Painter’s annotation: I’ve always believed yellow is the hardest color to paint honestly. Too hot and it lies. Too cool and it disappears. The perfect yellow feels inevitable. But it never arrives by accident.

He made me try again.

He didn’t say anything — he never does — but the message was as clear as anything spoken. He landed that morning beside a sketch I hadn’t meant to leave out. One of the first studies. Abandoned quickly. The proportions were wrong. The yellow, even worse. I hadn’t scraped it off because I didn’t think I needed to. Now I saw that I did.

He gave a single dry click.

It wasn’t disapproval. It was direction.

I didn’t even look at him. Not at first. I just nodded to myself and turned to the palette.

I started fresh. Clean surface, clean knife. I left the cadmiums capped. I didn’t even glance at them. They were too forceful, too proud of themselves. I didn’t want pride. I wanted something honest.

I laid out a pale barium yellow—cool, soft, almost unsure—and touched it with ochre. It dulled before it dried. A waxy silence on the brush. No light. I scraped it off.

He hadn’t moved.

So I tried again. Lead white, Indian Yellow, just the tip of the knife to start. I cooled it with a touch of neutral gray. This time, the mixture barely existed. More breath than pigment. I stared at it longer than I usually let myself. It had promise, but I didn’t trust it.

I didn’t move. He didn’t either. He was watching, but not me—watching what the paint might become.

I leaned in, adjusted the ratio slightly, and added a whisper of something warmer—just enough heat to lift the color off the ground, to remind it of light.

That’s when he moved.

Not dramatically. Just lifted from the peg, hovered a beat over the palette—his wings steady, silent—and then landed lightly on the edge of the rag I use to clean my knife. He didn’t touch the pigment. He didn’t look at me. He simply rested. Watching.

It was the closest thing to approval I’d ever seen from him.

That was the moment I understood: yellow is not just pigment. It’s temperature. A tone. A threshold. You don’t hit it. You arrive at it. Slowly. Carefully. And only if you’re paying attention.

He stayed while I tested.

I didn’t paint that day. Not really. I laid down swatches, mostly. Thin veils across old paper. Let the color show itself in shadow, in proximity, against gray, against white. I tried layering it over a warm ground, then lifting it back with the edge of a cloth. I was listening more than working.

I left the mix open on the palette, middle well. Clean edges around it. No turpentine nearby. I didn’t want it diluted by smell or haste.

For three days, he returned.

Each time, he checked it first—glanced toward the palette before even acknowledging the room. He never touched it. Never clicked. But he looked.

I think he was waiting to see if I’d change it. If I’d lose my nerve and reach for something easier.

I didn’t.

The fourth day, I used it. Just a fragment. A study of the wing, cropped tight—no eye, no beak, no perch. Just a soft arc of shoulder and a light fall of coverts. I laid the color down in a single stroke. Didn’t correct it. Didn’t layer over it.

When I finished, I looked up.

He was already on the peg.

Settled.

That mix—whatever it was, whatever I’d done to make it possible—became the base note of his finished portrait.

I’ve never quite managed to make it again.

But that’s not the point.

The point is that yellow isn’t a hue. Not when it matters. It’s a decision.

And some decisions only make sense when someone is watching.