My NuPastel Portrait Palette Colors

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Artists often ask me which brand of hard pastels I use, as well as what specific colors are in my portrait palette. Well, to answer this question once and for all, I've created a chart of my favorite NuPastel portrait colors, along with a collection of grays that I keep in my portrait palette. I purchase these NuPastels in single sticks online from resellers like Jerry's Artarama. All the numbers on this chart correspond with the official NuPastel color chart numbers, so you can easily order them yourself. If you want to learn how to sharpen these to a point, watch my video where I given a demonstration. I hope you find this helpful!

My Portrait Palette Box

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This is my pastel portrait palette, organized by value and color, according to the 6 basic skin types. More on that in another post. Along with the rich soft pastels, there are small batches of hard pastels which have been sharpened to a point and organized in groups of neutral grays (far right), cool flesh tones (right), warm flesh tones (center right), and warm earth tones (upper left) within the box as well. I find these very useful for the small details of the face. As you can see, light values are at the top representing "tints", and dark values are at the bottom representing "shades". Neutral values are known as "tones". Compliments to John Heilman for the Original Box from HeilmanDesigns.com.

In our Painterly Portrait course we not only talk about how to create amazing portraits using pastels but we also talk about efficiency strategies such as this to make your painting time fun and stress-free.