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Rembrandt Soft Pastel - Ultramarine Light 505.5, Full Stick

Soft Pastel

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$4.44

Blick Art Materials · recorded Oct 21, 2026, 6:54 AM UTC

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Product details
Blick SKU
20026-5221
About this product range
  • Professional quality
  • Pure pigments bound in fine kaolin clay
  • Smooth, intense color laydown
  • Firmer texture ideal for detail and layering
  • Clean, low-dust application
  • Full stick size: 2-3/4"L × 7/16"Dia

Rembrandt Soft Pastels have been made in the Netherlands since 1899 using pure, finely milled pigments and minimal amounts of kaolin clay as a binder. This low-binder formula keeps the colors clean and brilliant, while giving the sticks a soft, smooth texture that's just firm enough to give you control. You can blend easily, build up layers, or draw clean, sharp lines without the crumbling that sometimes happens with extra-soft pastels.

Completely free of heavy metals like cadmium, cobalt, and lead, every color is developed from its own unique formula to get the best possible color intensity and handling. The pigment and clay are mixed, then shaped through a small-scale extrusion process, which produces consistently sized, uniform sticks. Throughout the process, everything from pigment grind to final wrapping is tightly quality-controlled, resulting in professional-grade lightfastness and a premium feel and finish.

Full sticks are wrapped and sold individually or in sets. Half sticks measure 1-3/8"L × 7/16"Dia and are unwrapped, available only in sets.

__Color guide:__ Numbers like 205.3 refer to the color and tone. The decimal tells you how the color is adjusted—.2 and .3 mean it’s mixed with black, .5 is the full shade, and .7 through .12 are tints with increasing amounts of white.

Pigment information

General reference notes about pigments can describe other media (such as oil). They do not verify this product’s exact formulation or behavior.

Ultramarine [Blue]

Pigment code
PB29
Type
inorganic
Chemical name
complex silicate of sodium and aluminum with sulfur
Chemical formula
Na8-10Al6Si6O24S2-4 or Na6-8Al6Si6O24S2-4
Properties
Ultramarine is the standard warm blue, a brilliant blue pigment that has the most purple and least green in its undertone. It has a moderate to high tinting strength and a beautiful transparency. Synthetic Ultramarine is not as vivid a blue as natural Ultramarine. Ultramarine dries slowly in oil and tends to produce clean, though granular, washes in watercolor. French Ultramarine mixes well with Alizarin colors in oil and watercolor form to create a range of purples and violets. It can dull when mixed with white in acrylic form, but mixes well with other colors. The shade varies based on manufacturer. Considered a great color for glazes, it is not suitable for frescoing.
Permanence
Ultramarine has excellent permanence, although synthetic Ultramarine is not as permanent as natural Ultramarine. It may discolor if exposed to acid because of its sulfuric content.
Toxicity
Ultramarine has no significant hazards.
History
The name for this pigment comes from the Middle Latin ultra, meaning beyond, and mare, meaning sea, because it was imported from Asia to Europe by sea. It is a prominent component of lapis lazuli and was used on Asian temples starting in the 6th century. It was one of the most expensive pigments in 16th century Europe, worth twice its weight in gold, and so was used sparingly and when commissions were larger. Ultramarine is currently imitated by a process invented in France in 1826 by Jean Baptiste Guimet, making blue affordable to artists and extending the range of colors on their palettes.
Description
Artificial Ultramarine, French Blue, French Ultramarine, Gmelin's Blue, Guimet's Blue, Permanent Blue, Royal Blue, Synthetic Ultramarine. New Blue describes particular shades of Ultramarine. Armenian Blue and Lazuline Blue are names for genuine Lapiz Ultramarine. Sky Blue is a pale tone of Ultramarine.

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