Mystery Box Pastels

Rolling the dice to see what fate will bring you is an interesting way to choose color. Two boxes of factory seconds from Terry Ludwig were an interesting investigation.

I gave a road test to two sets of factory second pastels from Terry Ludwig. Each set had fourteen pastel sticks in the standard Terry Ludwig rectangular shape. I had previously purchase a set of grays and a set of reds from Terry Ludwig and thought it would be fun to see what colors I would get in these mystery boxes. After both boxes arrived, I resorted them, making one box mainly reds and purples, while the other had blues, a few greens, and ochres. There were three duplicates between the boxes, including a striking turquoise.

What makes these pastel sticks seconds? I’m assuming it is mainly tied to colors that do not quite match what was intended. There did not seem to be any major voids in the sticks, and the texture of the sticks seems similar to other Terry Ludwig pastels.

One thing to remember is that if you fall in love with the color of one of these sticks you are out of luck in reordering that color. They have no idea what went into your box (other than there are fourteen sticks of pastels in the box.)

Who would I recommend buying a mystery box? Probably not an absolute beginner. A beginner generally knows exactly what colors they are missing. A mystery box would make a great gift for an experienced pastelist. You don’t know what colors they would like, and they probably have enough colors that they don’t remember where the gaps are in their spectrum.

About the painting. This is a quick abstract study using the Terry Ludwig Mystery Boxes on Canson Mi-Teintes paper. Bended fields of color as well as sharp strokes were used to test out the properties of the Mystery Box pastel sticks.

Two Mystery Boxes from Terry Ludwig after rearranging the 28 pastels back into the two boxes. Another 14 stick box of missing greens, ochres, and a canary yellow would make a great travel set.

Mystery Boxes as Delivered