Review on SoHo Urban Artist 10-Piece Iridescent Metallic Soft Pastels Set: Vibrant Sticks for Art, Drawing, Blending, Layering, and Shading by Kim Sanchez

This year I've enjoyed learning how to work with pastels. I've been an artist for most of my life, but pastel is a medium I'm still learning more fully. Let's take a look at these pastels. WHAT IS IT FOR? They come in a box with a protective cover on top. He protects the pastel. The pastels look handmade and wrapped with labels. SOFTNESS These pastels are very soft. They take a light hand and work best when you're not trying to do a lot of layers with them. DUST There is LOTS of dust on it. I would say that half of the pastel is on paper and half is on the surface. The best way to work with them is to lightly place them where I want them and use stubs of paper to carefully inject other particles into my image most of the time. METAL? I wouldn't necessarily call them Metal. I would say they are more like pastels with mica. This means that they are more pearlescent than metallic. As accents, I didn't find them to stand out very well. They somehow blend in with the other colors around them, except perhaps for very dark contrasts. The lines and color overlay are very muted and soft, with no defining edges or color. AS A COLOR ALONE they are good, but on their own they tend to be faded and muted. If you use them on black they are visible but on white they are pastels and not great unless used in combination with the right pastels. They add zest to my work, but at the same time they don't stand out at all. They are very dusty and soft. They don't typically stand out as much as you might expect, but they work well in combination with the usual soft pastels for soft accents and texture. MY RATING IS FOUR STARS. I love these, but I'm not in love with them. If I find another way to use them more effectively, then maybe I'll rave a bit more. They're a bit muted for me right now, but I'll use them. A PHOTO. The quick sketch I made for you is metallic yellow (I used four colors with some regular pastels) and black and silver for the shadows and dome on the yellow part I sketched. I've tried to capture them as best as possible in the light so you can see them.