My friend Sandra set a limited triad challenge in an art Discord we are both in. The prompts were: choose a triad something like Ultramarine Blue, Nickel Azo Yellow, and Quin Rose; explore the triad; then paint something with it. That’s what I love to do with a triad, so I joined!
Color Wheel
I used:
- Daniel Smith Quinacridone Red (PV19)
- Daniel Smith Nickel Azo Yellow (PY150)
- Da Vinci Ultramarine Blue (PB29)
This is a very flexible triad. Every secondary color can be mixed, and all three colors together can make dark gray / brown. (That said, I found it hard to exactly tell what was going on with my neutral until it dried; I can now see I should have added more blue.)
Quin Red (or Rose) is close to a primary magenta.
Nickel Azo Yellow is a color that I call a gold; it’s a distinctive heavy metal based yellow that is very transparent and dispersive. It looks more lemony in dilute and more warm and brownish in masstone. You can see that it doesn’t exactly make bright crisp mixes as a primary lemon yellow or middle yellow would; its oranges are more shag-carpet pumpkin than traffic cone, and its greens are more pickle juice than shamrock. But despite not being the highest chroma, there is something very intense about these mixes. They are strong and deep-valued, never grayish.
Ultramarine Blue is a violet-toned blue, so it makes gorgeously strong violets with the violet-toned red. I wasn’t expecting very bold greens, but I was pleasantly surprised. I think these greens are better than the ones I mix with Ultramarine and a standard middle yellow.
This is a flexible triad, but what you can’t do is make a cyan.
Let’s take a closer look at these, one pair at a time.
Pairwise Color Mixes
Quin Red + Nickel Azo Yellow
Starting with straight Quin Red, a touch of PY150 makes it deeply coral – a ruby red grapefruit color – progressing to blood orange and warm gold. I found that the reds and oranges in this mix were not straightforward, but they were always interesting.
Ultramarine Blue + Nickel Azo Yellow
These blues have a tendency toward moody shadowiness from the violet undertones in the Ultramarine, or acidic yellowiness from the Nickel Azo Yellow. Some interesting specific mixes:
- The very diluted, mostly blue mix which shows blue granulation. Muted seafoam. Very pretty.
- The very strong, mostly blue mix looks like Perylene Green. Great for pines, etc.
Quin Red + Ultramarine Blue
Very classic violets; imperial violets, rose of ultramarine, dioxazine hues, diluted lilac, etc.
Painting
I looked through my photos and grabbed on that I felt could be painted without a cyan, but would also showcase the beauty of the Ultramarine, pink, and intense yellow in this triad.
This zoomed-in view of a little island in a local pond was painted at sunset on a cloudy day, so violet-gray clouds cover an orangey sky. There are also dark greens that I felt could be rendered with the Ultramarine and a bit of yellow.
Here’s my painting.
Loved:
- Texture and reflected color in water
- Atmospheric perspective
- Cloud color
Learned:
- I think I was too heavy handed with the yellow in the sky; it is a flex to put yellow next to blue without mixing green, but a more subtle color would be prettier I think. It’s hard to be subtle with Nickel Azo Yellow.
- I could have put more detail/definition in the closer island and made it greener.
Conclusion
I enjoyed working with this triad, but I did feel the lack of a cyan, even in a scene specifically chosen to avoid needing it. I found myself wanting to mix Cobalt Turquoise into the clouds, for example, to make them lighter and more opaque and add some color shifts. As Cobalt Turquoise is a color I often find optional, I find it interesting that that was my desired reach-for in the palette: maybe it’s becoming more foundational to me than I thought!