Mungyo Gallery Artist's Soft Pastels

Mungyo Gallery Soft Pastels are a discount artist grade brand of medium-soft round soft pastels. Don't mistake these for the Mungyo Gallery Square pastels or the cheaper student grade ones - these are artist grade and claim lightfastness even though they use hues for some mineral colors. The range of 200 is available in a wood box set, various set sizes from 12 on up to 200 and open stock colors can be found at Jerry's Artarama and ASW, same as some other brands like Erengi Art Aspirer oil pastels.

Because they are non toxic, these make a good choice for artists who work around small children or pets. This is a tradeoff. Genuine Cadmium and Cobalt pigments have certain working properties, especially in wet mediums, that aren't duplicated by using other pigments - especially in watercolors, acrylic and oil painting, real Cadmiums are far more opaque than their color-matching hues. This isn't necessarily as much of a problem with soft pastels, all have a dusty consistency.

In some of the more expensive brands, you'll find the hardness of the stick will vary with the working properties of the pigments. Sennelier is well known for using as little binder as possible and not even trying to keep the consistency the same between different pigments - the up side is that you get the pigments you chose and learn to use those colors in their unique ways.

For beginners and for anyone who doesn't have a big collection of pastels, that can also get frustrating. Other artist grade brands will use fillers to "even out" the texture of various pigments. Mungyo Gallery Artist's Soft Pastels have a consistent texture across all the sticks, you won't find one so soft you can barely hold the stick and another one almost like a hard pastel or gritty. Pigment load is pretty good. It's not up there with my expensive hand rolled Unison pastels but it's decent, especially for the price.

Hardness is in a category with Rembrandt and Art Spectrum, of that category I think the greatest pigment load can be found in Art Spectrum... along with a number of toxic mineral pigments that are more dangerous to breathe than the non toxic Mungyo Gallery. So when you choose a brand of soft pastels, it's important to balance health concerns, working style, how much protection you want to use while painting, ventilation and feel.

I'd definitely recommend these as a frugal alternative for beginners over any student grade brand. They're soft enough for easy sketching and blending, their medium texture is versatile and the color range is excellent. They are available in open stock, so it's possible to replace colors used in sets, fill out weak color areas in a mixed-brand collection or put together your individual palette choices. That's another important element in whether an art supply is considered artist grade - can you order fifteen Indigo Tint 3 sticks because you're doing a honking big painting with a vast span of Indigo Tint 3 sky, or are you stuck buying them in sets and getting a lot of colors you might not use?

If you, like me, are teaching a talented, underage artist and want to make sure she or he has artist grade supplies, this type of product is the best thing to start them off with. Toxicity may be more dangerous to young people whose bones and bodies are still growing than to adults, also youth are less likely to wear gloves, use barrier creams, make sure they've got adequate ventilation or wear face masks. They want to get down and make a mess painting, even when they're skilled enough you'd think they're adults. So if you're buying these as a gift for an underage pastelist, both the price and their non toxic hues are in favor of Mungyo Gallery Artist's Soft Pastels. These are the round ones.

I haven't tried the Squares. Those are half the price, which to me suggests that they might have twice the filler even though they are listed as lightfast. Those are priced and shaped comparable to Loew Cornell soft pastels, the original Blick student grade soft pastels, Alphacolors and similar products. These round, labeled sticks are much closer to Rembrandt in feel than any other brand I've tried.

The wood box is probably a veneer over sturdy MDF like the Mungyo Semi-Hard set, with a second tray to hold all the colors. I would recommend it as a sturdy box even if it's not the type of solid wood boxes that pricier brands like Winsor & Newton or Sennelier produce - it also doesn't cost as much and the one I have with the Semi-Hard set is just as good for protecting the sticks.

