Most Useful Yellows For Painters

Hello Yellow! In this video we will walk you through our favourite yellow paints and how to use them. Yellow is very different from its bolder primary siblings and requires slightly different handling to master. Our favourite yellows are:
Cadmium Lemon
Cadmium Yellow Light
Cadmium Yellow Medium
Check out our website for classes!
www.ourstudioseries.com

[@baulsmahoney]

You guys are awesome. I hope me and my daughter can banter like this one day. I’m trying to get her into painting at a young age she’s 3 and we have fun painting together

[@vsubr5329]

please keep em coming.... your videos are very informative while still a lot of fun.

[@ourstudioseries7490]

More to come! And thank you so much for the positive feedback!! 🙏

[@artistjoh]

How can a video about yellow not include the most important and useful yellow of all? Yellow Ochre and its variations might be earth colors, but they are not browns and definitely belong in the yellow group. They are also at least a partial answer to what color yellow becomes in shadows. If I had to keep just one yellow in my palette, it would always be Yellow Ochre. No other yellow is as perfect for mixing useful greens and earthy oranges. It is the perfect yellow for making the pale ochre and salmon colors in flesh. It takes years to finish a tube of Cad Yellow, but I use several tubes of Yellow Ochre every year. By lumping earth colors into a separate category devalues the yellowness in Yellow Ochre, or the redness in Red Ochre and makes many people think of them as browns. Nope, Yellow Ochre is very definitely yellow, and the best yellow on the palette.

[@ourstudioseries7490]

Every artist has their favourite pigment! One reason I don't use yellow ochre is today we have such a variety of pigments with higher chromatic values than their more muted elder counterparts. We can use cad yellow to achieve a wonderfully vibrant yellow BUT if we need a muted warm yellow like yellow ochre we can easily mix to get an ochre colour that is almost indistinguishable from yellow ochre (#CC7722) This is not to say that yellow ochre and Naples yellow are not wonderful colours- but when trying to minimize the number of paint tubes in your kit, there is no substitute for cad yellow :) Hope this helps!

[@mathilda6763]

agree. I really like using yellow ochre. I like it for portraits but it's also nice for mixing greens...mixed with prussian blue and a smidge of orange red ( vermillion hue for example) it's my base tone for north sea water. it also has the plus that it's not as expensive, so in a limited palette it's really nice for studying.

[@roseeartworksnl7992]

Thanks. Just found you on my quest to figure out best red and now yellow for my scenes. I subscribed!!!!

[@jivka6518]

Cad yellow it is - nice one refreshing to get a good information on paint as they are. Thanks for the info.

[@Leticiapowers]

Love to watch your videos 💖

[@ourstudioseries7490]

Thank you Leticia! And I love to see your amazing paintings!!

[@michaeljohnangel6359]

You guys are great!! I'm passing your link(s) on to our students (the Angel Academy of Art, Florence). Thanks for doing this!

[@ourstudioseries7490]

Awesome Thank you so much! Would love to take a summer course with you in Florence one day. Any suggestions for future topics would be gratefully accepted 🙏

[@robinbrennan4561]

You have answered so many of my Questions about how these colors are named! Thank you!😊❤

[@ourstudioseries7490]

You are so welcome!

[@avialbersbenchamo4797]

The sweetest video 🍰

[@daannielism]

This was so helpful! Subbed :)

[@ourstudioseries7490]

So glad you found it helpful and thank you very much!!

[@user-fk8hr6gv6g]

I have a tube of Pebeo cad. Yellow imitation PY1 , I need to research that now. Upon research the imitation cad. Yellow PY1 is Hansa yellow and it also contains tit. white. I like the imitation out of the tube for brightness but it doesn't mix as well for me with other colors.

[@pollyester6627]

Greetings, fun stuff. Dark yellow, add cad yellow deep or a bit of yellow ochre or mars yellow? Both of the latter are available in light versions. And yeah those tricky 'Cadmium' hue labels, like labeling margarine as butter!

[@ourstudioseries7490]

Labelling Margarine as Butter! I am totally going to use that haha it’s a perfect analogy. 🙏

[@RichardLutes]

Cadmium Yellow Deep goes to the darker side (though it’s actually more of a school-bus yellow.) and d the there’s the Chrome yellow (a bit lighter) and your bismuth yellow (still light.) Aureolin yellow is dustier, deeper and a bit darker, and you have the lighter Hansa yellow. Lesser known yellows like titanium yellow are available by Utrecht, I was able to attain a tube of zinc yellow (unknown brand, possibly Duro, ) from eBay (light and dusty) And of course you have the Indian yellow and yellow ochres to hit the darker, warmer areas of yellow.

[@EulogyfortheAngels]

Can't beat Hansa Yellow Lemon/Light (PY3) when trying to mix the absolute brightest, purest spectrum greens! 😃 Mix that with some Pthalo Green - Yellow Shade (PG36) and the results are somewhere between Mt Dew labeling and Nickelodeon goo!

[@ourstudioseries7490]

Hahaha between Mt Dew and Nickelodeon green. In my next class I’m going to tell my students we are mixing Mt Dew green 😝

[@lucianocortopassi3098]

what happened to ocher yellow and naples yellow ???

