50 Pastel Quotes for Art Lovers

By Norbert Juma

Master quote curator and editor on a mission to inspire

Published January 6, 2023

If you are interested in reading some of the best pastel quotes, we have you covered.

Here, we have created a list of quotes about pastels for you to read and enjoy.

Since the quotes are divided into five sections, finding your favorite pastel quotes will be much easier.

In addition, we have also shed some light on pastel colors and their different types.

So, let’s start with defining the pastels.

What are pastels?

Talking about pastels, they are unique types of colors made of chalk, pigment, and a binder.

These colors look identical to the crayons but are made with a different kind of binder.

Besides, pastels are dry colors, making them an excellent choice for new artists.

Different types of pastels

There are three different types of pastel colors.

Hard Pastels
Soft Pastels
Pan Pastels

Now, let’s define each of these types.

1. Hard Pastels

As the name suggests, hard pastels have a relatively strong construction.

These colors are suitable for detailed work and outlines.

The ingredients used for making hard pastels are similar to soft pastels.

However, the only difference relates to the higher ratio of binder, which adds more stiffness to a pastel.

2. Soft Pastels

This type of pastel color is relatively more popular.

These pastels are made of chalk, pigment, and gum Arabic (binder).

This binder is also used in watercolors, which keeps them soft.

You will find it easy to blend different colors to create extraordinary shades when using soft pastels.

Also, you can blend these colors with your finger.

3. Pan Pastels

This is the latest type of pastel colors, as they were introduced in the past few years.

Pan pastel is a hybrid type made with soft pastels and watercolors.

Each color is molded or shaped like a pan and is used with brushes or specific tools.

Pan pastels are suitable for all types of artists, including those experienced in traditional painting.

These pastels can serve the purpose well if you are working on a small project or intend to use them occasionally.

Take a moment and look through our pastel quotes and sayings.

Top 10 pastel quotes

This section contains the best and most popular pastel quotes. So, let’s check out what we got here.

1. “I like pastels and lighter shades on darker skins.” — Laura Mvula

2. “Pastel is possibly the purest form of painting.” ― Amanda McLean

3. “I love the smell of pastels…that breathes life into my soul.” ― Ama H

4. “It’s hard to look intimidati2two1onng in pastels.” — Sherrilyn Kenyon

5. “The pastel shades I embraced, Hues mundane, yet so chaste.” — Namrata Roy

6. “Why not spend that time on art: painting, sculpting, charcoal, pastel, oils?” ― Laurie Halse

7. “The peaks were glorious pastels, shimmering with only the faintest pigment.” ― Paige Britt

8. “I blend some areas to tone down the look of the pastels in less important areas.” — Paul Murray

9. “She had expressed herself, as women will, in a smug broadside of pastel shades.” ― Mervyn Peake

10. “Not to find pleasure in serious reading gives a pastel coloring to the mind.” — Marie de Rabutin-Chantal

Interesting pastel quotes

These pastel quotes are interesting as well as inspirational. Just take a look at these quotes and find your element of interest.

11. “Let me lost in the vast sky among pastel clouds.” — Unknown

12. “With dogs and people, it’s love in big splashy colours. When you’re involved with a cat, you’re dealing in pastels.” — Louis J. Camuti

13. “And although Margarita lived in a world that predated Technicolor, she always dreamed of the boy in rich pastels.” — Salvador Plascencia

14. “Turquoise, yellow, pink, a lot of the pastel colors are some of the more popular suit colors this year. But it varies from old to young.” — Amy Wright

15. “Show me a writer, any writer, who hasn’t suffered and I’ll show you someone who writes in pastels as opposed to primary colors.” — Rita Mae Brown

16. “Savannah is a lovely pastel dream of tight cobbled streets. There are legendary scenes to rival any dreamed up by Tennessee Williams.” — Rosemary Daniell

17. “I go with what I like and I generally just cling to things that are pastel and remind me of being a little kid. It’s just what it is right now, but I go through phases.” — Melanie Martinez

18. “In drawing after drawing, pastel after pastel, painting after painting, the contours of Degas’s dancing figures become, at a certain point, darkly insistent, tangled and dusky.” — Unknown

19. “Some days I do appreciate things more, eggs, flowers, but then I decide I’m only having an attack of sentimentality, my brain going pastel Technicolor, like beautiful-sunset greeting cards they used to make so many of in California. High-gloss hearts. The danger is grayout.” — Margaret Atwood

20. “We’re vampires,” he said. “Not fairies.” “Sometimes I’m not so sure about that. You see that study your king hangs out in?” “He’s nearly blind.” “Which explains why he hasn’t hanged himself in that pastel train wreck.” “I thought you were bitching about the gloom-and-doom decorating.” — J.R. Ward

Pastel quotes for Instagram

Sharing quotes on Instagram is fun. If you are looking for Insta-worthy pastel quotes, you can find one in the section below.

