Our Verdict

These luxurious handmade pastels pack all the tones of the ocean into a single box, and they're a joy to use.

For

Gloriously rich colours
Fantastically smooth strokes
Wonderfully consistent

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Unison Pastels is a range of handmade pastels from Northumberland. Their creator, artist John Hersey, began making the pastels in the 80s after struggling to find a commercial product that matched the quality of colour and consistency of texture he required. Here we're reviewing the Ocean Blue 12-pastel set created in collaboration with artist Zaria Forman. And they really are a joy to use.

Unison's Ocean Blue pastels were developed with Zaria Forman, who creates stunning images like this

As the name suggests, the set comprises 12 ocean-inspired tones. The richness of colour is luxurious and the smoothness of the strokes is unlike any pastel we've used before. Each pastel is roughly 5cm in length and between 1-1.5cm in diameter. Because each pastel is hand-rolled, there's also some wonderful inconsistency in shape. If you're looking for a medium brimming with colour, which is portable and fun to work with, then this could be your best purchase yet.

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The Verdict

out of 10

Review: Unison Colour Ocean Blue Pastels

These luxurious handmade pastels pack all the tones of the ocean into a single box, and they're a joy to use.

TOPICS

Rob Lunn is a self-taught painter, and loves to paint in oils. His influences are Vincent van Gogh, Caravaggio and Ilya Repin. He has taught art workshops since 2012 and gets a real buzz from teaching people to draw and paint. He has contributed to Paint & Draw magazine and bookazines, and has also provided traditional art tutorials for Creative Bloq.