While I love coloured pencils, they are a slow medium. Each portrait takes me at least 5 hours to complete. Soft pastels and pastel pencils, however, take much less time to blend and cover larger areas. I cannot tell you how attractive that is! I decided to try out two brands–Conte a Paris and Stabilo–for review.
Conte a Paris Pastel Pencils Review
The Conte pastel pencils have a larger diameter lead (5mm) compared to Stabilo CarbOthello. I heard a lot of artists complain about breakage, but I did not experience this at all with the special sharpener (made also by KUM for Conte a Paris).
I bought the portrait set of 6, plus duo packs of white and black. These pencils have great pigment and the hardness between soft pastels and harder oil pastels. They go on like chalk in terms of consistency and not at all oily or waxy. I love that I can blend them directly on paper with just a finger.
Conte a Paris pastel pencils are made in France, while the sharpener is made in Germany. I highly recommend buying the sharpener because it is made for these larger diameter cores. As a result, I experienced very little breakage with this sharpener compared to regular sharpeners.
Stabilo CarbOthello Pastel Pencils Review
The CarbOthello pencils have a smaller diameter core (4.2mm), and a special pencil sharpener as well. Using this special sharpener makes them much less likely to break (so far I have not experienced any breakage yet).
These pencils are partially water soluble and will leave a contour on the paper. They are chalk pastels, and have the same hardness and consistency as the Conte pencils. In terms of quality, both brands are very pigmented, lightfast and they blend easily.
Pastel Paper
When it comes to pastels, paper really matters. Initially I used Strathmore 400 series pastel paper, but it did not grip any of the pastel pencils at all. Pastelmat would have been ideal, with no need for fixative between layers, but it is too expensive. I settled for some clear gesso and it did the trick.
Clear Gesso: The Miracle Product
I have two clear gessos, Tri-Art (a Canadian manufacturer) and Liquitex, both of which are acrylic based. While they both have fine to medium grits, Liquitex goes on clearer (especially with multiple coats) and is a bit more self-leveling. Gesso is such a miracle product because you can easily do mixed media art with it.
This is after two coats of Tri-Art clear gesso on Strathmore 400 series Mixed Media paper. As you can see, it did leave a bit of white cast on the black paper. I used the gesso on Strathmore Pastel paper before, but because it was meant for dry media, the paper did not absorb the gesso evenly. Lesson learned: stick to paper that can take on a bit of wet media or the gesso won’t dry evenly.
Pastel Pencils In Action
For this portrait, I used primarily the Conte portrait set on gessoed Strathmore 400 series toned blue mixed media paper. The portrait set contained most shades needed for light skin tones. I used the browns from Stabilo and the black and white Conte pastel pencils for the eyes and hair. My finger did all the blending, with no blending stumps or tools required. It took just minutes to do the hair and hood instead of an hour or two with coloured pencils!
My only gripe is that there are visible streaks of gesso on the paper. On white paper you can sand it, but with a toned paper, it would have left marks.
The Tri-Art clear gesso left a bit of white cast on the paper. Because of the grits, I couldn’t do finer details with the pastel pencils though.
The Finishing Touch
I used a fixative, followed by Derwent Lightfast and Prismacolor Premier pencils for the details (eyes, lashes, lips and hair). For the catch lights, I used Uni Posca 0.7mm marker in white.
Instead of 6-7 hours I usually needed, this only took me 2 hours. This definitely makes me want to do more portraits!
