New Unison Pastels

I finally got around to trying some Unison pastels for a portrait. I had bought the Caucasian Portrait set of 8 colors and tried them out on a practice drawing. I really liked the way you can lay down color with these. They are very soft and creamy feeling, not crumbly like the Sennelier I have.

Although I had just a few colors to work with I knew these were the ones to get. I found a great deal on Ebay for the 36 color portrait set and was very happy to get the deal.

The set is a very nice range of colors, light to medium, cool and warm reds, and a good range in the light colors red, green, yellow and blue. Of course there are some darks for shadows and hair in the same colors. The darks are not quite as soft and can be a little grainy if you're using a light touch.

But what impresses me the most is I can can keep laying down light to medium colors right on top of each other and not worry too much of filling up the tooth of the paper. I use my finger to blend the colors and read a great tip of using tissue paper to smooth it out. The tissue also is great at picking up extra color you don't want.

There's still a lot of color experimenting to do, laying down different colors for different tones. I've also used my pastel pencils for detailed areas and also to add some color that are not in the Unison set. I'll also use a charcoal pencil for some small dark areas.