Review: SAA Artists 12 Soft Pastels - Sketching Colours

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.

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 

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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• How to start pastel drawing
• How to fix your finished pastel artwork