21. “Never get on an airplane if the pilot is wearing a hat that has more than three pastel colors.” — George Carlin

22. “He goes for stark versus accessorized, dark over bright, jewel tone instead of pastel, carnal over flirty.” — Karen Marie Moning

23. “I love pointy nails! A cute way to add a pop of color to your nails is to make a V-shape at the ends of them in a pastel color.” — Bella Thorn

24. “The image of all the cars leaving pastel-colored people at the same time has never really left me as an anti-ambition for life.” — Rupert Friend

25. “Preliminary drawings or sketches in oil or pastel often have an immediacy and emotional appeal far greater than the final canvas.” — Paul Mellon

26. “The ‘here’ of Watts is pastel houses with window gratings in curly patterns. ‘Here’ is yard sales with bins full of stuffed animals and used water guns. Here is Crips turf.” — Unknown

27. “All my works in pastels are the products of obsessional neurosis and are therefore inextricably connected to my disease. I create pieces even when I don’t see hallucinations, though.” — Yayoi Kusama

28. “Although millions of Americans purr with pastel delusions of Mohandas K. Gandhi, those who actually live in the scrawny crank’s homeland struggle to throw off the painful aftermath of his quackery.” — Emmett Tyrrell

29. “I’m on the verge of tears by the time we arrive at Pastels since I’m positive we won’t get seated, but the table is good, and relief that is almost tidal in scope washes over me in an awesome wave.” — Bret Easton Ellis

30. “My parents made no money whatsoever, but they really knew how to see, as artists. So a big adventure might be, on a hot, dreadful day with no place to go, to go out and draw our chickens with pastels. My parents gave me a sense of wonder.” — Ali MacGraw

Pastel quotes for the artist in you

Here are a few of the best pastel quotes for those who love using pastel quotes for painting or creating art.

31. “You don’t need to compete with the rainbows but be the pastels, uneven but still permanent.” — Unknown

32. “I use a lot of blending and layers of pastel to achieve the smooth, polished look and quality of extreme realism.” — Allan Berman

33. “There’s really no need to blend pastel strokes to create colors or to smooth transitions. Our eyes do the job for us when we look at individual strokes or dots of color.” — Mikki Root Dillon

34. “But the long tunnels of art through which I walked in Rome that day had no ragged edges, cowardly colors, or shades of pastel that didn’t know what to do with themselves.” — Unknown

35. “Bright colours or dark ones, sparkling clarity or misty atmosphere, landscape, still life, portrait – I haven’t met a subject, style or mood yet that can’t be portrayed beautifully in pastel.” — Dave Beckett

36. “I found ways to seal off the powdery surface of pastel so that gold leaf can adhere to it. Similarly, I found ways to roughen the texture of the gold leaf so pastel can be applied over it.” — Doug Dawson

37. “With pastels you don’t need gimmicks and are only limited by your imagination. If something doesn’t work for you… simply rub/scrub the offending area right back to the paper colour and build it up again.” — Gail Boyle

38. “As I rarely find the actual colours that I need in the pastel sticks, I build up the hues by using overlapping strokes of different colours… my colours are in fact made up of several others, like a tapestry.” — Gwenneth Barth

39. “I did some pastels, and I did other pieces in which there was just basically one color per square, and then they would get bigger and I could get 2 or 3 colors into the square, and ultimately I just started making oil paintings.” — Chuck Close

40. “The visual palette suggests the creepy pastel paintings of Guy Peellaert (Rock Dreams); the fantasy battles with monsters and samurais echo the muscular landscapes of Frank Frazetta and Boris Vallejo. The movie is like an arrested adolescent’s Google search run amok.” — Richard Corliss

Other pastel quotes to draw your attention

If you can’t find your favorite pastel quote, here are some other options to look at.

41. “I am a pastelist, for the most part, but much of my inspiration for pastel work comes from oil.” — Ron Monsma

42. “The direct, colorful nature of pastels is ideal for capturing the qualities of immediacy, spontaneity, and sparkle.” — Patricia Greenwell

43. “Like an alchemist… transmute dusty, dry, opaque pastel into fluid, shiny transparent effects. The solid becomes transient.” — Janine Parsons

44. “I like to be very girly, with bows and ruffles on the red carpet. I love pastel colours, especially blue. Me and my sister both because of our eyes look good in blues.” — Unknown

45. “I am not exuding anything,” said Holly through gritted teeth. Orion tapped her shoulder. “I beg to differ. You’re exuding right now, a wonderful aura. It’s pastel blue with little dolphins.” — Eoin Colfer

46. “To clean pastels, drop in a covered container half full of a fine consistency dry cereal… Put the lid on and gently swirl around a little. Then use a good-sized sieve to retrieve the pastels.” — Rita Mackenzie

47. “The Moscow of these pageants is the old core city with its buildings of pastel hues and white trim that, with the season’s continual dustings of snow, appear to be the work of confectioners” — Warren Hoge

48. “One of the great advantages of working in pastel is that the medium allows the artist to address both value and color simultaneously… value, depending on the degree of pressure used in its applications.” — Sidney Hermel

49. “I cringe when someone refers to pastels as chalk but it really grates when people call them crayons, as in ‘I just can’t believe you can do that with crayons!’ Are they referring to those waxy things children use.” — Amanda McLean

50. “Some people like to blend the colours to produce images with a high degree of surface finish—rather like oil painting techniques. Other people believe that much of the pastel’s attraction lies in its grainy, rough texture and loose network of individual strokes. Many people like to use both effects.” — Grace Paleg