Gallery Mungyo Semi-Hard Pastels Reviewed

Gallery Mungyo Semi-Hard Pastels 120 color wood box set. Photo by Robert Sloan.

Gallery Mungyo semi-hard pastels have made a big splash lately. Available from Jerry's Artarama and ASW online, they've turned up on sale during the 2010 holidays and are part of a new lineup Mungyo is doing to expand their pastel lines to include artist grade. I've reviewed the artist grade Gallery Mungyo Extra Soft Artist's Oil Pastels at my other website and plan to test their new line of artist grade soft pastels soon.

Price is very reasonable, currently they're on sale again at Jerry's ranging from $4.99 for a set of 12 to try them up to $84.99 for the full range wood box set. They're a little higher than Prismacolor NuPastel at the same site, sale price for a 96 color set is $5 more but you get a wood box with it.

The box is very sturdy. It has the advantage like Richeson semi-hard pastels of spreading out the range all on one level instead of stacking trays. It has a warm oak veneer inside and out with an attractive molding creating the depth of the box. The pastels are cushioned in dense slotted foam with another foam pad to lay over them and prevent shifting. These pastels won't break till you decide to break one to use it on its side.

I think the box would stand up well to being thrown in the car and driven to workshops, classes or plein air sites. The big set might be too large for backpacking but the 72 color box may be small enough for it. My big set has a large footprint at 14" x 20" that makes space to spread out important while using these pastels. However, it's sturdy enough you could balance it on a smaller stool without too much trouble. I could easily use this on the couch for family room drawing.

Gallery Mungyo Semi-Hard pastels are like other semi-hard pastels in that they're lower in dust than the soft brands. Generally, the softer you go with pastels, the more dust they'll generate and the more they get on your hands. They smudge easily, they give clean lines and firm control so they're very good for detailed realism as well as looser sketching.

By description, these are made with lightfast pigments and kaolin clay. That's the recipe for most hard pastels. They're artist grade. For actual lightfastness, I'd recommend doing a home test by taping a color chart into a sunny window and checking it periodically for a year. Either put a cardboard strip over half of the swatches or store an identical chart in a dark dry place for comparison. Note which colors fade and which don't. Some lightfast pigments become fugitive when they're mixed with white to make tints, others are less lightfast by chemical reaction with a binder.

If you do this test and see any fading, please contact me! I would be happy to update this entry with the results of your lightfastness tests. All I can report on a new product is whether it claims lightfastness, which this one does. They're good artist quality semi-hard pastels comparable to Prismacolor NuPastel, Richeson Semi-Hard and Faber-Castell Polychromos.

Gallery Mungyo Semi-Hard pastels come in a range of 120 colors with cardboard box sets of 12, 36 and 48 colors, wood box sets of 72, 96 and 120. Of course I got the full range, this is me, the color addict. The bigger a range of colors I have, the better. I might only use a few in a given painting but the larger a range I have to choose those few from, the easier it is to get exactly the mood I want.

Here's a color chart of the full range:


Color chart of 120 Gallery Mungyo Semi-Hard Pastels

This set is well balanced across the spectrum. Colors are distinct, I'm not seeing as many near-lookalikes as I did with the Richeson semi-hard pastels. As always finding light tints is difficult, yet there are some pinks, a light yellow, light earth yellow, pale green, aqua, purple-cast blue. The range of tints and hues in skin tone colors is wonderful. Good set of 12 grays with five cold values and five warm values. You will be using the white a lot to get those extra-light tints but overall this set has an excellent range.

The deep darks are lush and gorgeous. Both cold (bluish) dark green and warm (yellowish) dark green are included, along with a couple of gorgeous dark blues and four different very dark browns. Deep red-violet gets nearly as dark and there are two of those, one redder than the other. The skin tones include a pinkish gray like a Caput Mortuum tint, very useful in shadows.

I'd have no trouble composing any subject using just this range. Still lifes with bright flowers, landscapes in any season, portraits, animals, what I need to sketch anything is right there in the box. Their texture is good, firm and easily blended. They're not a bargain brand, they're just a good choice for hard pastels.

Hard pastels can be used by themselves on paper or sanded papers. Very often they're combined with other, softer brands in a layered approach. Hard pastels are often used for underlayers, with medium-soft pastels over them and hand-rolled or super-soft pastels for the last layer. They're good for sketching or a full painting can be done using just hard pastels. On non-sanded paper it may be easier to do a full painting with medium-hard or hard pastels than with softer brands.

