Swatching New Soft Pastels

My 112th soft pastel arrived in the post today, filling up my wooden pastel box, so I was straight out to the studio to swatch all 56 of my new colours.

The new colours are all here. In one place I changed the colour name to lime green white because the white I wanted has been out of stock for a while: this colour was t( one that arrived today. And the second colour in set three is different to the one I expected (but still fine). The only place where I genuinely screwed up was in set 2 where I got two pinks the wrong way round.

As for the new colours, all great and I’m looking forward to using them. My skies might not be blue and my foliage not green for a while. Colours that jumped out me as extra special at this early stage are deep vermillion, dark lilac, fade cobalt blue and cobalt blue but this is just a first impression.

Here are all 112 of my colours:

Things feel more balanced now, certainly warmer than before. I was definitely right to include some blues in the extra 14 “bespoke” colours. If anything I look short of greens but that’s not a bad thing: greens can be mixed from blues and yellows or, even better, replaced with earthier reds, oranges and browns.

Another five days to go before I start painting again though.