Pastelists using soft pastels have long had to concern themselves with breathing dust that contains toxic pigments. Some of the best colors available are also pretty dangerous for long term exposure, so working on big projects artists have had to use barrier creams, gloves, face masks and expensive air purifiers to reduce the risk of longterm exposure, especially in the studio.

Soft pastels are almost pure pigment with very little binder. They're usually applied just by drawing with the stick or turning it sideways, often on sanded pastel papers and grounds. The result is sparkling rich color that with a sanded paper can be layered and shimmering, with a beautiful matte look. Pastel paintings need to be behind glass in their frames because they are that delicate and any smudge can damage the art.

One alternative for those who develop dust allergies is to switch to oil pastels. If you're interested in those, check out http://www.explore-oil-pastels-with-robert-sloan.com -- they are beautiful, they are a fine art medium and I've written 75 pages on their history, their use, demos, tutorials and book reviews about them. However, oil pastels do not give the velvety matte surface that soft pastels do.

"Hard" pastels are similar but a bit more firm, there's a range of softness that goes from hard pastels like color Conte or Prismacolor NuPastel on up to Schminke and Sennelier soft pastels, which are very rich and smudge beautifully over any layer done with harder pastels. Pastel pencils have cores that are similar to the hard range of dry pastels and once on the paper can be smudged with blenders or Colour Shapers and treated the same way, but are a little cleaner since you're handling a wooden barrel.

Beyond the super-soft Sennelier and Schminke soft pastels, a new product has joined the pastelists' arsenal. Pan Pastels aren't even sticks. They come in round clear plastic dishes a bit like a woman's makeup compact and are applied with foam applicators, sponges and other blenders. They are a new invention, they've only been around since maybe 2006 or 2007 and they've taken the pastel world by storm.

They can do things no other pastels can and the experience of using them is closer to painting than anything else I could call it. Pastel paintings can be done with sticks, but the Pan Pastels are so expressive and smooth that it's much more like handling paint. They come in a range of 60 colors and mix like paint, so you don't need to have a specific stick for each value of a hue and every possible mixture, unlike using other dry mediums where a range of 100 or 200 still leaves you wishing you had a stick darker and bluer than this one but lighter and greener than the other.

Best of all, when I use them, there's no mess. No more streaks of color on my face, jeans, chair, everything around me. I don't need to keep a wet towel handy when I'm using Pan Pastels. I don't handle them directly and very little dust falls off the paintings. So if you love using stick pastels but the dust creates major problems for you, Pan Pastels may be a good answer for you. Here's a photo of my Pan Pastels. I bought all 60 colors eventually.

 Using Pan Pastels is a very different process than using other types of dry pastels. Don't ever call them Chalk Pastels to a serious pastelist, that term really annoys them. Dry pastels or soft pastels are pure artist pigment with binder, dyed chalk is only used in the very cheapest children's versions. Pan Pastels are also pure artist pigments with very little binder -- a binder that gives them a specific feel and makes the powder stick to itself and toothy surfaces very well. I found there was a lot less waste.

I'm not sure, but I think most of the pure tones are single-pigment colors. There are 21 pure tones counting black and white as pure tones, with tints (mixed with white) and shades (mixed with black) of each pure color and a couple of extra gray tints. Even though I know I love landscapes and would need all the greens and earth tones, actually wanted all the masstones (pure colors) and bought the 20 color Painters set and an extra Chromium Green to have all the possible combinations available, I wanted to see what I would get using just the colors included in the minimal Five Color Painter's Set -- White, Black, Hansa Yellow, Permanent Red and Ultramarine Blue.

So I tried mixing just those colors on a page in my sketchbook. This loose color wheel is on normal tooth sketchbook paper.

 I was very surprised that the primaries included in the five color set would actually create both a vivid purple and a vivid green. The red is a very pure balanced red, the Ultramarine isn't so purplish as to mute mixed greens with the Hansa Yellow. I also got a feel for what the Sofft tools handled like.

One thing -- the videos on YouTube demonstrate cleaning the Sofft tools with a paper towel. You do need to use actual paper towels for this. They clean up fast and easy swiping the tool sideways on it a few times, but if you try it with a cloth rag or jeans or a facial tissue it's too easy to get fibers stuck in the sponge. I had to buy actual paper towels instead of using my cleanup rags, but it's really been worth it.

Sofft tools are available from the makers of PanPastels wherever they're sold. They are not makeup applicators, though some shapes do look an awful lot like women's eyeshadow applicators. The spongy material was formulated to hold a lot more color and they wear far better. Friends who tried to save money by picking up unused makeup applicators had disappointing results, they didn't pick up or hold as much color or lay it down as well.

