Working with Schmincke’s finest extra-soft pastels will give you a completely unique drawing experience. They have an incredibly high concentration of top quality pigment powder held together by the absolute minimum amount of binding agent - just enough to ensure that they remain a stable compound. Unlike many pastels on the market, they also do not contain chalk or additives which helps keep their colouration pure and consistent throughout each pastel.This stripped back recipe results in such soft pastels that Schmincke had to design a costly and time-consuming manufacturing process to stop them breaking. Each lump of pre-kneaded pastel dough is rolled into rounded skeins which are sectioned by hand and laid onto a sheet. The skeins are then cut by hand with a wire-strung frame and transferred onto wooden palettes where they are left to dry for around 2 weeks. By this time they are so soft that they need to be wrapped by hand and gently placed in their foam packaging. Each pastel is covered in an information sheet that denotes its colour name, number and grade of graduation.