Gouache: Tubes or Pans?

Today let's take a look at some questions that blog readers often ask about gouache.

Do you use gouache squeezed out of tubes, or dried in pan form? Secondly, how do you reactivate the gouache after it dries on your palette?

It is possible to use gouache in pans, since gouache is water soluble. It has the same binder as transparent watercolor does, namely gum arabic, which will reactivate when it gets wet again.

It used to be more common to find gouache manufactured in pan form, but there's at least one company that still offers it that way. Caran d'Ache offers a 15-pan set of pan gouache. More about their gouache line on this previous post. 

If you want the ability to rewet your gouache, don't use any of the various "acrylic gouache" products, such as Acryla Gouache, which has a closed surface after it dries, meaning water won't dissolve the dry paint.

Can you use watercolor and gouache together?

Yes! In fact, transparent watercolor and "artist's" gouache aren't that different, because these days most quality manufacturers don't add a lot of whitener or filler to their gouache, as they did in the old days when it was called "designers" gouache.

Gouache and watercolor from reputable manufacturers such as M. Graham, Holbein, or Winsor and Newton tend to be pigment-rich and relatively transparent, unless the natural pigment tends toward opacity, such as Venetian red. Because of their close kinship, gouache and watercolor mix well with each other. So if you decide to work with pure gouache, you can achieve transparent passages, and those transparent passages are less likely these days to have that chalky, dull look that they had in days of yore.

Thomas Moran

Alternately, you can use a set of transparent watercolor for the colors, and just bring a tube of white gouache with you when you need opacity. That's what a lot of 19th century watercolor painters did, and they often called the result "body color." They commonly used zinc white, usually called "Chinese white," which is less opaque than titanium white, but often lovelier in tints.

Adding white is desirable for the following reasons:

1. You can paint over another passage opaquely.
2. A more opaque mixture can give you an absolutely even, flat layer, such as for a sky.
3. It allows you to work on tone paper, a technique with a venerable tradition.

Nathan Fowkes's gouache palette

Some painters I greatly admire, such as Nathan Fowkes, use this method. They bring their watercolors in pan form, squeezed earlier from tubes, along with a live tube of white gouache brought into the field and mixed with the regular watercolor to make them opaque. 

Filling your own pans

Whether you use gouache or watercolor, you can squeeze them from tubes into an empty pan set. This saves money in the long run and allows you to refill colors when you run out of them.

I recommend the straight-sided plastic paint wells called "full pans," which snap into the standard sized grippers inside the paint box. Or you can use smaller "half pans" for specialty colors. Full pans are better if you like to use larger brushes, but the smaller half pans will allow you to make a tinier kit. I like to mix full pans with small pans. You can buy a whole whole set of plastic full and half pans and prepare them yourself with tube paint. They'll fit into an empty metal watercolor box or a larger one, which will hold 24 full pans.

If you prefer working on large paintings, you can also use a large pre-made watercolor palette such as the venerable John Pike palette.

Fill the the pans just halfway up in the first squeezing, tap them against the table to get them to settle, then top off the pans with more paint. If the paint starts to crack, you can add more gum arabic to the mixture to give it more binding strength. Also, you can infill the cracks with more paint to lock it in place.

Note: don't use one of those round, dimpled plastic palettes. Those palettes are not designed to hold dry paint. They're for mixing large amounts of watercolor washes. If you use them for a portable palette, the dry paint is apt to break off and rattle around in your box as stray chunks.

Reactivating your paint.

As you start your sketching session, begin reactivating your paint by putting a drop or two of water lightly on each pan of color. You can use a soft brush for this, or a baby nasal aspirator or an artist's sponge. Get this started even before you start the drawing, so that the paint is softened up and ready for you when you need it.

Gouache from tubes

When it comes to gouache, I prefer to use it squeezed fresh from tubes because it gives me plenty of paint of the right juicy consistency.

I generally bring about 10 tubes of gouache at a given time in my small belt pouch, sometimes fewer. I like changing the assortment that I bring with me on a given outing, limiting my blue to just Prussian blue, for example, then switching that out for another blue such as Ultramarine. That way I stay away from color mixing habits, and I often discover weird combinations of colors that way.

For a flat mixing surface, I often use the steel lid of a colored pencil box painted with white spray enamel primer. I squeeze the paint onto a layer of damp paper towel if the humidity is very low and the paint risks drying quickly. A few spritzes of mist from a mini spray bottle can keep the paint active longer.

In some of my videos you'll see me mixing my gouache on the side flanges of my small watercolor box. That's just because I forgot to bring a simple empty palette. 

-----

Previous posts on GurneyJourney:

Watercolor in the Wild Materials

Gouache Materials List

More about Caran d'Ache's line of gouache 

Questions about Gouache

Gouache Ingredients: Info from Manufacturers

Teaching Resources
Own the 72-minute feature "Gouache in the Wild"
• HD MP4 Download at Gumroad $14.95
• or HD MP4 Download at Sellfy (for Paypal customers) $14.95
• DVD at Purchase at Kunaki.com (Region 1 encoded NTSC video) $24.50

Nathan Fowkes: "My Materials"

Nathan Fowkes's workshop schedule