In undertaking my current build, which is inspired by the famous set 375 Castle – commonly known as The Yellow Castle – I will be using a lot of yellow. However let me say that it will not all be the same yellow, I am going to broaden the palette.
I am going to be using at least three different yellows from the LEGO colour palette, maybe even four depending on how things turn out.
First and foremost as with most of my builds I had to decide what the colours will represent in my build, and this gives me a reason for them to be there and a reason why there might be different colours making up my yellow castle build.
The first colour that will definitely be making the cut is of course, the OG, Bright Yellow. This is the yellow that started it all, the primary colour of the original 375 Castle set, and I believe that making sure there are liberal amounts of this colour in my build will be key to having it appear as a true homage to 375 castle.
I will be using Bright Yellow in my build in much the same way that it appears on real world castles such as the Palácio da Pena in Lisbon, Portugal and Schloss Hohenschwangau in Bavaria, Germany. It will be used to represent coloured stucco or a painted rendered surface.
The second yellow that will do a lot of heavy lifting in my build will be Brick Yellow, commonly referred to as Tan. This will be used to represent the underlying structure of the castle, the sandstone walls and stonework that comprise the castle itself beneath the rendered surface. Some areas of my castle will be natural undressed stone and some will have a rendered surface.
Interestingly I recently read an interview from Blocks Magazine with Daniel August Krenz (archived here on Brickset), the designer of set 375 who had this to say about the colour choice of the yellow castle:
“I didn’t particularly want it to be grey, but if I had done it again I probably would have used the colour known internally as brick yellow, the one which the fans call tan. That would have been a better colour match to the kind of rock I imagined it was made of, but that didn’t exist back then, so it became a yellow castle.”
It is nice to know that I am heading in the right direction with the choice to broaden the colour scheme with tan.
A lot of castles in the real world are built of sandstone, so it is a pretty good choice I think.
The third yellow, that will be used quite sparingly, is Sand Yellow, commonly referred to as Dark Tan. This will be used to represent water affected or wet sandstone, specifically around the edge of the castle where the walls meet water.
The fourth yellow is Cool Yellow, though I am still undecided on whether it will actually make an appearance as yet, and I probably won’t decide until I get up to building the parts of the castle where it would appear and test it out. I may use it for contrasting architectural detail, but I may also just end up using more of the Brick Yellow for this.
So what do you think, do you think my yellow castle will be yellow enough?
Let me know!
