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)

The Top Five Artists' Watercolour Paints in 2013

Personal preferences were expressed in the product review poll "Which are the best artist-quality watercolour paints? (2012 / 13)" on my website Which is the best brand of watercolour paint for artists?

The chart below records the results of 360 responses.

Derived from
Which are the best artist-quality
watercolour paints? (2012 / 13)

The TOP FIVE WATERCOLOUR PAINTS IN 2013 are:

1. Winsor & Newton - 27%
2. M. Graham Watercolour Paints - 11%
3. Daniel Smith Watercolor Paints - 10%
4. Fine Schminke Horadam Aquarell - 9%
5. Sennelier Aquarelle Extra - 8%

It's basically Winsor & Newton way out in front and then four brands - two American and two European - bringing in the next significant group of artist grade paints.

Those who are unfamiliar with M. Graham Watercolor Paints may be surprised they came second. However you should note:

• Reviews of these paints generally provide high praise for the quality, saturation and lightfastness
• 95% of those buying this paint from Dick Blicks would recommend them to a friend.
• The Wilcox Guide to the Finest Watercolours gave high ratings to these paints across the watercolour range.

Below that most paints got little or no support of significance - although there is a good spread of those that did get votes

The chart below reflects the paints in the poll in alphabetical order - and indicates the percentage of the vote each attracted.

The ranking of different brands of paint - in percentage order - follows the chart

Ranking of Watercolour Paints

This is the final ranking for the 2012-13 Poll to identify

• 27% - Winsor and Newton Artists Watercolours 
• 11% - M. Graham Watercolor Paints
• 10% - Daniel Smith Watercolor Paints 
• 9% - Fine Schminke Horadam Aquarell
• 8% - Sennelier Aquarelle Extra
• 6% - Holbein Artists Watercolor
• 3% - Royal Talens
• Rembrandt
• St. Petersburg Watercolors
• 2%
• Daler Rowney Artists Watercolours 
• Kremer Pigmente Watercolors
• 1% 
• Da Vinci
• Dr. Ph. Martin's Hydrus Fine Art Watercolor Paints
• Grumbacher Watercolor - Finest
• Lukas Aquarell
• Maimeri Blu
• Mijello Mission Gold Watercolors
• Royal Talens - Van Gogh
• Shin Han Premium Watercolors

The following paints failed to get a vote:

• Art Spectrum Artists Watercolours
• Blockx Extra Fine Watercolors
• Holbein Irodori Antique Watercolor
• Old Holland Classic Watercolours
• Pebeo Fragonard Extra-Fine Artists' Watercolors
• Robert Doak's Concentrated Watercolors
• Stephen Quiller Watercolors
• Utrecht Artists' Watercolors

I'll be posting a new Poll for 2014 in the next few days.

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.

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.

More about Lightfastness

As manufacturers begin to appreciate that lightfastness does matter to artists, we're beginning to see more and more information published by those that make the art materials we buy

I just want to highlight today a couple of examples:

• the new Love Pencils - the Derwent blog created by the Cumberland Pencil Company has a post Lightfastness Testing Revealed!  about how they test for lightfastness
• Schminke - who make pastels I use - have a two page leaflet about the processes they use when creating art materials (see lightfastness.pdf available to download as a pdf file).  In it you can see an example of the blue wool cards used as a quality control by many companies manufacturing art materials.  This gives you a very good display of just how much fading happens in those actually graded 'lighfast' at levels 5 and 6 - and just how much disappears at the lower end of the scale.  

Seeing real blue wool cards like this - and how dramatic the fading can be - is what woke me up to the cause of lightfastness.  I now aim to use only pencils which meet levels 7 and 8 (ie 4 star and 5 star pastels and pencils).

Extract from Schminke Leaflet - Lightfastness – A Measure of the Durability of Artists’ Colours (pdf file)

I also learned something new from the Schminke leaflet and that is lightfastness levels MUST always tested on the finished product as the mediums which combine with some pigments can result in colours which darken.

You can read and learn more about lightfastness on two of my resources for artists sites:

• Coloured Pencils - Resources for Artists:  Coloured Pencils - Colours and Lighfastness

• Pastels - Resources for Artists: Pastels: Technical data about their composition and lightfastness / permanence