January 6, 2026

Pastelle Portraits

It is often referred to as the “art of makeup,” and the portraits you see here created by Liz Martin and her team are indeed closely allied to art, in this case pastelle portraits. Colours softly blurring and blending on the skin creating moments of beauty, colours almost undefinable as pink or green in their shadowy softness and shaded and smudged without dominating either the features or the skin of the models. How the colours were applied and how the shading is achieved is the craft of brush, powder, fingertips, and the skills of the application, just don’t ask me to try and do it. This is art and makeup, colour alchemy and the eye of an artist and the sensitivity of a visionary creator to make magic.

The tint on the fingers, or smudged colour on the lips, the mis matched proportions of colour shading, the irregularity of the balance require an artist’s eye and confidence. This only comes from knowing exactly when to stop, when to carry on, how much to remove and how much to add. The idea that “doing makeup” is just a job is totally disproved by these images. The great makeup artists of the past such as Richard Sharah or Pablo at Elizabeth Arden would recognise what Liz is doing in this story, she is creating something we hadn’t imagined, to paraphrase Diana Vreeland, she’s giving us what we didn’t know we wanted.

The overall calmness of the images, the way the accessories support yet fade into the work, the way the hair acts as a flourish or seemingly a brushstroke is all being accumulated and being assembled to create the final impression. We, the viewers, know we are looking at beauty, but it is tilted away from the ordinary or conventional, the whispers of colour at times intensifying, at others looking as if a breath would make them vanish. They are like coloured clouds drifting on the skin, they are like dream colours, they’re………. beautiful.

Thank you, Liz, and your team, for offering us an escape into art and beauty, it’s not fashion or makeup in the ordinary definition of the words, it is the creation of images to enchant and delight. It’s odd they made me think of opera and classical ballet, perhaps Les pêcheurs de perles, or La Bayadère with its Kingdom of Shades, but I’m sure they will conjure up different associations for each observer. In the end it is simply six beautiful pastelle portraits by Liz Martin to frame and gaze at, as with any work of art.

Words by Tony Glenville