 Hello, artists! And welcome to the studio today where I'm going to be sharing with you a new set of pastels that I just purchased. Actually, I bought them used and they're in great shape. So I often try to help beginner artists in finding a set where you can create an entire painting and not have to buy so many different pastel supplies. They can get expensive. So welcome and let's go over these pastels. This is going to be kind of a product review. And I'm also going to be giving you some simple beginner paintings that you can do just from the set. All right, here we go. All right, so let's talk about this beautiful set of soft pastels. First, let me remove the mystery. What are they? These are the Unison 120 half-stick set of soft pastels. Now they are pretty soft too. They're pretty soft and buttery when it comes to the range of hardness to softness with soft pastels. But I find they're very versatile. Now, I always recommend getting half-sticks when you can, especially for beginners, because you get more variety for your money. And often, sometimes two-and-sets, full-stick sets will have some colors we don't use that much or we don't like that much. And so by getting the half-sticks, you get more of an opportunity to figure out the ones you really like. And again, you get more choices for your buck. Okay, so it's a good idea. Now, I want to share what I love about these pastels. And as I did in the introduction, I also want to share that I love to be able to offer opportunities and instruction and lessons, giving beginner pastel artists the ability to create paintings without having to buy so many supplies. So, and you don't need to get a set even this big. I've done videos where I've done paintings with just six pastels, one not too long ago with just 12 pastels. And I was really pleased with the painting at the end. But I do think this is a really great set. Once you're, you know, it's kind of like when you're a kid, when they say they would like a horse, you don't go buy them a thoroughbred or a show horse. You know, you start out with, not an old nag maybe, but you know, you start out with something perhaps more affordable. Now, with pastels, we don't want to scrimp with quality, but sometimes we can't get the quantity that we want. The difference in the quality really does matter with soft pastels. And unison is an excellent quality pastel. I love these pastels. All right, so let me talk again, or also about the things that I love about this particular set, not only the quality and the consistency and how they're pretty versatile. I also love the color assortment and the value assortment that they have arranged in this set. There's kind of three things I like when I look at a set or I analyze and prefer when I look in a set. I like good color choices. Of course, every artist has their own preference as to which colors they like the most. I like good value choices, especially if it's set with a decent amount of pastels. And I love to see them arranged in a logical, reasonable way, kind of with respects to color theory. And this one is done beautifully. So let's kind of analyze that first. And I think it will help the beginner artist in doing paintings when the palette of pastels is arranged in a logical color theory manner. And so what do I mean by that? Let's talk about that. Before I talk about the arrangement of the set, I wanted to share with you guys that I found them available on Jackson's Art Supply for $255, basically. Now, I'm not sure when you'll be watching this video, but as of now, they're on back order until June 20th. They're also available on Dakota Pastels. They're also on back order there as well. A lot of people are liking these. At Dakota, they are $322. So in general, we're going, in general, okay, we're going warmer on the color wheel to cooler. You see that? Now, within certain areas, that's why I say in general, we've got warmer colors in here of the pink family. But in general, if you just kind of pan across, you can see warmth to coolness, which I love. I think that's done quite nicely. Also too, if we look in the centers of each row, they're arranged by value from darkest in that color family out to lightest value in that color family. Now, let's just analyze, first of all, this row of what you would probably consider reds. Now, these reds here are, if you look at this side that are going more towards orangey reds, okay, they have more yellow in them. These would be considered warmer in reds and oranges because they have more yellow. These would be considered cooler reds, okay, or, you know, reddish, pinkish, you know, it's all in how you label the color, but they have less yellow. Can you see that? Now, as in comparison to these also are kind of in the pink family, but notice they don't have much yellow at all in them. So that's why these are not in this area here, okay? They're more leaning towards the magenta going towards purple end of the spectrum. So notice, though, the values as they darker in the centers, lighter on the edges, okay? Now, when we go here, this row does have more warmer yellow and some interesting, I love these kind of ochre colors here, and this one almost leans towards green right here. So, but the