What's so special about Cadmium Yellow Light? Do you really need a Cadmium Yellow Light on your Palette? And which one is best for you?
All this and more.
These Collectible Cadmium Yellow Lights Make Unique Contributions to the Color Spectrum
What's so special about Cadmium Yellow Light? Do you really need a Cadmium Yellow Light on your Palette? And which one is best for you?
All this and more.
With high chroma and relatively high opacity, Cadmium Yellow Light is a palette staple
Like the bright clear sun on a May morning, Cadmium Yellow Light describes a notable group of specific colors in the wider group of Cadmium Yellows.
Do these yellows play a role on your palette? Quite possibly, as their opacity and lightfastness make them perennially beloved by painters. For those who are wondering if these colors are all the same, or how a particular brand's Cadmium Yellow Light compares to the others, this is for you.
A range of high-quality cadmium yellow light paints
There are a lot of different cadmium yellow lights in the world, and here we're featuring six of them. Brands vary in how they name their colors, so these were grouped by hues (note that one is actually a 'Medium')
Many of these paint colors are so bright they exceed the yellows we can portray on screens
Let's start out by saying that these colors are out of gamut! What? Yes that's right, you can't actually photograph most of them accurately on a digital camera. So these mysterious paint colors are more different from each other in real life than they actually might appear on your screen.
Interestingly, in all of the yellows, a half-step on the lightness scale makes an enormous difference to the overall color impression one receives. This is so much so that the Munsell book includes an extra row for value 8.5 as well as rows for values 8 and 9.
Part of the reason for making a big deal of fine differences here is that these colors are also part of the area where our eyes are most sensitive to gradations of wavelengths.
Also these colors are notoriously difficult to photograph in a way that does them justice, so we have included the Munsell data, which can be found beneath the paint descriptions.
Cadmium Yellow Lights differ subtly in hue- moreso than we are able to really portray on a screen. These small differences can matter when doing carefully balanced color work, such as when using them to mix lime greens
Cadmium Yellow Lights and Lemons are the high sopranos of the palette
If colors sang vocal parts, these colors are in the soprano section when it comes to yellows. The same could be said of a similar group of Cadmium Yellows called Cadmium Yellow Lemons. Clocking in at the upper reaches of the lightness scale, Cadmium Yellow Lights also soar in chroma.
Yellows in general-- speaking of other pigments here like Hansas-- can be a tricky area to find lightfastness and opacity, and so these Cadmium colors really help out in that department. Cadmium colors tend to do well in both comparative opacity and lightfastness. (Some cadmium yellows are more semi-opaque than opaque, it just depends-- but that depends on brands. Anything can be diluted or spread thinly--this is just to say these pigments do not tend to be thought of as transparent). There is some interesting research about cadmium yellows in conservation, however for many painters the choices in the paintbox still don't outshine these beauties.
Cadmium Yellow Lemons and Cadmium Yellow Lights. These colors have subtle differences, but both are high, bright, and have great lightfastness. Our featured panel is on the right. The panel to the left shows some glowing Cadmium Yellow Lemons.
Explore each of these colors in depth
High tinters, gorgeous yellows
These paints are all terrific-- all have strong tinting strength and they create a gorgeous panoply of lemony strobe-light yellows. Here we mixed the paints out with Williamsburg Titanium White to show how their hues are affected by white. The semi-circle area shows a 50-50 mix with each paint color and white.
Our featured panel of cadmium yellow lights. These are the only cadmium yellow lights out there, but they are among the best we have tried
Navigating an Array of Cadmium Yellows
As noted earlier in regard to the nuances of human vision, there can be a sensitivity to small differences in this region.
Certain Cadmium Yellow Lights are needed to reach specific areas of the gamut. Does this matter to everyone? Nope. If you paint Old Master styled muted-chroma paintings, or even realistic landscapes, or portraiture, these nuances between the cadmium yellow lights are probably not the most important thing. However, if you appreciate this area of the gamut, it might be helpful to know that each cadmium yellow light is different from the each other. We're excited by this color range, and as color appreciators, we prize the small differences from brand to brand.
Our featured panel is on the far left. The panels to the right of it show vareities of Cadmium Yellow Light and Cadmium Yellow Lemon.
These tend to have a touch more warmth than the Cadmium Lemons
What's in a Name?
Let's explore the way brands tend to name their paints (unfortunately they don't consult each other too much when sitting down to name the colors they make). Cadmium Yellow Lights tend to form a distinct hue grouping within the cadmium yellows. Cadmium Yellow Lights and are cooler in hue and higher in lightness than the ever so slightly oranger Cadmium Yellow Medium.
If one lines up the cadmium yellows in the paintbox, there is a bit of a jump between the hues of paints called Cadmium Yellow Medium and the ones labeled Cadmium Yellow Light. However there are a few surprises like Vasari Cadmium Yellow Light, which is named "light" and is really more similar to what most brands would call a Cadmium Yellow Medium.
