Review: SAA Artists 12 Soft Pastels - Sketching Colours

Buying an own brand can give you excellent results in addition to saving you some money.

Our Verdict

Perfect for mixing and for applying a stable layer of colour over the top. This is a great sketching set or a complement to your existing collection.

For

  • Pigment-rich colour
  • Great tonal range
  • Quality feel

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The Society for All Artists (SAA) is the largest art group in the world, with over 45,000 members worldwide ranging from beginners to professional artists.

With this huge membership comes buying power, giving its members great discounts on top art materials and enabling the SAA to produce its own-branded materials like these pastels, all designed by the members with the artists’ needs at the forefront of the creation process.

There's every colour you need for a tonal sketching set

There's every colour you need for a tonal sketching set

This SAA Artists' pastel drawing set comes in a single-piece box with 127.5cm long by 1.2cm diameter pastels. This Sketching Colours set includes black, Blue Grey, Burnt Sienna, Burnt Umber, Cool Grey, ivory, orange, Raw Sienna, Raw Umber, Sanguine, Smoke Grey and of course, white.

These colours are specifically chosen with tonal sketching in mind (a key discipline to practise), be it for a finished piece in itself or for the underpainting before adding colour on top. Other colour sets are available, though, including sets for portrait and skin tones, landscapes, floral studies and more.

Pastel performance 

Lay rich strong colour down without mess

Lay rich strong colour down without mess

We found the pastels to have a quality feel, and provide a fresh pigment-rich stroke of colour. This makes them perfect for mixing and for applying a stable layer of colour over the top.

Priced at $27.95/£21.50 for the set, or an amazing $22.09/£16.99 for SAA members buying from its store, this is a great sketching set or a complement to your existing collection.

They might not have quite the same pigment strength of Unison pastels, but you get a lot of pastel power for your pound. For the passionate pasteleer, an SAA membership would pay for itself in no time at all.

This article originally appeared in Paint & Draw issue 10. Buy it here.

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The Verdict
9

out of 10

Review: SAA Artists 12 Soft Pastels - Sketching Colours

Perfect for mixing and for applying a stable layer of colour over the top. This is a great sketching set or a complement to your existing collection.

Rob Lunn is a self-taught painter, and loves to paint in oils. His influences are Vincent van Gogh, Caravaggio and Ilya Repin. He has taught art workshops since 2012 and gets a real buzz from teaching people to draw and paint. He has contributed to Paint & Draw magazine and bookazines, and has also provided traditional art tutorials for Creative Bloq.