Canson Mi-Teintes Velvet vs Pastelmat oil pastel

In this post I would like to talk about a paper that it’s new to me and that many people like to compare to Clairefontaine’s Pastelmat.

Since I primarily use it with oil pastels I’m going to focus on that medium but I will try it in the future with soft pastels as well.

As always, all the products mentioned have been bought by me with my own money, I’m not sponsored and haven’t been asked to make this review or any other.

In my local art store it was only available in pads but I would normally prefer to buy individual sheets. At first I thought I would get the pad all in white but that one was unwrapped and I could see that it was too yellow and too light for my taste so I went with the greys. Those were wrapped and I couldn’t see the exact colours inside and they turned out to be a bit darker than expected.

I’ve used the mid blue grey for my comparison because I also have a similar Pastelmat grey (although warmer) and it’s easier to see how the pastels behave on both and how much they can cover.

The feeling of the paper isn’t the same and the sound the finger makes while touching isn’t either but I knew right away that the performance on a real painting was going to be pretty close.

The first thing I did before jumping on a painting were a few swatches with different colours and different opacities, using oil pastels that went from fully opaque to semi opaque. I’m currently trying out different papers to use with oil pastels and how some of the sticks apply matters to me. In particular some of my lighter shades aren’t as opaque as I would like them to be and in other papers it shows quite a bit, specially over coloured paper but here those same sticks cover much more on both Canson Velvet and Pastelmat because of how well they grab the pigment even though the colour of paper is quite dark itself.

The biggest difference I see is how a stroke looks over clean paper. Those first strokes are much more grainy and textured over Canson Velvet than on Pastelmat. On Pastelmat they look much softer and diffuse right away. If you like to cover the whole surface with pastel then this doesn’t matter at all but if you like to leave some strokes here and there or you like a sketchy unfinished look then it’s something to consider. I personally like the look of both! They are different but I appreciate both of them, maybe I would choose one over the other depending on the subject or idea I have in mind but I’d be happy with any.

Some colours like the blue below appear darker at the edges, they look almost wet. The best way I can describe it with a digital watercolour effect, where the contours are darker and diffuse. This doesn’t occur on Pastelmat.

As I had expected, painting on them feels very very similar once you have a layer or two on the paper. I’ll post the comparison and process of both paintings on my Youtube channel once I’m done editing.

They hold layers very well and they allow you to blend and move the oil pastel around basically the same. I didn’t feel like I had to change any of my techniques or modify how I paint while working on Canson Velvet so I’m very pleased with it. I also feel I get the same level of detail with both.

These are the two small landscapes I’ve done to compare the papers:

Velvet left, Pastelmat right

Canson Mi-Teintes Velvet is a lovely paper and I can’t wait to try it out with soft pastels one day. For oil pastels I’d happily use any of these two since they are really so similar. They don’t come in the same colours so I would choose one over the other depending on which colour I want for an specific piece but other than that, both are fantastic. If you don’t care about the colours that much I would say to go for whichever is cheaper at the moment! I’m genuinely surprised I’ve liked something as much as I like Pastelmat. Some other papers I’ve tried are fine but none were close to Pastelmat (IMO) so I’m happy to be able to recommend something more.

Something minor but that I like about Canson Mi-Teintes Velvet is that it lays very flat! Pastelmat tends to bend a little no matter what so I always tape it well. It’s a small thing because I would tape any paper regardless but it’s nice.

I’ll continue to use it and if I have new thoughts about it I’ll update this post.

Thank you for reading and have a lovely day! ♡