While proctoring a test, I get to sit and watch over a class for ninety minutes. This year, I brought in my 4 x 6″ fine art quality watercolor paper and my watercolor set. This watercolor set is a gutted-out half-pan set. I removed the half-pans and squeezed in custom selected colors from tube watercolors. No blacks are in my set.
For grays, I either use complementary color combinations or Payne’s Grey which has a mild blue smokiness.
This lovely young third grader has sun bleached blonde hair.
For her hair mass, I laid down a light wash of the Bismuth Yellow. A little drying time and then added Bismuth Yellow with Raw Sienna. The Raw Sienna works well with the greener yellows like the lemons and Aureolin.
The unlikely quartet of yellows in my palette are Aureolin Yellow, Cadmium Lemon Yellow, Bismuth Yellow and Cadmium Yellow
Aureolin Yellow is a yucky color in the pan. It fools the viewer because it appears as green as khaki. But it lays out a bright and intense yellow. Those are the strands of hair on the Tester’s left side. A tad tipper of Winsor Violet brought the value down to that greenish brown.
For her highlights, the tissues given out during the test picked up the excess color when dampened.
Aureolin and Bismuth are my experimental yellows. I bought them to see what they do and wonder why they are so expensive. Both started their color life in industry, not art. Aureolin does not sell well in oils and is predominately a watercolor color. Bismuth sounds like something in a chemistry test and for good reason: Bismuth is an actual element on the Periodic Chart of Elements. Bi is the short version.
Aureolin means ‘golden‘ from its Latin origins. Again, the Au is the short version for gold in the Periodic Chart of Elements.
Testing out these elemental industrial colors sounds heavier than they appear.