Sky yellows are warmer than I think.

I just did two versions of the same sky, and I thought the difference was instructive so I figured I’d share.

Here’s the sky.

This has that blue to yellow gradient that I like to practice!

Here are the two versions I made.

The two versions differ in two major ways:

1. They are on different paper texture. Left is on Baohong Masters Cold Press, right is on Baohong Masters Hot Press. This was my primary reason for doing two versions, to test paper from my paper sampler. I liked the Hot Press better than I thought I would, especially for the smoothness of a sky and for details like the gouache moon, though it’s harder to avoid blooms.
2. The yellows! This was a difference that I adjusted from version 1 to version 2 after realizing I didn’t like the yellow in version 1, and it made a bigger difference than I expected.

On the left, I used mostly diluted Hansa Yellow Light (PY3), a very cool green-undertoned yellow, mixed with a little of an earth yellow just to tone it down a tiny bit. On the right, I used diluted WN Gold Ochre, a very orangey color. This looks much closer to the photo.

It should be noted that photos lie, and I especially find that my cell phone camera specifically makes skies look more orange than they are in real life, though usually that’s making pinks look orange rather than yellows. So, while this is a good imitation of the photo, it may not be a good imitation of life.

At the same time, I find it curious and interesting that even when working from the photo for both versions, I perceived the color as being much more yellow, which was why the Hansa Yellow Light originally seemed a good choice. My brain said “This is a blue to pastel yellow gradient,” so I painted that. It was only comparing the result to the photo that I thought, “Wait, maybe it is more of a pale peach/orange.” The diluted Gold Ochre looked wayyyyy too orange to me on my mixing palette, but I took a chance that it would look right in the end and it did.

I thought I had learned back in 2023 that I liked a warm, muted yellow for sunsets, but that doesn’t stop me from seeing and trying cool yellows again once in awhile!

It’s worth remembering that I’m prone to this illusion and to compensate by painting sky yellows as warmer than I think.

I don’t know if you are prey to the same mental shortcut, or if you immediately saw the color in the reference photo as a sort of light peach, but maybe you can think of other colors you consistently “see wrong”.