Saturday, January 26, 2019

Starting Loosely in Gouache




With gouache, you can start loose and find the drawing in the paint. (Link to video on Facebook)



Questions from my Instagram page:

Suzy asks: "Awesome ! I love how you’re brave to just paint no matter where you are! Are your gouache colors listed on your blog? I mix white with my watercolor."

My answer: I used terra rosa, yellow ochre, Rowney blue, and titanium white in a Pentalic watercolor sketchbook. You can use the white with the watercolor, too, but tube gouache gives you more "oomph."

Janet Lobardi asks: "Did she know you were painting her? Do you ask permission?"
My answer: She never looked over. If she had, I was ready to smile and say: "Hope you don't mind, I'm painting your portrait," and then show her. Whoever she is, she'd beautiful and I thank her.

Lisa Nelson says: "My biggest problem is that my water becomes cloudy and contaminated almost immediately, so I'd feel as if I'd constantly be spilling it out and needing fresh water in the field which isn't practical. With watercolor, the brush seems to release most of the pigment onto the paper, so the water doesn't get as dirty, but I don't find that this is the case with gouache. Or, perhaps it's just my user-error. Any tips to keep your water clean would be helpful."

My answer: My water gets fouled quickly too. Tip: When I want to change colors, I try to get most of the paint off into the rag so I don't swish all the pigment into the water. Problem was in this instance I didn't have a rag, just half a Kleenex. Had a big mess to clean up in the Grand Central bathroom, and they don't have paper towels there either!

Yay Mukund asks: "In gouache, is it typically easier to lighten dark colors or darken light colors?"
My answer: I'm not quite sure what you mean, but with gouache you can do either of those things, but the key is to try to hit the right value with each stroke, and use an absolute minimum of back-and-forth noodling with the brush, or you'll get a mess.

skyredoubt asks: "Who was doing the videography all this time? Could not have been you, being busy painting!"

My answer: My left hand was unemployed, so I just gave it a job.

Eliza asks: "I get lost between the part where you’ve practically darkened the whole figure and looks like there’s no way to recover from that, and then you bring out the details and all is resolved with the lights. My head can’t get round that. I think that’s what is stopping me from doing more painting. Scares the heck out of me!"
Gouache is so forgiving. You can fix any mistake and keep correcting. The only thing is you have to put down a stroke and leave it. If you want to change it, just wait until that last stroke is dry. 

Cavatroop asks: "Is that tube gouache that you let dry in a pan?"

No, it's tube gouache. I just squeezed it out on the side flanges of my watercolor set. I did use a touch of the transparent watercolor red over the neck scarf.
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4 comments:

Suzy Pal Powell said...

I did ask on Instagram but will ask here too. Where you get the terra rose and Downey blue. I googled with no luck. Thx

Jennie said...

I would love to see how you defined (or found) the face! I love your videos and art. ��

Peter Drubetskoy said...

It is amazing to me that you were able to multi-task like that! Painting or drawing under time constraint from a moving model (in a moving train to boot) requires such intense concentration and mobilization of resources, that to imagine that you had space capacity to engage in video documentation is just mind boggling! Master!

Meera Rao said...

Thank you so much for sharing so generously 🙏🏼 Do you have any tips for learning how to block in shapes? I can’t seem to figure it out ! Thanks in advance !