Dr. Tortenkopf is making Terminators great again

Yesterday I finished the yellow highlighting on one half of one Terminator.

For this I mix Citadel Averland Sunset with Vallejo Bone White in a 2/3 Ratio. The Averland Sunset has previously been stretched with Winsor&Newton Matt Medium. I always do that to Citadel Base Colors as they are far too goopy for my taste and contain enough pigment to make them last twice as long.

The highlight mix turns out slightly transparent, which is good because it allows me to apply it very carefully as adding to strong highlights can easily ruin a yellow miniature. I takes about two or three passes in the brighter areas to build up a sufficient highlight.

Yellow is always mentioned as a hard color to work with. This is why:

Humans are worse at perceiving color gradients in the yellow band of the spectrum, than they are in other color bands. The reason for this is, that the yellow information is extrapolated from the luminosity values of the red and green signals. This is also why people with red green blindness can perceive yellow. Their cones do not distinguish between red and green wavelength, but do register the luminosity of those color bands separately.

In short: Unless you are a tetrachromat you do not actually have the capacity to see yellow. Your brain compensates for that by combining parts of the red and green signals.

Because all the initial information we have on yellow light is its luminosity we do not perceive a lot of highlighting on yellow surfaces. Yellow is just always bright. Its perceived color intensity, compared to the other color bands, hardly changes.

This is why making yellow highlights more yellow wont look good. In order for them to look natural, they need to be brighter and less saturated. An that is the reason why I mix the Averland Sunset with a bone colour in order to create a highlight, that both stands out on a miniature to our poor, incapable eyes while seeming natural and believable.

Source:

Wikipedia on Color Vision