For beginners, we suggest just two or three of the various Cadmium Yellows in order to learn color mixing with a Cadmium Yellow Light.
However, for more advanced painters, it may be advantageous to have a wide array of cadmium yellows including more than one Cadmium Yellow Light if you like their working properties.
Sometimes a cadmium yellow at full strength hits just the right note. For context, in this hue cluster the word cooler means leaning toward green, however that always feels misleading to write as all of these hues would be identified as yellow.
Our featured panel is second from the bottom of this photo. In this context the Cadmium Yellow Lemons in the foreground are bit "yellower" or yellow-greener than some (but not all) Cadmium Yellow Lights, shown in the middle.
What’s the Difference Between a Lemon and a Light?
And no, we don’t mean a broken car, nor the oblong fruit, nor a lightbulb. Cadmium Yellow Light often have some overlap in hue with paints named Cadmium Yellow Lemon. Names can vary among brands, however we found a lot of cadmium yellow lights have a particular behavior.
The paints we'd classify as true Cadmium Yellow Lights tend to impart more yellow-hued saturation in tints, where the lemons had different behavior. It’s a bit subjective, and we’d like to put more precise language and testing around this in the future.
Sometimes Cadmium Yellow Lemons imparted a sort of overall lightening effect as though one had also added a bit of white to a mix. Perhaps it is a greater reflectivity overall— that is reflecting more of the spectrum at many wavelengths, and hence an overall white light effect. This is a subtle distinction, and probably most useful to those studying fine gradations of electric green.
We grouped these paints due to this different behavior in mixing. Paint brands are here and there with their naming, so now you know what we mean when we call something "more of a cadmium yellow lemon" or "more like a light."
Closeup on Cadmium Yellow Lemon and Light
More Views of Cadmium Yellow Lights vs. Lemon Groupings
The hues shown here as Cadmium Yellow Lights bring a lot of saturation to mixtures rather than displaying the lightening effect that is characteristic of many cadmium yellow lemons. The hue pitch of the Vasari Cadmium Yellow Lemon is one of the naming exceptions, and so is Rublev Cadmium Yellow Medium-- both are colors we've grouped with the Cadmium Yellow Lights. As noted earlier, Vasari's naming convention puts their lemon where most brands would put a light, and scales their Vasari Cadmium Yellow Light closer to where some other brands place a cadmium yellow medium. If you're confused at this point don't worry, though let us make it even more confusing. Rublev Cadmium Yellow Medium is keyed lighter than most brands, placing it with the Cadmium Yellow Lights. Where Vasari is keyed lighter, Rublev is keyed one darker. To help sort out the differences, we've included descriptions below, and we've placed similar hues together on this panel.
The top panel shows paints we grouped as behaving more like Cadmium Yellow Light, while the bottom panel shows Cadmium Yellow Lemon-esque Paints
Bright, Clear Yellows
Great tinting strength
We freely admit we are totally over-the-top when it comes to prizing of the small differences among cadmium yellows. For many painters, this color is so high pitched it may be totally out of their gamut, or perhaps some painters pick one paint and stick with it. Whatever suits you best. This is an area where human vision is especially attuned to differences. We like to have at least three of these Cadmium Yellow Lights on hand at all times, as we enjoy hitting various high notes amongst the chromatic yellows.
Here is another set of comparison panels between the Cadmium Yellow Lights and Cadmium Yellow Lemons (both PY35). The featured panel is the top panel here. One thing to note is the relative tinting strength, shown by the semi-circles.
The featured Cadmium Yellow Light ensemble-Cadmium Yellow Lights with a bit more tinting strength than the lemons on the whole
The featured paints varied a lot in consistency. With the cadmium colors we tend to focus most on hue, since a particular color might have a unique quality, but for many people the consistency is a major factor.
Speaking in generalities, Old Holland tends to be a stiff impasto, while Williamsburg is a softer impasto. The Maimeri Puro is interesting- it has a different consistency that needs to be integrated sometimes with a palette knife when it first comes out of the tube. The M Graham has a fairly light consistency but is not exactly like the Rublev nor the Vasari, both of which are more flowing. The M Graham is made with Walnut Oil.
Old Holland tends to be stiff, while Williamsburg has a soft impasto
Vasari and Rublev tend to be more fluid-like and are extremely workable
These Cadmium Yellow Lights hover around 7.5Y. However, when dried, we took readings and most of them were around 3.5-4Y, so less of a lemon yellow. When the LAB readings were converted to Munsell, the warmest color on the panel was M Graham, (almost tied with Vasari). Some of the highest chroma colors (by the numbers) are the M Graham and the Williamsburg, but they are different hues.
An exploration between brands of Cadmium Yellow Light and Cadmium Yellow Lemon. Yellow swatches of artist paint display the differences between cadmium yellow among artist paint brands
These Cadmium Yellow Lights are Glorious, High-Chroma Yellows
While the hue may vary a bit all of these are listed as having PY35