Pastel colors have remained popular over the centuries. Pastel colors date back to the 16th century, when they were used by Italian and German artists. But also in the 20th century popular TV-series "Miami Vice" pastel colors were the trademark of the main character Sonny Crockett (Don Johnson). What are pastels and what makes them so special?
The name pastel color originates from the pastel stick. This art medium consists of a pure, powdered pigment with a neutral colored (white) binder, often chalk or gypsum. Meanwhile there are a large number of variants on the market with other binding material, including eg. oil pastels, hard pastels and pastel crayons.
There’s a significant distinction between the painters’ material pastel stick versus the color pastel. While it is quite possible to make bright and strong colors with pastel sticks, when we talk about pastel colors we specifically soft and light tints.
To make things even more confusing, also an artwork produced with pastels is called a pastel!
The ability of these pastel sticks to make very light tints of one pure color pigments, has yielded the name pastel colors.
As I mentioned already, pastel colors contain pure pigments, which results in very pure color. Light and pure neutral gray is sometimes included, but gray blue, gray green and the like are not considered 'true' pastels.
Looking at the different color systems, pastels have some characteristic parameters (values):
Some example of HEX-code of pastel colors; all three values for R, G and B are relatively high:
Some well known pastels have specific names: Pink, mauve, and baby blue, as well as magic mint, peach, periwinkle, and lavender. (source: wikipedia-en).
Since all pastel colors are very bright, they lack the dramatic light versus dark contrast. Pastel art works therefor often seem soft, romantic and sweet.
A commissioned work that I make a few years ago as a wedding gift from the groom for the bride. It shows Café P. de Gruyter in Amsterdam (NL), where the couple to-be-married had had quite a few dates, I was told. The pastel colors really matched the location and the overall "love is in the air"-mood of the work.
For inspiration I have collected a number of images of pastel artworks through the ages.
Read more about visiting this restaurant...
https://thelcstudio.co.uk/portfolio/scoop-ice-cream/
Sonny Crockett changed the "sweet baby image" of pastels...
More fashion tips from the 80's/90's...
In this series you can watch the fashion slowly changing from pastel to neon colors!
The colors really fit in with the storyline of the movie.
