There’s a certain grace in pastel colours. They put the mind at ease, rectify the damage made by overly saturated colourways, and speak to our inner child. Soothing in nature, pastels lend themselves favourable to most colour palettes, serving as the perfect medium from which one can experiment with bolder hues. Ahmed Ali, an Egyptian 3D artist and illustrator, immersed himself in a world of pastel when he built a series of 3D scenes that are fully saturated in crème, baby blue, salmon pink and a slew of pastel shades.

“Colours have a different effect and a certain psychological value to them that dictated the project, informing its visual direction and conveying its feelings while being easy on the eye,” Ahmed Ali tells #SceneHome. An Applied Arts degree holder, Ali has spent every waking moment following his graduation on the hunt for a visual style that differentiates him amidst the saturated industry.

Adopting a palette that evokes calmness and cleanliness, Ali’s illustrations allow the eye to engage with the design, ultimately permitting his audience to witness the nuanced beauty of the minimal architecture he built. His total look designs contain a ‘fresh’ factor that is solely an offshoot of the colours at hand, ones which are often referred to as ‘ice-cream’ colours. Used in tandem with rigid architecture and urban cityscapes, the colours manage to evoke blissfulness, even when the infrastructure at hand is innately incapable of doing so.

“I created a lot of projects using pastel colours, keeping them in mind from the concept and modelling stages until the rendering and colour assignment,” Ali continues. Using this soft duality, Ali explores the different emotions that result from applying pastels to architectural elements such as stairs, doorways and windows.

The artist’s colourways (particularly his striking balance between primary colours) have a unique way of tapping into emotions. “I became connected to this style and its colours, it has its own state of mind that I keep upgrading,” he explains. “I hope that my work is inspiring to people, that it’s something different, that’s why I always go for a fantastical concept.”

Often associated with romanticism, red is not one to visually encompass Ali’s tranquil take on architecture, however, what Ali grows to express are the ways in which red’s pastel counterparts depict more subdued facets of romance: tenderness, softness and warmth. Present in this artist’s world, the sentiments portrayed above allow Ali to position his art as a means to mark new beginnings and with it a new world.