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I’ve used cadmium yellow medium hue acrylic paint fairly extensively, but I am taking a course which had cadmium yellow deep on its supplies list, so I’m putting the two head to head to see the differences between the two. For the course, I purchased a cadmium-free yellow deep, so I can compare it to hue, another cad-free version.
Cadmium yellows come in a few different values. Paint manufacturers usually have at least three versions: light, medium and deep. Sometimes manufacturers have a lemon version, as well as a light version.
Watch me compare warm yellow acrylic paints on my YouTube channel.
I tested Golden cadmium yellow medium hue compared to Liquitex Cadmium-free Deep Yellow. They both avoid having real cadmium, which has some toxicity concerns, by using their own pigments that mimic true cadmiums. Both are artist-quality.
I mixed the two warm yellow acrylic paints with the following colours to give an idea of the colours one can mix:
- Quinacridone magenta
- Cadmium red
- Ultramarine blue
- Phthalo blue (green)
- Burnt sienna
- Titanium white, to show a tinted version
I’m going to spend more time painting with the cadmium-free yellow deep colour before I decide which one to give a permanent home on my palette. My initial thoughts are that the deeper colour of warm yellow will be more useful. I think it’ll be convenient to have a deeper yellow on my palette because yellows tend to be such a bright value – a darker version will likely prove valuable.
One last note – both the cadmium medium hue and cadmium-yellow deep tend to be more inexpensive than true cadmiums, so either one is a relatively affordable choice.
Learn more
Check out a listing of all my colour mixing blog posts and videos on my colour mixing roundup article.
Buy your own
Pick up your favourite warm yellow acrylic paint at your local art supply store or Amazon:
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