The rectangle-tip tool is what I used on that mixing test. It handles a lot like using a flat brush for watercolor or acrylics. The color goes on very smoothly and is transparent if you're not putting enough on. I made a common beginner mistake and didn't dip the tool in the pan often enough. Pull it over the surface of the pan once or twice and then make only one or two strokes before doing it again, otherwise you'll be putting very thin glazes on and may pick up color from previous layers.

For big areas, the oval sponge is a great tool. I love that for toning pages or underpainting, it gets a lot down fast and smooth. With four knife shapes and a variety of different sponges, I can get any kind of stroke I want. The only tool I don't have for my own setup is the one with a long handle and replaceable heads that are shaped the same as the short little mini-applicators but have a long handle.

 The triangle-ended knife is good for getting small details and into cracks. The side of any of the knives is good for a narrow line. The tip of the round end knife is wonderful for doing clouds and anything rounded. I haven't used the oval one for anything that specific yet but it has its own stroke too.

The various sponges in different sizes are great too. My favorite is the wedge sponge, which I can use either on a corner to get a tiny detail or make great swooping strokes a lot like using a big flat in oil painting. The wedge sponge especially encouraged me to use more painterly strokes, and I've seen this happen with other pastelists who try Pan Pastels too. Their work loosens up and becomes bold and painterly, but it is possible to get very fine smooth transitions and realism with them too.

It just takes getting used to them and remembering to dip the sponge more often in later layers. Here's my first painting, Cabo San Lucas.

 I loved the painterly way that the rocks came out. Instead of noodling over details, it was a lot easier to block in areas of light and shadow, then start mixing color into them with successive layers and detail them last. The water was a lot like trying to paint water in oils, and its texture came out great. I had a bit of trouble trying to get a smooth texture in the sky, but gave up on that in favor of a painterly texture.

I solved that problem in a later painting when Donna Aldridge, who did most of the demos on the PanPastels site, mentioned in a post to someone else on the http://www.wetcanvas.com thread that she needed to dip the sponge or tool into the color more often. I'd been doing what I usually do when using watercolor or oils -- go heavy with the first stroke and then go around with it using up everything on the brush before dipping again. It takes different habits to use a new medium.

This is almost a new medium. It blends well with other types of soft pastels though -- it can be combined with any and will not change either the chemistry or working properties of the painting. Many artists use Pan Pastels for underpaintings because they're so easy to apply and then finish off detailing and layering with sticks.

 I painted this marmalade tabby for a challenge on http://www.wetcanvas.com using Pan Pastels after I'd ordered the 20 color Tints set and 20 color Shades set to fill out my collection and have all the colors. While I was able to mix any shades and tints I wanted using just the 20 color Painters set, the premixed tints and shades are very useful and consistent.

Light can go over dark using Pan Pastels. The thing to remember while using them is that it may also mix with what's under it, unlike going over heavily with a soft pastel stick. While doing this cat I had to get used to that and to handling them like an oil painting that's still wet.

That gives all the reworking advantages of doing an oil painting wet into wet. One of my future experiments is that I'm going to read through a Bill Alexander or Bob Ross project and try it in Pan Pastels on my favorite surface, Art Spectrum Colourfix. When I want to save money, I use Art Spectrum Colourfix primer on watercolor paper, which gives the same surface with a bit of prep work and lets me recycle failed watercolors into decent underpaintings.

I didn't do that on this cat, but I did use watercolor paper and primer for it.

 An online friend commissioned me to paint a mystical dream she had -- of two cheetahs circling a bonfire in a magical forest at night. I decided to try Pan Pastels, knowing that I could at least underpaint it with the Pans and finish off with sticks if I couldn't get enough detail.

I started with Storm Blue Art Spectrum Colourfix paper, 9" x 12" and used the whole sheet. I laid in the background fast with a big sponge, then started detailing over it and sketched in the cheetahs with the tip of the triangle knife. I shaded them with that and the round and oval knives, then worked on the forest with a rectangle knife getting great painterly strokes in the foliage. I had fun doing this one and tried effects I'd only seen in oil painting, things I had never done in pastels.

I made significant changes during the painting such as moving one cheetah's leg and moving their shadows to be consistent with the light. I found out doing this that you can lift Pan Pastels completely using a kneaded eraser, aka putty eraser, the squishy gray one that is grownup artist version of Silly Putty. Just stretch and press and peel or rub till your color's removed. I got back to the pure color of the paper when needed at one spot. The new color blended over it with no patches or irregularities too.

This makes Pan Pastels a very forgiving medium. It's good to relax and know that if I make mistakes, I can make changes as many times as I need to.

Some of the final details were added with pastel pencils, including the spots, but I could have used the triangle knife for them if I'd been patient enough to dip it in the black for each spot.

