Watercolor Dirtbag
Recently, I began experimenting with acrylic gouache, which is basically just acrylic paint that dries matte. When I look at ASTM ratings of the lightfastness of paints, they’re often better in acrylic than in watercolor. I suppose it’s because watercolor is so often used in tints, and gum arabic is not a very protective base. … Read more
Well, I got out of the gouache game, but not for long! After moving with only my watercolors, I started to miss having a second medium, especially one that forces me to think differently from watercolor and that has different benefits and challenges. While I love the dreaminess and luminosity of watercolor, some types of … Read more
I like gouache and I’m glad I tried it. If I weren’t currently attempting to fit all my possessions into a few suitcases I’d probably keep my gouache supplies – at least for awhile longer. Ultimately, though, I think I’d still be on the path to switching back to watercolor-only at some point. In raising the bar for what I’ll keep, I realized that watercolor makes the grade for me, and gouache does not.
Here’s why.
I have a new gouache theory.
When I first posted my gouache observations and palette, I noted that some of my favorite watercolor pigments – the transparent, high-tinting ones in the phthalo and quinacridone families – don’t always make good gouache, because gouache is meant to be opaque. Phthalo Green gouache, for example, while thicker and less transparent than the corresponding watercolor, still isn’t opaque, and when you paint it out it can appear patchy. My favorite gouache colors were opaque pigments with more robust coverage: colors like Titanium White (PW6) and Hansa Yellow Light (PY3).
I’ve come to realize, though, that there is still important value to those less-opaque colors, especially the ones with high tinting strength, because they can be great mixing colors. You just need to combine them with another color that has the desired opaque properties. You mix practically everything in gouache with at least a little white, anyway, so it’s not such a big deal that not every color has perfect coverage alone.
I now mentally divide my gouache palette into two categories: base colors and mixing colors.
I haven’t engaged much with my username on this blog, so you’ve gotten a lot more straightforward art talk than any Billy Idol theming; but the phrase “Rebel Yellow” popped into my head and I just had to make a palette. Billy Idol’s signature color is black – as in black leather. He’s also known … Read more
One of my favorite gouache artists is Kelley Vivian, who paints gorgeous nature scenes typically in New England settings. She has painted numerous National Parks across the US, but her local park, like mine, is Acadia in Maine, and I just love her homey-looking Maine landscapes and seascapes, complete with lots of evergreen trees and rocky beaches. I especially like the way she treats golden hour and sunset light, with glowing sunlight flashing through the trees.
Kelley’s work was an inspiration to me picking up gouache, and I consulted her site when choosing my gouache palette. Here’s what I learned.
As I transition from a watercolor-only artist to watercolor-and-gouache, I’m finding that it’s harder to find lightfast pigments in gouache, even in professional/artist lines. I love Holbein and Winsor & Newton’s gouache, but I’ve seen so many pigments in their lines with super-low ASTM lightfastness ratings – not just the typical fluorescents (which are also much more widespread in gouache), but stuff like PR1 or PR60 that are uncommon in watercolor because they’re notoriously fugitive. What gives?
White is a really important color in gouache, and I defaulted to Titanium White until I started reading some interesting opinions online about Zinc White. It seems that Titanium White is more opaque and better for highlights and stars and things, but Zinc White is supposed to be a better mixing colors – to make nicer pastels.
So I got myself a tube of Zinc White gouache and tested out pastels made from Titanium vs Zinc with all my gouache colors.
Sarah Burns is a Scotland-based landscape watercolor and gouache artist from whom I’ve learned a ton especially about gouache. She’s shared her palettes for each medium on Youtube, so I’m going to explore each of them!
I recently took a pair of classes by Ruth Wilshaw on Domestika: Atmospheric Landscapes in Gouache and Fantasy Landscapes in Watercolor & Gouache. Without spoiling everything in the classes, I wanted to keep my notes on what was personally meaningful to me.