Tip of the Month - April 2001

As a painter of primarily warm dominance paintings, YELLOW is definitely an important color for me. My studies of YELLOW have taken me in many different directions.

With YELLOW, I had the same challenges as I had with RED. Why did I not succeed in mixing the exact color that I wanted when I mixed the YELLOW with RED or BLUE? It all came down to analyzing the hidden content of the chosen YELLOW. It remains true that three primaries in the mix will dull the resulting color. I discovered that aureolin has hidden blue; cadmium yellow has hidden red. I mixed both of these YELLOWS with a variety of blues.

1. aureolin with different blues:



2. cadmium yellow with the same blues:

After looking at the results, I compared my remaining YELLOWS with either aureolin (lemon-like) or cadmium yellow (sunny). I tested each of the YELLOWS with blues to see if the results were similar to the aureolin and cadmium yellow tests.

I next tested aureolin with tube greens; I, also, tested cadmium yellow with the same greens.

1. aureolin with greens



2. cadmium yellow with the same greens

Upon looking at the results, I discovered that an undercoat of YELLOW, in particular aureolin, certainly does help to give a light-filled quality to my greens.

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