How to: fade a yellow color to blue without going through green

[Christian223]

I have been trying to paint (in real oils and acrylics) a fade from yellow color to blue without going through green, but its imposible to me, i have no idea how to do it. I was trying to imitate this portion of this picture, its a sky iluminated by the sun. I can see that in my monitor the blue color, is not actually blue, but greyish red, how is this posible?, i really have no idea, please help :), thanks.

[Senira]

I think it has something to do with how colors appear relative to each other. The sky may well be bluish-gray, but the high saturation at the edges of the clouds may be giving it a yellowish tint.

Don't quote me on that, though. I'm hardly a color expert myself.

[Zazerzs]

you're right there is no blue in your picture. Try not to paint what you think it should be but what it is. Try mixing the sky color seperate, a low intensity blue violet looks like it might match the "blue" area.

[The Pariano]

Yes that color is not blue at all, in fact I dont even think I would call it a cool color, but it is much cooler than the rest of the sky relatively. A similar effect can be done with traditional colors in many ways.
If I were to go about it I might start with a dull red orange underpainting. Then for the yellow parts I would scrumble with white for the lighter parts of the sky, and scrumble with a greenish blue for the darker parts. Then I might glaze over it all with a bright yellow. You could use an endless combination of colors and techniques, experiment and see what works!

[Elwell]

I was trying to imitate this portion of this picture, its a sky iluminated by the sun. I can see that in my monitor the blue color, is not actually blue, but greyish red, how is this posible?

It's possible for the same reason that the white clouds are yellow, gold, and brown.

[dcorc]

Spot-sample the colours - take them out of the context of the image - these are the colours you need to mix.

You can't simply take the extremes and blend them together - think of the image as being made up of tiles, like this:

http://img338.imageshack.us/img338/6328/skytiles1sx5.jpg (http://imageshack.us)

or this:

http://img338.imageshack.us/img338/3360/skytiles2mu4.jpg (http://imageshack.us)

so mix colours for each of the tiles, trying to hit each colour as accurately as possible and lay them down next to each other - then you can perhaps minimally blend if needed.

Oh - and one more thing - I've pulled a few blocks down onto a grey ( 128,128,128 ) background - so where's the blue here? :) (and whyever use blue in your colour mixes??? why not just go directly for the low-chroma greyed-down oranges?)

http://img338.imageshack.us/img338/1853/skytiles3cp6.jpg (http://imageshack.us)


Dave

[Christian223]

Thanks everyone, im going to apply the advice given here tomorrow in a few test and see what comes out of that.

[Zazerzs]

if you haven't done so yet , may I suggest you paint a color wheel similar to this example. Its easier to mix and pick out colors when you know where on the colorwheel they are. This one isn't well done overall but it gets my meaning across.

[Christian223]

Thanks again for the advice. Heres what i have done. I tried to make a scale in acrylics to achieve the same effect, i didnt achieve it, besides i cant take good pictures :/

Then i tried to imitate the colors in my pc, after that i realized how to do it.

In point 1. It has two colors, the "blue" of the sky and the yellow from the clouds in point 3, you can see how the greish orange seems blue when surrounded by the other color.

In point 2. You can see there is not that much difference in value and in saturation (the two bars of the top are values, and the two bars of the bottom are saturation).

In point 3. you can see from bottom up how the colors interact, without the yellow from the clouds surrounding the greyish colors, those colors just look grey-ish red, but with the yellow part of the clouds, the greyish red seems more like a sky.

I hope that helps someone. Ill keep trying to get this on paint. Thankyou.

edit:

I almost forgot, i was trying to find in internet how to do this, and i found some kind of rule to it, i cant remember where, but it says basically that when there is a desaturated color surrounded by a more saturated color, the desaturated color seems tinted with its complementary, something like that...

[Blue]

Fun topic. I'll keep an eye on this. :)

[That fat kid]

Check out Seurat. It's all about local and perceived color. Pixels are an extension of pointilism.

[dbclemons]

There are a few interesting sites on the net explaining "why is the sky blue (http://http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/physics/General/BlueSky/blue_sky.html)" that are worth reading. They're good to know in this case in order to better understand what we see (or don't see.) Essentially, in this case, you go from yellow to blue by passing through red (the long way around.)

[meltface]

I've noticed that when you desaturate a warm it looks cool even though you haven't shifted the hue technically...
vice versa with cools looking warm when desaturated..like a blue sky looking warmer(but really desaturated) at the horizon

[briggsy@ashtons]

Colorspace (http://www.couleur.org/) by Philippe Colantoni is a great free Windows programme for plotting colour relationships like this in a choice of colour spaces. The output is a 3D graphical model that you can turn to inspect from any angle. The plot below confirms a basically steady progression from A to B of increasing lightness, saturation and chroma, accompanied by only a slight hue shift towards yellow.

[Funkyskull]

It has to do with additive and subtractive color.

real light is additive, but a painting is subtractive, get it?

[input]

I think the topic still is interesting though: as it happens the sky often can be seen as a gradation going from blue to yellow( vertically downwards ). If you try to lay this down as a water color wash (gradation) it is very difficult to do this without going thru yellow unless you make the wash really light.Is it even physically possible to do a gradation from blue to yellow without going thru green with pigments?

[dbclemons]

...Is it even physically possible to do a gradation from blue to yellow without going thru green with pigments?

If you notice on the left of the posted image the sky is orange not yellow. That means there's red involved, not green. In order to get a gradient from yellow to blue without getting green, you have to pass through red. Turn the other direction on the color wheel. It's the same if you were doing it digitally or with pigments. Using watercolor (or whatever) place down a wash of orange and red-violet in the center, then blend blue to your violet and yellow to your orange.

[marks]

Ummm. . . Basically it's a red earth tone transitioning into a blue rather than a yellow.

oh whoops, sorry, I didn't read that last post, never mind. :oneye:

[Pixal]

I didn't notice what brand of paints you used if it was mentioned, but if you're not using quality paints with good pigmentation, you're not going to be able to mix colors and get true blended hues.

Look at the back of the paint tubes and check if they are color "hues" or if it says something like "single pigment", you want the pigmented colors. Hues are synthetic. Pigmented is natural or "from the earth".

Hues will not give you good blends. Single pigmented paints will blend well.

Quality paint makes a HUGE difference.