Organizing your pastel box with varying brands

[mrking]

I want to start to organize a pastel box by value/colour and have a question for the veterans here on the forum...

When organizing your pastel box by value/colour do you have a different box for each brand you have or have one organized box regardless of brand?

[chewie]

by value and temp., regardless of brand except for the very hard square ones.

[mrking]

why leave the hard square ones out? being a different shape you'd know they were harder. Just curious as to why.

[artist_pw]

Hi:

I had mine generally organized by value and I think I tend to use any brand at any time. I have a mix of Nupastels (those are easy to tell), Art Spectrum, Rembrandts, Mount Vision, Unison, Terry Ludwig, and Great American. During a workshop last week though, I reorganized my little travelling set to more specific value groups based on what Anita Louise West demonstrated, and Albert Handell reiterated about values. I made simple wire dividers out of some WireMesh to group by light-light, medium-light, light-medium, dark-medium, medium-dark and dark-dark values. A secondary sort even in those groupings is to sort for temperature - cool, neutral, warm.

Albert did recommended that for a midwest landscape where everything is really various greens, to get your two most intense existing greens, and then get all of the greenish Senneliers between those - probably about 8 or so.

It was really interesting to see Albert work on a piece - when looking for a new color in his apparently jumbled palette, he took about three or four in the ballpark for a particular color he was looking for and then from those found the one he was really wanting.

Hope this helps and gives you some ideas.

[David Patterson]

I have around 7 diff. brands in my box. Mine are arranged by color and value, with some "neutrals" on the far right. This is how Richard McKinley arranged his, and I sort of liked his set-up. Here is a his box.

[KJSCL]

Here's a link to an older thread where this was discussed. Hopefully it will help

http://www.wetcanvas.com/forums/show...php?t=337816&]

[chewie]

i keep those square harder ones separate simply cuz i don't use them thru-out the work. they'd only be in my way thru the main part of the work, i use them mostly thru the beginnings, then at the end of my works. and i have a 100 set tin, i like them as they are in the tin, and when i want them, its very simple to find the ONE i'm after.

the photo of richard's pallate was the very one i printed off and used to organize my at-home sets. having someone else's organization to look at while i did mine helped tons!

[artist_pw]

Hi:

Here's a snap of Albert Handell's just for a comparison.

[mrking]

Originally Posted by artist_pw

Hi:

Here's a snap of Albert Handell's just for a comparison.

I really don't understand Albert's way of organization. I look at his box and see no sense of pattern at all?

All the others I see colour and value which makes sense to me.

[artist_pw]

Hi:

Right - I tried to examine it also and didn't see a real pattern. But, I think it is organized for him - he didn't seem to expend any extra time searching for anything specific, like where a particular pastel was, but rather looking for a general color that he was planning to place in his image. I just thought I'd show this so everyone would know, palette organization is really up to each individual.