Conté à Paris soft pastels are softer and easier to apply. Artist’s grade pigments give brighter, more robust, cleaner colours, and the creamy texture allows the exceptional flow of the application to enable better expression, spontaneity and versatility.

Conté, also known as Conté sticks or Conté crayons, are manufactured using natural pigments (iron oxides, carbon black, titanium dioxide), clay (kaolin), and a binder (cellulose ether).

Coloured Pastels and sets are especially useful for field studies and colour studies. Some artists create entire paintings, using them more like pastels than drawing mediums. They are often used to sketch pastel paintings or lay down initial layers before using dry pastels.

The colour sets lean toward very bright spectrum hues that mix well; even the 12 assorted colour sets can be layered to produce any hues or values desired. Colour Conté mixes better on paper than many hard pastel products.

They are frequently used on rough paper that holds pigment grains well. They can also be used on prepared, primed canvases as an underdrawing for a painting. The sticks' square profile makesandnbsp;Conté crayons more suitable for detailed hatched work than the bolder painterly drawing style demanded by soft pastels.

Nicolas-Jacques Conté was a French painter, balloonist, army officer, and inventor of the modern pencil.

He was born at Saint-Céneri-près-Sées (now Aunou-Sur-Orne) in Normandy and distinguished himself for his mechanical genius, which was of great avail to the French army in Egypt. Napoleon called him “a universal man with taste, understanding and genius capable of creating the arts of France in the middle of the Arabian Desert.”