The cardboard box sets are packaged the same way as those 64 clever little Mungyo Gallery half sticks that I love for a sketch set. A sturdy cardboard box has two trays filled with slotted foam and foam padding on top to protect the sticks, then for added protection against the box falling open, it slides into a cardboard sleeve. If you're putting a set on edge inside your backpack for sketching outdoors, that sleeve can be a lot of help! Even if it drops off a shelf, it's less likely to fall open and the sticks are less likely to break with all that padding.

Here's the color range of the 60 color set that I bought. It has a reasonable number of darks and tints for a 60 color range, a good spectrum and good choices in warm and cool neutrals. I used a piece of gray Canson Mi-Tientes for the swatches so the values on the tints would be easier to see. One gray almost precisely matches the paper, but the white shows up very clean and strong, distinct from the tints.



The size of the box on this 60 color cardboard set is pretty convenient, it'd fit in any backpack or messenger bag for outdoor sketching and painting. That may be another good use for Mungyo Gallery Artist soft pastels - because they're not toxic pigments, they may do less damage to the environment when puffs of dust come off your easel. You're not poisoning the squirrels and birds with them or putting Cadmiums into water runoff.

Mungyo Gallery Soft Pastel rounds are often on sale at both Jerry's Artarama and ASW. Watch for sale prices on the sets and on open stock. If you want a lot of colors for a very low budget, give these a try with a small set or a few chosen open stock colors to see how you like them. Some of my friends hated them because both Art Spectrum and Rembrandt beat them for pigment concentration. I enjoyed them and would be very happy to use this set outdoors or over at the farrier school to sketch the horses. Less concern about toxicity balances against the stronger pigment concentration in Rembrandt and Art Spectrum for a medium-soft pastel.

They handled very well on Canson mi-Tientes, either smooth or textured side. They smudge easily, are quite softer than any of my hard pastels and will carry several layers even on unsanded paper.

For best results in soft pastel painting rather than quick sketching, I recommend getting some hard pastels, some medium pastels of this type of hardness and some hand-rolled or super-soft pastels such as Sennelier half sticks, Schminke, Unison or Richeson Hand-Rolled. For a bargain startup, Gallery Semi-Hard, Gallery Artist Soft Pastels (round) and some Richeson Hand-Rolled pastels might make a good initial investment. They're better than student grade, in the artist grade category, but in pastels especially where most of what you're paying for is pigment load versus filler, you'll get what you pay for.

They definitely beat the other super-bargain brand I've invested in - the Yarka Soft Pastels. Mostly on palette. Texture is similar but the Yarka palette has serious gaps especially in pure tone yellows, oranges, reds, violets and strong greens. Yarka's got some good blues and is strong on gradated tints, but often the brightest color in a pigment range is still a mid tint rather than a pure tone. So if you already have some Yarka soft pastels, you might consider filling out the range with full intensity Mungyo Gallery Soft Pastels. They're close enough in texture that they'd play well together and be interchangeable.

Yarka has been recategorized as Student Grade for palette range issues, although the Yarka ones do include genuine Cadmiums and Cobalts. Don't mix them if you're buying these for an underage friend or student, Mungyo Gallery Soft Pastels are better for anyone who may have toxicity issues.

Below is a sketch of my granddaughter's dragon toy as a flying dragon on pale yellow Canson Mi-Tientes, textured side, done with Gallery Mungyo Artist Soft Pastels. These and a pad of Canson mi-Tientes would be a great sketching combination.

Strathmore Windpower Watercolor Pad

Wirebound Strathmore Windpower Watercolor Pad is a green product. I like to buy green whenever possible and I try to be responsible in how I dispose of art supplies that may harm the environment. So when I decided to get an inexpensive wirebound watercolor pad to use as a water mediums sketch journal, I naturally chose this one over the others.

The cover's been altered because I did decide to use it as a sketch journal. I kept the alterations fairly minor though, so you can still see the original illustration (with cartoon Frankenstein monster hanging on the windmill blade and a small mob with torches under him), and placed my titles and captions in blank areas of the design. I wanted to keep the original information legible.

