Finest extra-soft, handmade artists' pastels Pastel set with 60 half pastels
Getting started with pastel painting with this colouristically senseful selection of half pastels (chosen from the range of 400) in an elegant box design.
The art of pastel painting has been popular for centuries as it combines drawing skills with an intense, velvety colour effect. Schmincke's extra-fine pastel pastels are as delicate as velvet and silk thanks to their unique formulation and handcrafted production, and enable a particularly soft and intensive application of colour.
The broad range of 400 brilliant colours opens up limitless artistic possibilities, whether on special pastel paper, in mixed media techniques or even on canvas when used on the special Schmincke primers. A professional range of fixative sprays ensures that the unique results are retained in the long term.
At the source of colour - best artist pigments with minimal binder
Working with Schmincke pastels leads you back to the origin of colour. Our round sticks consists only of the finest artists’ pigments (without chalk!) and a minimum amount of binder. The binder content is so small that the medium-find ground pigments only just achieve a stable bond.
Pastels from the manufacture
The unusual formulation which guarantees a unique strong colour application, also requires an equally unique production process: traditional craftsmanship. In this traditional and time-consuming process, screw presses are used first to shape the pre-kneaded dough into round strands which are afterwards removed by hand and cut into the right length in wire-strung frames. The sticks are still damp and are left to air dry for 8 days before they are individually labelled by hand.
Due to the particularly fine formulas, machine production of our pastels is not possible - the precious sticks could break.