Clouds was another experiment. Inspired by some tutorials I read and a video by Deborah Secor, I decided to try a landscape entirely from imagination -- and get my clouds to look three dimensional and lively instead of doing them just by leaving out white areas in a blue sky. So I went back to my Pan Pastels and started mixing the cloud colors by overlaying pure strokes of various Tints.

I think I must have used nine or ten different hues in the clouds, they came out rich and golden as if in late afternoon sun when it's stlil so bright vegetation and ruddy soil are their true colors but will soon lean toward sunset. I loved how the cool colors mixed in the shadows and the warm tints blended in the lighter areas.

I fooled around with the banks of the river a lot and actually changed my mind about four times on their shape, their color, their texture. I played around on this one over and over till I reached a point that I was happy with it -- and I could.

I didn't have to clean up much afterward either.

 You can see a number of good videos on using PanPastels by searching for user PanPastel or on Pan Pastels. Donna Aldridge did most of them and she is a fantastic artist. I've been following her comments and tutorials at http://www.wetcanvas.com for a while now and am so glad she introduced me to this wonderful version of soft pastels. I'm more likely to paint with these than my sticks if I don't have the energy to spread out and then clean up afterward.

http://www.panpastel.com/ has links to all the videos if you don't want to bother to search, plus color charts and listings of set contents for each of the different sets available. The larger sets are a definite bargain.

Individual colors come with a few tools and sleeves for Sofft knives, a mini applicator, a sponge and a couple of sleeves in a storage jar under the jar. They run about $5 online at places like Dick Blick and other companies tend to get a bit higher in price, so comparison shop for where they're on sale. This is pricy compared to soft pastel sticks, a Schminke soft pastel might be $3 or $4 somewhere.

Each pan has about as much pigment as 1 1/3 full stick of soft pastels though, so they last a long time and you can use every speck. You don't have to worry about them getting down too small to handle.

The price per color in sets is lower the larger the set you get. The last time I looked, it was about $200 for the full range 60 color set at Dick Blick. Sofft knives and sponges come in packs or individually and Blick now carries most or all of the styles, they used to only have some of them. Jerry's Artarama also carries the full range, so does ASW, so does Dakota Pastels albeit at slightly higher prices.

All these supplers also carry extra lids if you want to have fewer stacks and more colors visible at a time.

The sleeves for the Sofft knives wear out very fast on Wallis sanded pastel paper, they last longer on Colourfix and a really long time on Mi-Tientes or sketchbook paper. The No. 2 Rectangle Knife sleeve is what fits on the No. 2 Colour Shaper, which is a Firm one quite a bit larger than the No. 2 size Royal Sovereign Colour Shaper. It has a different stroke because the tip bends and it can be used by itself to push color around as well as with the sleeve on it. I bought a pack of extra sleeves for my knives and a four-knife set when I first kitted up, and then got extra knives with the 20 color sets without realizing I would.

I like getting the extras though and while each set came with a rectangle knife, the other knife in the sets was random -- I would guess you get all of them in a 60 color full set. Knives are currently $1.88 at Blick and $5.75 for the set of four, they come with five covers but I got the 40 covers multi pack for $5.13 too, since I knew I might go through a lot of them and I'd hate to run out in the middle of a painting. Sponges come three or four to a pack for small ones and individually for the big oval one.

Unless you specialize in doing a particular subject like landscapes or portraits, I'd seriously recommend the Painters sets as well balanced ranges. The ten color Painters set has the essentials for any subject you could want including a good strong green and some earth tones. I got the 20 color Painters Set first at Blick, which had the best price, then I went back and got the 20 color Tints and 20 color Shades when they stocked them because I found out I'd prefer to have some tints available.

Some of the tints make truly splendid human skin tones, especially the Red Iron Oxide and Burnt Sienna are good skin tone bases. You might prefer a different set that's slanted and has most of your favorite colors, then fill it out with one or two individual colors.

Currently, The Pastel Journal is offering a free sample Pan Pastel with the storage jar and mini applicator with new subscriptions. What color you get is random, one friend got Yellow Ochre, I got Permanent Green Shade, a friend got Permanent Red Shade. I love landscapes anyway, so I know I'll use up the extra.

Give them a try sometime -- especially if you're tired of vacuuming your studio. I hate cleaning up. These are convenient, they're eminently portable if you stack them as long as when you set up outdoors you have some tray or side table to open them up on. Some artists build trays for them out of foam board so they can have all the colors open at once with no fuss. I don't mind unscrewing the jars, it's one of the ways I keep them organized with the shade and tint of each hue together above a storage jar and a related hue's three pans. If I had less table space I'd build taller stacks with three or four colors each.