I’m really getting into Gouache painting! What a versatile medium this is: With just a bit of water the colors really pop out, and when diluted it’s transparent but with comparatively more color intensity than watercolor . It’s a bit like acrylic except it’s more matte and chalky, but unfortunately like watercolor, more difficult to layer paint on wthout moving the color below. And after experimenting on black paper as per Moonlight Glow, I went about creating a daytime version on white paper!
This time, for added cuteness we also introduce Ginger the cat! And on a 2-page spread from my Strathmore’s A4 sketchbook for Mixed Media (190 gsm), I painted away. The background came first of course, mixing the paint with more water for a washed look, a consistency our artist friend Lisa Bardot calls “tea”. Our hair and faces were then painted with less water or “coffee” as she would call it. And finally the rest as little water as possible (which she calls “cream”). As you can see, I went for Holbein’s Gouache and tried to use up the remaining paint from my last piece, whilst replenishing when I run out. Look now how bright and vivid the painting turned out to be!
Although I am happy with the painting, one thing I noticed was that the smooth surface of the paper made the paint strokes rather “streaky”, particularly with the background. It’s because the paper doesn’t absorb the paint as effectively, and the more diluted the more obvious. Luckily though that the background is sky and grass and hence still looks fine, and for the rest the colors are still intense. I would be curious, though, to try gouache on watercolor paper to see how much differently it turns out. Meanwhile, it’s the cuteness of this piece that counts!
My Kawaii Quarter 