Pastel Colors

The clear blue color of the ocean, the fresh green colors of the leaves, the red, yellow, purple colors of flowers and the orange from the fruits. There are so many colors in nature which make life beautiful and colorful. Man has always loved to discover and create new colors from the basic 7 shades of the rainbow and is quite successful in doing so. But the way he has made these colors is a very interesting discovery. Earlier, flowers and fruits were the only medium of making color, but today these colors can be found in the form known as pastel. It mainly consists of a pure pigment in the form of a powder and a binder to hold it together. These pigments used in pastel colors are the ones used in every art medium like oil-paints and water colors. However, the binder used is of a neutral hue that is of low saturation and thus binds well with the pigments. These pastel art colors usually come in the form of sticks or crayons and are made in 12 to as many as 95 shades. Take a look at what are the different colors found in this colorful pastel palate.

What are Pastel Colors?

Pastel colors are defined as the light and dark shades of any color found in the form of sticks or crayons that are made with the combination of a color pigment and a binder. You can have you own collection of these pastel color crayons as they come in every possible shade of VIBGYOR. These have classifications like cold and warm colors of these basic 7 and each of these 7 colors have three forms in them viz. the tint, light and dark of every color. It's quite unimaginable of how many colors can come out of this combination, but those that exist are very attractive. There are four pastel color types which we will refer to in the following paragraphs, viz, the mid tone, the tint colors, the light and dark colors.

The Mid Tone Pastel Colors
These pastel colors are often considered as the basic or raw colors out of which further combination and shades are made. As mentioned above, these mid tone colors have the cold and warm forms of pastels and have about 10 basic colors. These are as follows;

• Warm red: Permanent red, scarlet, poppy red
• Cold red: Carmine, crimson, madder red
• Orange: Mid and permanent orange
• Cold yellow: Lemon yellow
• Warm green: Permanent and phthalo green
• Cold green: Aquamarine, teal
• Warm blue: French ultramarine, deep ultramarine
• Cold blue: Cerulean blue, turquoise
• Warm violet: Red violet
• Cold violet: Ultramarine violet or blue violet

These 10 basic mid tone colors are all you need to move on to your tint colors.

The Tint Pastel Colors
These colors are further modified from each of the basic 10 pastel shades you have. Each of these mid tone colors now are divided into 6 tint shades individually, for example, if you consider the 6 tint shades of cold blue, then the first will be Turquoise 1 which is the darkest and Turquoise 6 being the lightest of the tint colors. Similarly, all the 10 basic colors have their 6 shades from dark to light and are numbered respectively. These pastel colors are created with the combination of mid tone color pigments and are held together with binders used in making these pastels.

The Light and Dark Pastel Colors
Similar to the tints, the 10 basic warm and cold mid-tone colors have their light and dark shades. Referring to the above mentioned warm and cold color list, every color except two have their light and dark shades. Orange however, has only the light shades and so does cold yellow. Since there are no darker shades in these, they are used in their natural forms. The darker shade of orange is warm red and the darker shade of yellow is orange, thus they are best used originally.

Other Colors
There are some other colors which is the combination of black and white with the mid tones to give very different and unique pastels. Also known as earth colors they are, cold earth brown, gold ocher, burnt sienna, raw umber, Caput Mortuum, Indian red and Mars violet. They too have their tints, light and dark shades as usual. Apart from these a mixture of black and white gives you another unique color known as gray which can have, neutral, warm and cold gray (Davy's or Mouse gray) and (Payne's or Blue gray).

There are many more pastel colors which are being discovered every single day and the ones mentioned in the above article are just a few of them. God, also doesn't like a black and white world and hence he made colors, so enjoy them and feel free to add some more to my list.