Having issues with yellow

[Dribble Joy]

I'm painting up a warboss, and being Bad Moons, there's a lot of yellow.

Now my usual tactic for yellow is to prime the yellow areas in white, add a layer of golden yellow, wash it and build up from there, and it generally looks good (ignore the avatar image, he's old and rubbish).

For the warboss though I wanted to spend a bit more time on him, so I decided to build up the yellow from a snakebite leather base (orangy brown), which would give it a more natural look and less stark.

The problem is that building up the yellow on top of this takes forever, which I don't mind doing, but since yellow paints tend to have very low pigment contents I've had to use a lot of layers and in my impatience used it almost neat and caused a degree of caking in several areas. Plus where it's not solid yellow, it looks almost green to the eye.

How do you guys paint yellow? What do you use as a shade coat? I've heard purples can help (since it's a complimentary colour) but is there anything else I can try?

 

[Godlikebuthumble]

One word: Tausept Ochre. Ok, two words.
I found Foundation colours to be a blessing for working with the "traditionally" difficult colours, like red and yellow. And depending on how brown you want the yellow to be, I'd go with either Tausept Ochre or the somewhat straighter Iyanden Darksun (both are still rather "muted" tones).
You can also shade those with Foundations, e.g. Calthan Brown or Macharius Solar Orange, respectively. For highlights, just add either a regular brighter yellow, white, or bone colour, and the high pigmentation of the Foundations will keep the mix from becoming too transparent.
Just remember that you might want to thin them a bit more than regular paints, and to stir them up regularly, as they do tend to separate easily because of the high pigmentation. Also, they taste more earthy than regular Citadels :nobrushlick:

 

[Dribble Joy]

I found that even going over Iyanden Darksun required too many coats. I am trying to get a very bright yellow, but I want to start it off with a dark/natural colour rather than orange.

I'll get a few pics up in a bit.

 

[Wyrmypops]

I stumbled upon a means of doing yellow over a black undercoat. I was working out ways of doing flamey effects, and turned out the same worked well for yellows in general.

Can start with an appropriate colour for a shaded yellow. Be it Fiery Orange or a brown. They don't have yellows issues and provide a solid coat.
Then, blend that orange/brown into white.
Cover that once dry with some yellow ink. Applied as one would a paint rather than as a wash. As in, the brush not heavily loaded, just the tip carrying the paint, applied evenly.
That strongly tints all that blending beneath it. Like a glaze, but stronger.
The white takes on the juicy yellow of the ink, while all the orangey-white tones get turned into shades of yellow.
Remarkably easy, and can get some shading thrown onto the model without a lot of effort.

Incidentally, the flamey bit worked too. Blending from white into red, or a bold enough red into white. Then the yellow ink turns all the pink grandients into oranges for an easy and bold transition from red to yellow without all those tricksy red to orange, orange to yellow blendings.

 

[Einion]

...but since yellow paints tend to have very low pigment contents I've had to use a lot of layers...

It's not that yellows have less pigment in them, it's just that in hobby paints the all or most of the yellows will be made from naturally semitransparent or transparent pigments (because they're cheaper).

FWIW, Vallejo do use cadmiums in their line but I don't know if any other hobby paints do.

Now my usual tactic for yellow is to prime the yellow areas in white, add a layer of golden yellow, wash it and build up from there, and it generally looks good (ignore the avatar image, he's old and rubbish).

For the warboss though I wanted to spend a bit more time on him, so I decided to build up the yellow from a snakebite leather base (orangy brown), which would give it a more natural look and less stark.

The problem is that building up the yellow on top of this takes forever...

It's for this reason that I would tend to favour something like your usual method (even though I'm using much better paints than the ones you're using).

Yellows, even the ones that are naturally opaque, do not cover as well as other colours and directly over a colour that's too dark you end up either having to put too much paint on to get coverage or you get a patchy finish, which just looks sucky.

I would suggest you just slightly modify your normal way of doing it - mix in a little brown with white and use that as an undercoat. Or you could dull down the yellow you use as a glaze. Either way will work.

What do you use as a shade coat? I've heard purples can help (since it's a complimentary colour) but is there anything else I can try?

The complementary colour of yellow is actually blue (violet-blue) - think RGB and CMY. What you're seeking is a mixing complement which unfortunately are nearly non existent for yellows across the board.

You can get okay results from some violets - particularly in hobby paints because they're usually mixes and especially if you get them to the right value first, adding white if needed - but often it's simpler to use grey and compensate for the likely shift in hue toward green, with a dab of orange or red.

Dark yellows are golden yellow, ochre and even the sort of colour that Raw Umber is if you're familiar with that, so any one of these can also be used for shading yellows.

Or both of these methods can be combined, which often yields the best results IMO for realistic colour.

You can of course also ignore the realistic thing, true darker yellows, and use oranges or tans and even brown to shade yellow if you like how that looks.

Einion

 

[Dragonsreach]

Godlikebuthumble has recommended GW's foundation paints but for a brighter Yellow try thinned Dheneb Stone.
As it's a paler colour you'll have less effort to get a brighter Yellow.

 

[Beelzebrush]

If I know that I'm going to be using yellow, I usually tend to undercoat in grey (black undercoat is very difficult to cover and white tends to shine through). I'd then mix the base colour for yellow from grey, brown and white and yellow... aiming for a grey/yellow/brown. The grey and white add more opaqueness. It's then just a matter of working outwards to yellow with progressive layers - for cloth folds etc, leaving the base colour in the recesses helps with contrast and these can be glazed later to suit. Highlight upto white and then glaze over with yellow... again to suit.

 

[airhead]

Instead of trying to work up from the shadow color, why not do like you've done:

Prime white
Midtone bright yellow
Wash down the shadows, layering down to a mid brown.
Highlight up.

Another option:
Prime white
Wet blend. Very wet with the shadow along the edges/creases, then the midtone along side working the transitions while wet.

 

[Dribble Joy]

Got some (bad) pics.

Here's my sorscha, showing I'm vaguely capable of blending (mainly on the leg armour, not finished and ignore the ice, it was an experiment)

Here's the shoulder pad of the warboss, as you can see it's all cakey and poo.

And here's the torso, I added a few washes of gryphonne sepia and built the golden yellow up again, started some sunburst yellow in a few areas.

 

[Einion]

Here's the shoulder pad of the warboss, as you can see it's all cakey and poo.

At this point I think you have only two real options, strip and start again or go with a heavily-weathered result where the texture becomes part of the finished effect (rust bubbling the paintwork).

Einion

 

[devoncodain]

It is an ork so the weathering and rust would be a natural occurrence and make it look exceptional.

 

[Dribble Joy]

Oddly enough I had some of the old GW yellow ink, and it's really useful. A lot less hassle than mixing up a glaze. I used it to stain a white highlight I put on him. Very tempted by the blending up with white idea. Anyway, yellow's done aside from weathering effects.

 

[Wyrmypops]

Yeah, that yellow ink, a much underused bottle in the paint box but sure makes for a nifty way to render yellow areas eh.
Such a juicy colour, so it can look a bit Fisher Price. Can offset that by ensuring the dark tones before the yellow ink goes on are dark and dirty browny-greys.

I like it most of all as blending from one colour to white is easy. In going from a dark tone to a decent yellow we can fall into using so many different paints and multiple coats we get lost in which paint does what and various problems in multiple paints jobs being applied. Easy in judging the increments too.

It's a bit like having a B&W pic in photoshop. Colouring it with new layers of colour and applying them in "muliply" or "overlay" mode.