Cadmium Yellow, Hansa Yellow, and Azo Yellow

I decided to do my tests against a black background because I thought it would give you and me a better view of how the yellows looked than white. From left, I have hansa yellow, cadmium-free yellow and azo yellow.

​There was a surprise, because, while the hansa yellow says it's transparent, and the azo says it's semi-opaque, as you can see, the hansa clearly has more opacity than than the azo! I also think the azo looks green against the black, so I knew I'd have to test these colors against a white backdrop too.

So far all of the yellows I've swatched for you have been from Liquitex's soft body line. I felt having all of the paint be from the same line was important to get a fair comparison. But, I wanted to compare the hansa yellow from the soft body with the cadmium yellow from the Basics line. Hansa yellow is known to be a transparent color, and while cadmium is traditionally an opaque color, the paints in the Basics line tend to have very little pigment and so, be very translucent. Basically, I wanted to see which is more translucent, the hansa yellow from the soft body line of Liquitex, or the cadmium yellow from the basics line. I was a bit surprised to see that the Basics cadmium was actually more translucent than the soft body's hansa. I'll keep that in mind when I'm painting in the future.

hansa yellow from the Liquitex Soft Body line

Cadmium yellow from the Liquitex Basics line