[@ourstudioseries7490]

Haha yes where did they go!! Today we have such a variety of pigments with MUCH higher chromatic values than their more muted elder counterparts. We can use cad yellow to achieve a wonderfully vibrant yellow BUT if we need a muted warm yellow like yellow ochre- we can add a touch of dioxazine (and maybe a touch of white) to get an ochre colour. This is not to say that yellow ochre and Naples yellow are not wonderful colours- but when trying to minimize the number of paint tubes in your kit, there is no substitute for cad yellow :) Hope this helps!

[@drewgarcia9823]

Hi indian yellow is helpul for portrait painters?

[@ourstudioseries7490]

Indian is a beautiful warm yellow and by all means, if you have it, use it! I don’t use it because I can get away with muting down and warming up cadmium yellow. But Indian yellow is wonderfully transparent, a feature not shared with the cadmiums.

[@joebrann4612]

Needed a dark orange on the shadow side of that lemon

[@LittleMew133]

What's the difference between lemon yellow vs cad lemon? 🍋

[@JohnDoe-ej9mi]

I use 2 yellows most of the time . One more greenish , "cadmium yellow light" and one more red that can be indian yellow or cadmium yellow deep / medium. Unluckily Arylide yellow and similar pigments can't replace cadmium yellow well , because they are very transparent usually . They are nice in mix or if you use them with glazing but they behave differently than cadmium yellow and the covering power is just not comparable. ☹

[@thekappap]

I'm doing a painting of a golden doodle but I don't know which colors to mix oil paint.??

[@ourstudioseries7490]

A golden doodle can be any colour depending on the light! If the light is cool you might see muted blue grey colours in the highlights and deep brown red hues in the shadows. Good tip for seeing colour is cut a little hole in a white piece of paper and hold that hole up to whatever part of the photo you are trying to match colours with. You can even dab a bit of the mixture next to the hole the double check your mixture. Hope this helps! Happy painting :)

[@netsaosa4973]

👍

[@keith_cancel]

There also bismuth yellow (Aka Bismuth Vanadate) that is very similar to the cadmium yellows.

[@ourstudioseries7490]

Do you find the bismuth yellow on the cooler side? I will see if I can find a tube and test it out! Thank you :) Always good to experiment

[@user-kb9cg2xq9p]

No lemon yellow?

[@Swartwood12c]

What yellow would you say is the closest to pure primary yellow? Seems they all lean toward green or orange.

[@ourstudioseries7490]

This is a hard one.....There is no such thing as a perfect pigment which is why most pigments lean in one direction or the other. Honestly- Hansa yellow is probably the closest to primary yellow BUT it isn't the best pigment. It dies in mixtures and is too transparent to make it onto my palette. What you can do, is work with the cad yellows by controlling the temperatures. If the cad yellow light is too greenish you can warm it up with some of the more orangey cad yellow medium. Hope this helps!!

[@danielfernandeznungaray8996]

Is it safe to tint Cadmium Yellows with Lead White?

[@Divertedflight]

Lead white doesn't seem to react with the sulphur in the now more stabilized (From the late 1920's onwards) cadmium yellow pigment. The only reaction I've heard of is a chemist putting wet oil paint of both colours into boiling water for an hour.

[@danielfernandeznungaray8996]

@@Divertedflight OMG I'm so glad to read this information. My manuals are a little bit old , and I was afraid of using the White Lead tube I bought, with the Cadmium Yellows. I thank you a lot

[@alexkorami6679]

What happened to "Naples Yellow"

[@ourstudioseries7490]

Ah always hard to justify, as I do love Naples Yellow, but I can get away with using cad yellow and muting it down to get pretty close. I try to avoid overcrowding my palette so have to make tough choices and keep only the essentials.

[@ARTtract]

I think that the "coldest" yellow is Strontium yellow

[@GEOGigalot]

I agree

[@ourstudioseries7490]

Ohh even cooler than lemon yellow? I have never used Strontium- I know it is rare. Have you got it in your kit?

[@tonalharmony9266]

Good demonstration of the cadmiums, but your ignoring the excellent Bismuth Yellow (PY184) on the cooler side, and Benzimdiazole Yellow (PY154) -which can be produced in both light and medium shades is a mystery to me.

[@diegoallcore]

That variations are actually chemical variations of the same molecule, that's why it retained the same pigment number. In chemistry they are called isomers

[@sagreroart1090]

Gelb is yellow in german.

[@ourstudioseries7490]

Languages and how they evolve is so fascinating! It is definitely etymologically related.

[@k.k8791]

How about the yellow ochre 🙄🙄

[@ourstudioseries7490]

Yellow ochre is an earth pigment. Lovely natural colour, Aisling uses it but Dermot prefers to tone down a cad yellow to achieve the same effect. Depends on how distilled you prefer your palette. It is easy to achieve an ochre colour by mixing more modern pigments, however there is no way to get the vibrancy of a cad yellow with other yellows.

[@k.k8791]

@@ourstudioseries7490 i love earth pigments they're extremely lightfast and very cheap .yellow ochre is essential for me for portraits ❤