same thing, they go from darker value out to lighter value, and these were getting more of those oh, really warm neutral kind of pink and not quite peachy yet. These get more peachy in here, but again, they go out to the lighter values. Now, here's another thing on that note. As we look at these rows, I'm not going to go through all of them like this. As we look, notice, though, the assortment of brights to neutrals, all right? Look here how we have a kind of a bright pink, okay? This is kind of a warm pink, and a neutral, more of a, you know, kind of pinkish beige-y pink color here. So it's really great that this set has so many neutrals. I'll go in a second and point out some of the more neutral colors. By the way, finding neutrals, really, you can just cancel out all the colors that are so brilliant and bright. Neutrals are really just they have less color. To make a neutral, I believe I have a video on it. If you combine complementary colors and add white, you get a neutral, okay? You're kind of like canceling out the color a little bit, and they're just a little more dull. They look a little more dead in color, and I hesitate using that word because neutrals are so important. They shouldn't be considered, oh, that's a dead color. I don't want to use that. They're what will make your brights stand out where you strategically place them, okay? Your bolder colors with more chroma. So let's go again and look at some more of these. Again, notice darker values to lighter values. We've got some nice yellows here. We've got some nice buttery yellows here, and then we've got some nice of these deeper, more burgundy pinks. Notice neutral, neutral, neutral. These are all nice neutrals, okay? Compare these to these, okay? They are much more neutral in color. Same thing. We've got our row of greens here. A nice row of greens. These greens, again, darkest to lightest value. We've got some neutral greens in here, a little more neutral anyway than some of these. These have more yellow in them. We've got some, this one seems like it got put out of place. Maybe not. Maybe not. Oh yeah, because we've got greens here with a little bit more neutral and still some yellow in them. They're really soft. These would be nice in distant fields. They're not too bold with color. These would be better in the foreground. Now we've got our blues here. Oh, I love these neutral blues right in here. Isn't that beautiful? And neutrals are so important and they go out to lighter values. Now we've got our pinks here. Darkest value to lightest value. Purples. This set too, I find a lot of sets don't have a great assortment of purple or a color I really love, which is periwinkle. This is kind of a periwinkle in color. But this has a beautiful assortment of purples. Look at these all the way from here down to the lightest value. More of the periwinkle blues here. Again, the pinks. And now, oh, a beautiful assortment of turquoise. Some sets are missing turquoise. Look at that. Gorgeous. Darkest value to lightest value. Now we've got another purple over here. That's such a beautiful purple here. Now here's some really good news. Some sets are missing some good darks. Look at these nice darks we've got here. It's a really nice rich dark, like a midnight blue. I know it's really dirty. And we've got another dark blue here. Not quite as dark. This one's a little bit more of a dark neutral blue. And so and we could we've got this dark here. Look at this one. This one's more of a deep charcoal kind of dark, almost gray, really nice dark neutral. So we've got nice darks. We've got nice blues. We've got nice neutrals, nice colors, and values arranged beautifully. And these are like our really neutrals. Okay, they're lacking a lot of color. They're mostly like grays. And still I still love using these. Oh, see, look at these gorgeous like neutral neutral pale low value colors, lighter value colors. Oh, these are like still in the blue kind of teal family going to the lighter values. And we've got some really nice lights too. Look at this. So your lights are more on the perimeters, gradually moving into the darks in the centers. So as I create paintings with these, I'd like to really discuss my color choices while looking at this palette. I know that's where some of you guys really request instruction is picking out color palettes. Because you need to know that you need to know what pastels to buy and how to find, you're kind of going blind if you don't have instruction on why did you choose that color and why would you choose those colors together? So that's going to be my goal with using this set in the next few paintings. So with this unison 120 half stick set of pastels, I'm giving it a Monet cafe two thumbs up. Well, how about a four thumbs up with me and Bob Ross here? All right, how about it, Bob? Yeah? Even though he's mostly an oil painter, I think he likes a set too. So Bob Ross seal of approval and mine too. All right, guys, I love the set. I'll give more information as I have it on supply where you can get it. And I hope you enjoy the next few beginner videos that I'll make and keeping it simple and fun and beginner friendly. Okay, guys, happy painting. I'll be back with some tutorials. Yay.