Review: Mungyo Gallery Artists' Handmade Soft Pastels

After my very positive experience with the Unison Pastels Emma Colbert Animal set, I was eager to try out more soft pastels. The Animal set is just 16 half-sticks and in very specific tones, so I needed to get a wider range of colours. 

However, Unison pastels are very pricey and I wasn't prepared to spend a lot on something I was just experimenting with. After some research, I decided on the Mungyo Gallery Artists' Handmade Soft Pastels. Like Unison, these are handmade and lightfast, but since they're made in South Korea and not a known brand, they're a lot cheaper. I bought this 30 full-stick set for around the same price as the Unison 16 half-stick set.

Don't they look gorgeous? They come in a sturdy cardboard box with foam packaging and it looks very luxe indeed. Here's a close-up look at the colours.

I decided to give these pastels a thorough test by drawing three pictures on three different types of paper with them. I intended to just do studies so they were supposed to be quick, but as usual, my perfectionist spirit got the better of me!

First up: a quick sketch of Nagoya Tower on Canson Mi-Teintes. We'd taken a family vacation to Nagoya a few years ago and enjoyed ourselves tremendously.

 

Landscapes generally baffle me, but I thought I would try to get the Impressionistic look that many pastel artists get. I don't think I've quite gotten the hang of it. Anyway it took me just about an hour for this sketch. 

From this quick study, I discovered right off the bat that the Mungyo pastels are nowhere as soft and buttery as the Unison ones. This may not be a bad thing, especially if you want to layer a lot (as is hard to do with the Unisons because they're so soft), but if you're looking for very soft pastels to do your final layers, these are probably not it. The colours are bright, but again, not as vibrant as the Unison pastels.

Next, I drew a blue fairy wren on homemade pastel paper with pastel primer, mostly to test out the range of blues in the Mungyo pastels.

The Mungyo pastels worked ok on the wren but I had the same problem with the Unison pastels - I couldn't draw details with them, so I had to finish up the drawing with pastel pencils. As for the background, it looked muddy when I tried to smudge them, though that might have something to do with the paper as well. Since I painted pastel primer over smooth paper, the texture was a little uneven.

Finally, I bravely tried my hand at a landscape piece - Nabana no sato, where we visited when we were in Nagoya. I worked on this one for hours and while I think the finished product looks ok, let's just say landscape is not my forte. This was on Strathmore Artagain tinted paper.

It wasn't helped by the fact that this 30-stick box was not made for landscapes. It had quite a nice range but there are clear gaps. There's no yellow green that's commonly needed for foliage. Among the six green shades, there's only one light-ish green which is too bright and unnatural for leaves. There's also no light brown, unless you count the Light Yellow Ochre which is more yellow than brown. I would have liked there to be one golden ochre shade. There are also two dark, bright oranges that are very close in shade. This made my painting of the autumn leaves very limiting, and I had to complement with the Unison box. I would have preferred a lighter orange yellow shade.

So here's my overall verdict on the Mungyo Gallery Artists' Handmade Soft Pastels. Quality-wise, they're certainly not at the level of Unison. I can't speak for other brands as I haven't tried them, but I suspect these won't satisfy if you're used to the handmade soft pastels made by popular brands like Unison, Sennelier and Schminke. The texture is not as soft or smooth, they don't glide over the paper.

However, if you consider that the price point is similar to harder factory-made pastels of the big brands, then comparatively, these might be quite good if pitted against that range. I paid about S$50 for that box of 30, which is great value. 

The sticks are large and substantial, and should last a long time. If you want them for filling in large areas of background, for example, these are quite economical. Since they're not as soft as Unison pastels, you can probably get in a few more layers with these. The pigment level is seriously not bad and I noticed that these pastels are not very dusty, which is super. Not breathing in extra pastel dust is always a bonus!