ABOUT COLOUR: YELLOW

About Yellow

Yellow is the most luminous and lightest of hues. It loses this light-giving quality as soon as you add black or gray or violet. When black is added it becomes like a sap green. Yellow is the one hue that rapidly changes its character when mixed with another colour.  This hue represents happiness, optimism, the sun and light. Paintings of the early masters symbolized heavenly light using a golden yellow.   When a person is smiling, he/she is glowing from the inside out.

In everyday language, to say “ a light bulb went on” or to say “to see the light” meant the realization of an unsolved problem. The hidden truth was uncovered. To say that a person is bright is to say that he/she is intelligent. Therefore, yellow symbolizes knowledge and understanding. When yellow is altered it opposed understanding and becomes expressions of betrayal, envy, distrust, and doubt.

The colour yellow is everywhere in nature. It is the colour of sunflowers, tulips, daffodils, bananas, lemons, budgies, cockatiels, canaries and parrots. It’s the colour of Springtime. Yellow alerts us of danger. It is the caution light on our traffic lights.

Yellow in Different Cultures

• In Western culture yellow is a sign of cowardliness and treason.
• In Chinese culture yellow corresponds to the earth. It represents good luck. Yellow is considered the most beautiful and esteemed hues. This colour often decorates royal places, altars and temples. It was the colour worn by their emperors.
• In Japan, yellow represents heroism.
• In Mexico, the marigolds are an important Day of the Dead symbol.
• The American Indians wore face paints and one of their favourite colours was yellow considered the sun’s colour, the setting sun, symbolic of beauty, sincerity, and peace. During the puberty ceremonial, an apaches ritual, the girl’s dress was dyed yellow, the colour of pollen, which in itself represents fertility (from the book, “Indian Dances of North America” on page 130, Chapter 9, Reginald and Gladys Laubin).

The Theory of Yellow

• Yellow is one of the three primary colours. It is a warm colour located on the warm half of the colour wheel. It is situated at the top of the wheel with its complementary colour, violet, directly below. It is sandwiched between Yellow-orange and Yellow-green. In its purity it is the most luminous and lightest of all the hues.
• Yellow loses it’s light-giving quality as soon as you add black or gray or violet. When black is added it becomes like a sap green. Yellow is the one hue that rapidly changes its character when mixed with another colour.
• When yellow is surrounded by orange it blends optically to appear like a light orange. When yellow is surrounded by black and other dark tones, it becomes more radiant, strong, aggressive and energetic. On the other side of the scale, when yellow is surrounded by white it becomes subdued and subservient.
• HANSA YELLOW LIGHT: is a yellow-green as it has some blue added.  It is considered to be a cool yellow compared to a yellow-orange.
• CADMIUM YELLOW: is a yellow-orange as it has a red bias

A Poem About Yellow

“What is Yellow?”

Yellow is a sunflower,
A banana,
A feather from
A songbird,
The sun,
The brightest colour
Of all colours.
Yellow is a happy face
That glows from inside out.
Yellow is a buttercup
With petals to say he loves me
And he loves me not.
Yellow is yummy like lemon meringue pie.
Yellow is a butterfly,
A bumblebee flying high.

Author: Donna Wilson

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