This largely-discontinued orange yellow was commonly marketed as New Gamboge or Indian Yellow until being phased out by most brands. It is very transparent, mixes nicely, and has posed a replacement problem for the artists who loved it; an especially rude awakening for those who used it to replace the previously-discontinued Quin Gold PO49.
Thanks to a sample from a Discord pal, I was able to try Daler-Rowney’s Indian Yellow, which is still PY153.
Pigment Stats
Chemical name: Nickel Dioxine Complex
Lightfastness: Rated II by ASTM, but found Excellent by Bruce MacEvoy
Toxicity: Rated B by ArtIsCreation because it is a heavy metal complex paint, similar to Nickel Azo Yellow
Availability: Manufacturing discontinued in 2012
Observations of Daler-Rowney Indian Yellow
Hue: Looks very similar to DS New Gamboge (pictured below) in masstone but dilutes to a much less yellow and more true-peach / orangey dilute. Although the photo translated the mid range to a yellowy hue, in person it is much more orange than yellow.
Gradient: Very smooth and gentle.
Dispersiveness: Not as wildly dispersive as its cousin Nickel Azo Yellow. Moves, but reasonably.
Texture/Granulation: Fully smooth and not even a tiny bit granulating.
Transparency: 100% transparent. This is the big selling point of this pigment and it did not disappoint. It is fully transparent and matte in a lovely way.
Lifting: Lifts more cleanly than I expected. I’d call this semi-staining.
Mixing: Thanks to its transparency and smoothness, it has a chameleonic nature in mixes.
Brushfeel/consistency: Daler Rowney is a honey-based brand, which means they are stickier than I am used to. My friend who gave this to me gave it in a small covered container rather than a dot because it never dries fully hard and tends to remain liquid. It’s hard to tell how much of this is the brand vs the pigment vs the interaction.
Replacements
There are many posts around 2018 of artists trying different methods to replace PY153 after mourning its loss. For example:
- Polly O’Leary: Turner Permanent Lemon PY109 + WN Winsor Orange PO62
- Lee Angold: PY150 for its transparency, or PY150 + a touch of PO71
- Teoh Yi Chie (Parka Blogs): just going on with DS New Gamboge
What others say
PY153 is a splendid deep yellow pigment from almost every point of view. Though typically not as strongly tinting or textural in mixtures as cadmium yellow deep, its transparency, versatility and hue shifts (in the darker brands) make it one of the most evocative and effective yellow pigments you will find.
Bruce MacEvoy, handprint.com (2010)
Conclusion
It’s too bad that I really liked this pigment, because you really can’t get it anymore. I tend to like the heavy metal complex yellows for their transparency and movement. PY153 is gorgeously high-chroma overall and lacks the dull masstones of the other heavy metal yellows, PY150 and PY129. I also like how it dilutes to a true tint of itself in the same yellow-orange hue range without going yellower or changing hue in any way (which admittedly is not well picked up by my cell phone camera).
With all those pluses mentioned, the marginal differences from similar orange-yellows are pretty slight. There are a wealth of gorgeous orange-yellows available on the market today, including PY110 and PY65, and of course mixed Indian Yellow/New Gamboge colors designed to look like PY153, notably Daniel Smith’s New Gamboge (PY110, PY97). (Maybe it should be called New New Gamboge?)
The Daler Rowney sample is fun to try, but impractical for me to get in a larger amount because it remains liquid and so doesn’t travel well. However, it would be a fun studio paint.
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Daler-Rowney Indian Yellow (PY153), 5ml: Jackson’s US