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Tutorial 98 - The Color Yellow

Added 2016-04-10 03:22:21 +0000 UTC

Keywords: spirituality/enlightenment, cheer, happiness, optimism, energizing,

cowardice (Western culture only), caution, hazard/emergency, illness.

Yellow is the lightest and most luminous color on the spectrum. Because of it’s brightness, yellow is the most easily perceptible color to the human eye, appearing in our visual periphery before other colors.

The color yellow has an energizing, stimulating effect (typical of warm colors), eliciting responses ranging from cheer, happiness, and excitement to anger, frustration, and anxiety. Different shades of yellow can elicit vastly different responses. When mixed with a little black, yellow begins to appear sickly and hazardous. However, some yellows remind us of fruit, sunshine, and Springtime, generating a warm and giddy response.

Yellow also has some spiritual connotations. In ancient Egyptian art, yellow is used to symbolize an indestructible, eternal quality. It was used to depict both the sun and gold, as well as the skin of the Gods, implying a luminosity and sacred other-worldliness.

In Buddhism, yellow represents humility, freedom from attachment, and renunciation of material society, which is why monks wear yellow robes.

Yellow is synonymous with cowardice in Western culture (“yellow bellied”)- but interestingly, this is not the case in any other culture.

In alchemy, yellow or "Cintrinitas" is the third major stage of four on the path to the philosopher's stone.

Yellow can be used in your artwork to play with luminosity and the various ways light expresses itself. It can be applied to indicate other-worldliness, as with a haloed silhouette, or it can add a sense of warmth, romance and lightheartedness to a scene.