Yellow is one of those ‘hard’ colors. So, much like painting black, I stepped up to the challenge and created a tutorial on how to paint yellow. But not just one way, but three different methods to paint yellow.

Mostly this tutorial was spawned by painting my Dwarven Blood Bowl Team with yellow padding. Since I wanted to try a couple of other techniques for painting yellow, I built a Bretonnian Knight and a Death Watch Space Marine.

Both of these other kits provides great opportunity to paint other colors. Well, at least if you don’t keep to the ‘standard’ Death Watch scheme.

So if you need some help or inspiration on how to paint yellow, check out the three tutorials below.

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Using Layers to Paint Yellow on a Knight

I picked up a box of Brettonian Knights years ago to practice painting different colors and freehand.  And so far, I have painted only two of them! But Sir Sunshine here has provided the canvas for my first tutorial on how to paint yellow.

In this example, I used layers to paint yellow as that is the traditional way of painting. Start with a base coat, maybe a wash, and add lighter highlights. But yellow does not cover well and I will say, doing this example was a practice of patience as the mid-tone yellow took five layers to get good coverage!

I started with a primer of white paint and a base coat of all the colors. For the yellow, I used Game Color Plague Brown (GW Zamesi Desert). This is a yellowish brown that would work for the low-level shadow.

I then gave it an all over wash with Vallejo Brown Wash. This was mostly to provide shading to the rest of the model, but it also adds even more shadow to the yellow.

Using Game Color Sun Yellow (Flash Gitz Yellow), I painted layer after layer until it looked smooth. This is exactly why yellow is frustrating for so many painters as it was so tough to paint over the base layer. Straight out of the bottle, the thick yellow left ridges. Too thin and it wasn’t anything more than a glaze – and a terrible glaze at that.

But patience and persistence got me through. I realized later that I could have used Gold Yellow (Yriel Yellow) first as it would have provided a better transition. Alternatively, I could have mixed some of the Plague Brown in a well. It may have only taken four layers that way!

The next layer of Model Color Moon Yellow (no clear GW color) was easier as I was only painting the highlights and ridges. I started emphasizing the folds in the cloth at this stage.

The final highlight was a 50-50 mix of Moon Yellow and White. This was an extreme highlight that I thinned down with Airbrush Medium.

From there, I painted the rest of the miniature, including his coat-of-arms. I used the decal from the Space Marine vehicle kit for the fist. I simply cut off the circle and painted over it with my reds.

To clean up the colors and add further shading, I added a carefully placed wash of brown. This was thinned down with the Airbrush Medium and used between each color area. I also added some of it to the folds of the cloth to add shadows.

I finished up the base and added some mud to the bottom of the horse’s coat to match my first knight. A couple of coats of matte varnish and he was completed.

One Coat Yellow on Dwarves

For the other two techniques for painting yellow, I wanted to show how easy yellow can be.

This version involves using WarColours’ One-Coat Yellow which is a high pigment paint similar to Games Workshop’s Averland Sunset, but brighter.

The beauty of the One-Coat paints is that they will pretty much cover over anything. So on my Dwarf here, I painted the yellow last.

You can see that most of the armor pads are still black with some paint splatter here and there. I wasn’t too careful with this first layer as I want to get all the colors in place and then tidy up.

You can see that after the one coat yellow, everything is covered up. On a few sections, I did need to use two coats but compared to standard yellow paint this was fantastic to paint right over black.

After that, I followed up with my typical Brown Wash all over. This is a magic elixir for getting quick results on your miniature. It not only shades everything nicely but provides an excellent separation between each color.

In many ways, this could be tabletop ready, and everything from here is gravy.

Once the wash was dry, I highlighted all the other colors. Since I am painting my Blood Bowl teams to a quick gaming standard, I only went with a single highlight on most of them. You can see the full paint list for painting the Dwarf Team here.

I then went over all the yellow with the one coat except for the deeper recesses of the armor. This cleaned up any extra wash and re-brightened it.

And a final highlight of pure white. Again, these guys are meant to be a high-contrast gaming piece. So a pure white highlight adds a ton of pop without many layers. I kept the white only to the top edges of the armor.

All that was left to do was add the decals, finish the base, and varnish him. From start to finish (not counting drying time) the dwarf only took about two hours to paint. This is pretty fast for me!

Painting Yellow with a wash on Lamenter

For the second, easy version of yellow, I wanted to paint with washes. I’ve seen many other painters get great results with using a wash straight over a white primer.

So I built up a Death Watch Space Marine to paint in the Lamenters Chapter scheme. I know that Death Watch is typically silver and black with only the right shoulder pad in chapter colors, but I like the idea of having them more colorful and only the left arm in silver.

I gave him a layer of white primer from the rattle can. In hindsight, I would have given him a second coat as the spray didn’t fully cover some areas where were visible in the final model.

I then gave the whole model a generous wash of Games Workshop Casandora Yellow Shade. The bottle threw me off at first as the wet paint has an orange look to it. But it goes on with a nice yellow color and somewhat orange in the recesses.

After a second wash, the yellow started to pop and give me the shade I was looking for. Be careful with each wash so that it doesn’t pool like it did on the inside of his left leg. Use an extra brush to wick away any extra wash.

I wanted to do a third wash to deepen the yellow but wanted to keep the highlights. So I did a quick drybrush of pure white. This drybrush focused on the upper ridges of the model including the top part of the pad and helmet.

The third wash turned all the dry brush work back to yellow and gave my Lamenter a solid look.

I then went in and painted all the other colors. This was a nerve-wracking experience as I knew it would be hard/impossible to fix any mistakes. So I was careful with each brush stroke and made it through.

As another tip for when I do this again is to leave the silver arm off the model and paint it separately.

After I had finished all the highlights, I used a mix of Black and Brown washes mixed with extra Flow-Aid to create a dark pin-wash. Using a small brush, I added the wash to panel lines, rivets, and between colors. This helped provide better separation of color and deeper recesses in the yellow.

From there, it was a matter of doing all the details and base. The chapter badge took a while, and I’m still not happy with it, but it gets the point across.

Wrap-Up

I hope that this tutorial has helped provide some pointers on how to paint yellow. Whether doing it with layers (and layers!), using a high pigment paint like the One-Coat, or with washes, painting yellow can be done.

After painting all three methods, if I were to do a whole army of yellow, I would use a combination of the one-coat and layers. The wash worked well but makes it hard to paint everything else.

A nice look could be achieved with One Coat Yellow, Brown Wash, highlight with mid-tone yellow, and then bright yellow. The One Coat gives you the speed while the wash and highlights would give you additional color range.

Do you have other tips on painting yellow? Gripes about certain shades? Let me know in the comments below!