plural or singular?

Question

I am doing Rosetta Stone and I came across this sentence: las caras estan pintadas de morado y amarillo. but I think that there should be moradoS y amarilloS or am I wrong?.

Answer 1

If the sentence were "The faces are purple and yellow" you'd be correct. But the sentence is "The faces are painted purple and yellow, " so the adjectives should not agree with faces. Yellow and purple are acting sort of like adverbs modifying "painted."

Thank you ;) - ghiotalent, Jul 14, 2015

Answer 2

The “de” before the adjectives means they are not being being used as an adjective directly on caras, but their noun has been dropped:

Las caras están pintadas de morado y amarillo.

With everything implicit in place:

Las caras están pintadas (con pintura) de color morado y de color amarillo.

So the adjectives are actually modifying the masculine noun “color”, but that noun is implicit as it often is in sentences with color.