Since I began teaching painting with Pan Pastels on Skillshare and YouTube, I've been looking for alternatives to Pan Pastels. I realize that Pan Pastels may be too expensive for some people and that sometimes people just want to try something different.
I had seen a few videos about Jane Davenport's pastels but they were all about crafting and working on preprinted faces. While the color palettes are all cosmetic-like in appearance they are not for use on the face or any other part of the body. Ms. Davenport is quite clear about that. So, for about $45.00 I purchased the three sets of the pressed pastels; Chilled, Birthday Suit and Lit Up. I received two of the three palettes within a day but the third was held up but..... I was really anxious to work with my new pastels so..... I went ahead. These are the two palettes I used, Chilled and Birthday Suit. Because there were a couple of colors missing from these sets I supplemented them with hues from my Pan Pastel Collection. I used the red for the tulips and the yellow for the pansies and black for shading in both.
The Tulips were painted on Canson Mi Tientes pastel paper, black. The Pansies were painted on Clairfontaine Pastelmat paper. The Canson worked fine but it didn't have sufficient tooth so, if I had wanted to use pastel pencils in the drawing, it wouldn't have worked. They worked well on the Pastelmat paper. I found that I needed to apply more layers of these pastels to work on black paper than I did with Pan Pastels.
I also found that mixing in the palette as I do with Pan Pastels didn't work as well. They did blend but the colors are tints and shades, not pure hues so that blending to achieve the colors I wanted wasn't possible. This doesn't mean that what I achieved wasn't lovely. I really did like my outcome; I just didn't like the process. And I found the white to be not strong enough. Does that make sense? I just couldn't lighten the violet shade in the painting of the pansies as much as I wanted.
While I'll keep these palettes to add to my collection of colors, I'll be sticking with Pan Pastels for most of my paintings. I find Pan Pastel colors richer and the consistency thicker. Covering tinted papers with Pan Pastels was easier.
Not that it's a bad thing, but I found the differences between colors to be too subtle which is why I am planning on painting a portrait using the Jane Davenport pastels just to see how I like it.
The biggest drawback with these pastels is actually a practical one for me. The little trays (1 x .75 inches) of pastel aren't sold separately so that if you run out of, say white, you have to buy that set (Birthday Suit) again.
