review.
Is there a way you can consider its archival potential?
Nice review btw
From the Daler Rowney website: Daler-Rowney Artists' Soft Pastels combine the finest available pigments with other ingredients to give the smoothest and most consistent drawing experience through a carefully balanced range of tints.
Finest quality pigments.
Excellent lightfastness.
Smooth and consistent.
Minimal tendency to crumble and dust.
Hi Karen,
I hope you’re having a wonderful day :)
I got all set up to try a monochrome landscape in blue, wanting to learn from your example, and I can’t find the video. Did you take it down? Or did I overlook it?
It should be there. I haven't taken any videos down.
budget vs Schmincke vs Sennelier vs Ludwig etc. Use the right paper - LuxArchival and you wouldn't know the difference between $50 dollar pastels vs $600 dollar Henri Roche pastels (36 stick set). I've used lots of pastels and find Prima Color, Rembrandt and others better than the high end crap they push through these videos.
I don’t think Mercedes is my ideal car. 🙈
👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻😊
Thanks!!
謝謝！
Thank you very much for your support!!😀
Karen, when will you be doing more of these "budget" reviews? You promised! I see in one of your replies that you had Mungyo set. I've been intrigued. Waiting to see.
I did review two other budget sets on my Patreon Page. I do plan to release them here on my channel at some point but if you are a Patreon member you can search for budget sets for the reviews!
Ludwig has some under $50 - but that’s one stick 😂
2:37 I hear you laughing, Mr camera man 🧐
Part of those costs are import fees
If you use less than the best, we know the results are less than the best as well
That is so true! But just as not everyone can afford a high end car, not everyone can afford the best pastels. I always recommend buying the best you can afford!
@@KarenMargulis Exactly Karen. :)
Oh dear, that still seems expensive to me, ha ha.
Many brands allow you to buy open stock. Also check for resale on supplies on eBay and similar sites for deals.
I'm kind of surprised by this definition of budget, seeing how it's roughly the same price as Schmincke and Sennelier (especially if buying half sticks), and I don't see a lot of reasons to buy Daler Rowney over those. I'm also not sure if you ever ended up really comparing with other brands, which kind of makes me think that it's just a sponsored video. I hope it's not true, because that's the kind of thing I'd want a disclaimer about.
Thanks for your feedback! I wasn't recommending them over any other under $50 set. I was asked by a student to try them and if I would recommend them as an introductory set. I do recommend them for beginners over the senniliers because they are harder and easier to control. On my Patreon group I do reviews of the other brands in other videos. This was NOT a sponsored video. I never am sponsored. My videos are only my opinion. I just want to share my experiences and hope they are helpful.
@@KarenMargulis thank you for the explanation!
Too much rabbit
This "budget Pastels" in mexico are very VERY expencive, sucks to live in the 3rth world
Do you have any pastels in Mexico that you would consider budget? Let me know and I will try them!
You have a hairy left arm 😂
Always so helpful, than you for the review. New to soft pastels and been purchasing less expensive sets.
Glad it was helpful!