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.