The cover stock isn't as heavy as the watercolor paper but it's still a good heavy cover stock. It would stand up to much more alteration if I wanted to go the collage, glitter and glued on tidbits route with a sketchbook cover. I chose wire bindings by category for this pad because I'm running out of wall space for small practice paintings and they just get stored in a box when I take them down. I can file a completed watermediums journal on a bookshelf with other sketchbooks and flip through it again anytime, or show it to people more easily.

The paper has a bright white, very nice cold press texture. It's a little less regular than some of the cold press "wove" textures, which makes for better texturing if I want to use broken color with any medium. It's good and sturdy, acid free and heavy. Sizes on this pad are standard for the USA: 6" x 9", 9" x 12" (the one I have), 11" x 15" (a quarter sheet compared to full size watercolor paper) and 18" x 24" if you like to paint very large. Current prices at Blick range from $3.11 to $14.22 and each pad has a generous fifteen sheets.

I've also used Winsor & Newton Cotman watercolor pads, similarly inexpensive and good quality. But the Strathmore paper is a brighter white, something I enjoy since it makes colors glow and doesn't mute the cool violets and blues at all. Most of all, when I chose it I was supporting Strathmore's decision to convert to windpower.

The back cardboard is very heavy. If you tend to rip out pages in a watercolor pad, frame and sell them, then by all means keep that back cardboard as a drawing board. It's a solid 1/8" thick and would hold up for much more painting or drawing than you can do with fifteen pages of pad, including flipping it over as a cutting board. Part of living green is reusing things that would otherwise go in the trash.

If you want to experiment with collage, acrylic textures and other heavier techniques, this book would be a good choice. The paper's very strong, the binding is excellent and that heavy back will give you a good base for anything you want to do with it. The pages are not perforated, so if you want to remove a page you'll need scissors or an art knife and some care.

One tip for using watercolor pads rather than blocks. Mark off some margins around each page before painting. I am not kidding. They will cockle more than watercolor blocks, which is why I favor watercolor blocks when I'm doing paintings to frame. To get them to dry flat, you can clip down three sides of the page with bulldog clips so that any major warping is compensated for.

I used 1/2" borders on my pages since I'm doing smaller paintings with space between them, though I did one full page painting with loose washes and it dried flat. The entire book is one composite work, a collection of watermedia experiments, but you can also use a pad to do serious paintings to sell or just sketch in it without trying to pull it together as a whole.

This is an inexpensive way to get a lot of good watercolor paper in a convenient, portable form. The small sizes would be great for plein air studies, while the big one could be a good way to get used to working large. Backs of pages can be used, the paper is a bit less textured on the back but also feels less sized. Experiment. At these prices and with that added green benefit, this is my choice for a book I can feel free to mangle and try things without worrying about waste.

Also, if I didn't mention this in a previous review, you can use a botched watercolor painting as a good surface for pastel painting if you cover it with a sanded pastel primer like Colourfix pastel primer or Golden Pumice Gel. For oil pastels, I'd prime right out past the border or mark a new border within the primed area -- oils will migrate to the edges when there's a barrier layer, staining and weakening the paper. For dry pastels that isn't necessary.

I plan on using one of these for a pastels sketchbook too, by cutting pieces of glassine the size of the pad and using a hinge of masking tape to attach the glassine to fold up from the bottom of each page and tack at the top. Borders will be 1" from the top to make room for the glassine to be taped. The glassine stays folded back till that page is used for a painting, then folded over to protect it. Might take a little while to prime all the pages and let each dry before doing the next, but doing this would give me a good inexpensive plein air journal for pasteling.

I was going to do that with this one, but got distracted by those lovely Derwent Watercolour Pencils that I got to review and have turned it into this water media journal instead. I'm now on page 12 and expect to complete the journal this month. Here's an example of one of the better pages in it, done entirely with Derwent watercolour pencils, captions with black Pigma Micron pen:


Copyright © Robert A. Sloan, all rights reserved.