Here's an example of how they handle on Aquabee Bogus Recycled Rough Sketch Paper. Watch for a review of this paper soon because it's another new item I bought recently and enjoy most of all for pastel sketching.


"Evening, Time to Get Away" by Robert A. Sloan, 6" x 8" Gallery Mungyo Semi-Hard Pastels on Aquabee Bogus Recycled Rough Sketch paper.

Derwent Pastels

Derwent Fortnight continues with #5: Pastels.

Derwent Pastels are medium-hard sketching pastels. Comparable to Prismacolor's NuPastel, Color Conte sticks, Cretacolor Pastel Carre, Richeson Semi-Hard or Faber-Castell Polychromos, these pastels are versatile for both painting and sketching. Like the Derwent Pastel Pencils, these pastels have been reformulated for softer, more consistent texture and greater lightfastness in some colors. I haven't got the old formula to compare, but I like these very much and consider them as a probable improvement on NuPastel, which has lightfastness issues.

I loved the NuPastel texture but didn't like the way some very useful colors were fugitive. Derwent hasn't posted lightfastness per color in this range on the Derwent home page yet, but I'm sure they will later on. They post this information for almost all of their products and this formula's new, which may mean Blue Wool testing is still ongoing.

The earth tones blister pack I tested is a great range for life and nature sketching. The reddish earths would make excellent skin tones for figure drawing or portraits, while the cooler browns and deep darks would help with background elements and deep shadows.

I like the example sketches on the package, but that was done with a larger set since it seems to include a pale yellow or ivory color not in the blister pack. Thus any shading to light I did with these had to be using reserved white on the paper. They smudged easily when deliberately pushed, but weren't so delicate that I wound up getting them all over my hands for a completely muddy surface.

Just firm enough to get a clean line or hard detail, they're soft enough to give a good scumbled texture. Several of the sticks had broken neatly in half when I opened it, so that was handy. I used the side of the stick to block in some areas and found that just as effective as using the tip.

Some of my highlights in my test drawing are reserved, others are created by lifting with a kneaded eraser. Derwent Pastels don't stain the paper in any of the colors I used. I was able to bring back pure white in a couple of spots I wanted to remove color, one of them (the hole in one of the dried leaves) had been a dark spot with a heavy application. Spraying with SpectraFix alcohol-casein based fixative did not dissolve the color or change the colors.

Being compressed, the first stroke with a new stick may be a little light and not lay down much color. The solution is just to scribble a bit till the color comes up. If you have scrap pieces of sanded pastel paper or sandpaper, one swipe will take off that outer compressed layer revealing the working core.

They have uniform softness without grit or hard lumps in them. None of the sticks crumbled under hard pressure or on being squeezed, something that happens sometimes with other pastels in vigorous applications. They are nicely pigment-rich and have a texture very close to the American Prismacolor NuPastels.

The range is only 36, but like other short range Derwent products, it's got a good balanced spectrum of brights and some great earth tones. A short range is the only drawback, but then, if you're on a tight budget a smaller set that's good artist grade quality is going to make it a lot more affordable.

I hope that in future Derwent does choose to extend the range to 72 and beyond, since these pastels are wonderful for so many uses. Every application I listed for the color Conte crayons applies to these. You can use them for sketching, sketch under pastel paintings without changing the texture, paint with them from beginning to end or do an underpainting by blocking in large masses of color and then rubbing them smooth to provide a base for softer pastels in later layers.

Corresponding with Dick Blick, I discovered that the current stock is the old formula, somewhat harder Derwent Pastels. The distributor has informed them that this new formula will be available in June or July 2010 and presumably that's when the rest of the USA suppliers will have them. I've written to them for an old formula sample, so I can tell exactly how much softer these new ones are. The texture on these is splendid, consistent and firm without being dry or brittle. If you like the older formula, stock up on them while Blick still has the previous ones. Derwent might also have changed some colors in the range.

Here's the test sketch I did this morning with my six-color earth tones blister pack. I like the palette for nature sketching and feel it'd be glorious for figure drawing. Definitely something to bring along the next time I find a group of artists doing life drawing. All whites and lights are reserved, smudged light applications or erased out -- this range is better for white or light paper unless you accompany it with a white pastel pencil.


Bone and Gall
8 1/2" x 11"
Derwent Pastels (six color earth tones assortment)
White ProArt sketchbook paper
Sketched from life.