Company Background

Diane Townsend Artists' Pastels are manufactured in an artist's loft in the lower Manhattan neighborhood known as SOHO. Townsend is a working artist; she has been making and selling handmade pastels since 1971.

Product Background

This is no small line of pastels. There are 110 basic colors, plus about 100 lighter shades of just about every main color, plus 100 darker ones too. Add 16 metallics, 12 pearlescents, 7 iridescentds, and 10 flourescents, andthe line rounds out to about 350 individual pastels.

You can't buy them everywhere. Three good sources are NY Central Art Supply, Dakota Pastels, And Rochester Art Supply.

Townsend pastels are handmade with very high quality pigment and not much binder. This results in a casual silhouette, More on the clumpy or lumpy side than anything resembling a commercial pastel cylinder. In practice, that's just fine-- they fit very comfortably into the artist's hand. They also cover the paper beautifully and because they tend to be slightly largerand less reliant upon binder, they seem to last longer, too.

Note that Townsend pastels are made with the best available pigments, and that the precise color value of these pigments sometimes varies. If you're starting on a big project that requires a large supply of a single color, buy it and test it before you start!

Getting Started with Diane Townsend's Pastels

If you happen to be in NYC (or Rochester, NY), visit the appropriate store and just buy a handful. They'll cost about $4 each. You can also order individual sticks from Dakota.

A starter set of 12 pastels costs about $45. The best is called Artist Choice, a selection chosen by Townsend herself.

For portraits, the set of 24 flesh tones for around $90 is also recommended.

Getting Serious About Diane Townsend's Pastels

Beyond the slimmer sets, there is no set of, say, 48 or 60 mixed colors with the generalist selection of lights, solid tones, and darks. (Dakota could put one together, I suppose).

Instead, the serious collections offer sets of about 50 solids (2 sets get you all or the solids), and similar arrangements of lights and darker shades.

Dakota sells the whole set of 349 pastels for $1150.

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