Gamblin Artists Colors
Yellows

The color yellow appears to advance. It has the highest reflectivity of any color.

Today hearing "yellow" many painters will think of Cadmium Yellow – brilliant and opaque. Cadmium Yellow replaced toxic chrome (lead) yellows. Although more expensive than Chrome Yellow, Cadmium Yellow was used by landscape painters, including Claude Monet, because of its higher chroma and its greater purity of color.

Painters today can choose from among the cadmium yellows of the impressionists as well as the modern and more transparent hansa yellows. Hansa yellows retain their intensity in tints and make beautiful glazes. Hansa Yellows can boost cadmiums in mixes; enabling brighter secondaries. Indian Yellow has been prized for hundreds of years and is ideally suited for glazing. In its transparency, it makes a glowing warm yellow—as if a painting were suddenly lit with summer sunshine.

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Cadmium Lemon: This is the coolest shade of Cadmium Yellow.

Pigment: CP cadmium zinc sulfide (PY35)
Vehicle: Alkali refined linseed oil
Lightfastness I, Series 4, OPAQUE, MSDS
Cadmium Yellow Light: Cadmium Yellow Light is a bright, cool chemically pure Cadmium color - one step warmer than our Cadmium Lemon. Excellent opacity

Pigment: Concentrated cadmium zinc sulfide (PY 35)
Vehicle: Alkali refined linseed oil
Lightfastness I, Series 4, OPAQUE, MSDS
Cadmium Yellow Medium: Pure medium yellow with great opacity and naturally muted tint. This chemically pure cadmium color replaced toxic chrome yellow for the Impressionists. Most useful for natural light painting.

Pigment: Concentrated cadmium sulfide (PY 37)
Vehicle: Alkali refined linseed oil
Lightfastness I, Series 4, OPAQUE, MSDS
Cadmium Yellow Deep: Chemically pure deep yellow Cadmium color has excellent opacity and muted tint.

Pigment: Concentrated cadmium sulfide (PY 37)
Vehicle: Alkali refined linseed oil
Lightfastness I, Series 4, OPAQUE, MSDS

Before the Industrial Revolution, painters used Yellow Ochres or Orpiment (sulfide of arsenic). Occasionally painters found some Gamboge, a strongly colored secretion from trees that resembles amber. Gamboge was used for glazing before Indian Yellow became available in the middle of the 19th century. To make Indian Yellow, cows were force fed mango leaves and given no water. Their urine was collected in dirt balls and sold as "pigment." The resulting artists' color was a warm transparent glazing yellow. But Indian Yellow was lost somewhere between the decline of cruelty to animals and the rise of manufactured pigments.

In the 20th century, the most transparent of the yellows that we at Gamblin call "Indian Yellow" is a light stable diarylide pigment. In its transparency, it makes a glowing warm yellow—as if a painting were suddenly lit with summer sunshine.

Indian Yellow: This color has been prized for hundreds of years. But only now has the color been made with a completely lightfast pigment.

Pigment: Diarylide yellow HR70 (PY83)
Vehicle: Alkali refined linseed oil
Lightfastness I, Series 3, TRANSPARENT, MSDS

A color with obscure origins, Naples Yellow was originally lead antimoniate. Assyrian artists used this pigment to make ceramic glaze. Contemporary history of this color begins in the 18th century but "Naples Yellow" means more a color than a chemical composition. Rubens used this color extensively for skin tones. Because the original pigment is lead based, Robert Gamblin formulated an excellent copy at a reasonable price.

Naples Yellow Hue: A pale opaque earthy yellow.

Pigment: Zinc oxide, concentrated cadmium sulfide, natural hydrated iron oxide (PW 4, PY 37, PY 43)
Vehicle: Alkali refined linseed oil
Lightfastness I, Series 2, OPAQUE, MSDS

Hansa yellow pigments were first made in Germany just before World War I. They are organic pigments that are semi-transparent and lightfast (Hansa Yellow Light is Lightfastness II, and Hansa Yellow Medium & Deep are Lightfastness I). In their masstones, Hansa Yellows resemble Cadmium Yellows but the similarity ends there. Hansa Yellows make more intense tints and cleaner secondaries, especially when mixed with other organic (modern) colors like Phthalo Blue and Green. Because they are more transparent, Hansa Yellows have great value as glazing colors. Painters can also take advantage of the "temperature" shifts of the Hansas –- from coolest yellow (Hansa Yellow Light) to warm golden yellow (Hansa Yellow Deep).

Hansa Yellow Light: Hansa Yellows are not Cadmium wannabes! Coolest yellow. Cleaner in masstone, brighter in tint, more transparent, try using Hansa Yellow Light instead of Cad Yellow Light where transparency is desired. Also useful to intensify tint of Cadmium Yellows.

Pigment: Arylide yellow (PY 3)
Vehicle: Alkali refined linseed oil
Lightfastness II, Series 3, SEMI-TRANSPARENT, MSDS
Hansa Yellow Medium: Its masstone is very similar to Cadmium Yellow Medium but semi- transparent. Clean, bright tint. Use in place of Cadmium Yellow where higher key tint is desired. Also Hansa Yellows' transparencies make them useful for mixing cleaner, brighter secondaries.

Pigment: Arylide yellow (PY 74)
Vehicle: Alkali refined linseed oil
Lightfastness I, Series 3, SEMI-TRANSPARENT, MSDS
Hansa Yellow Deep: While this color has not been tested for Lightfastness by ASTM, it is being used to paint the yellow stripe on city streets! Golden yellow, warmest of the Gamblin Hansas.

Pigment: Arylide yellow (PY 75)
Vehicle: Alkali refined linseed oil
Lightfastness NT, Series 3, SEMI-TRANSPARENT, MSDS


 
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