I am so very fortunate to have a family full of people who embrace my art and encourage my work. About a year ago I was gifted a set of gouache paints to play with and see if I liked them.
Gouache is such a cool medium to work with because you use them in a very similar way to watercolors but they are typically opaque like an acrylic paint. Watercolor paints have been a very frustrating medium for me to work with but I wanted to give these paints a real try. I bought a watercolor paper sketchbook and decided to sit down and really practice. I watched watercolor videos on YouTube as well as gouache painting videos. And slowly I fell in love with these paints.
This is my first page in that watercolor sketchbook. I started with very watered down gouache to create a very light background. If you add less water tot he gouache paints they become less transparent. I tried slightly less water and made some loosely painted flowers, leaves and berries. Being my first time trying to create an actual painting with the gouache, I was not very happy with the flowers and decided to sketch with my glass pen and ink over the top to give them more definition. I enjoyed trying to create these flowers but it took me several days of getting frustrated and quitting and then going back to it before I was happy with the end result.
Part of me wants to revisit this paintings and re-do it now that I have learned more about the medium and see what I can come up with a second time around.
My second page started as just a water colored splotchy painting with no flowers. I wanted to play with the blending of colors and ended up with a rainbow of cloudy-ness. It sat that way for about a month. One day, sitting in the grass I saw these sweet little white flowers and decided they would be perfect on this rainbowed background. They were good practice with less watered down gouache. It was amazing to see how the opaque-ness of the paints covered the background so well and made these flowers stand out nicely.
My next page stays unfinished. I started this painting based on a picture of one of my favorite places to visit. A picture of my peaceful place. I don't really have a reason for not finishing this painting. It simply sits unfinished.
I do enjoy the wispy paint strokes and the depth that is started in such a crude state. Maybe its just me, knowing this place, but I feel the peace in this painting.
Some days my peaceful moments come from no brain paintings. This is one of those. My sweet daughter wanted to paint one afternoon and so we sat on the floor and painted. She made her typical box monsters that always make us giggle and I listened to her silly stories about the monster she was painting. I sat there chatting and giggling with her while I simply painted a gouache tie dye spiral.
This is where I decided to get brave!
I live in the most peaceful, inspiring place I have ever been. It is a place I have visited annually since I was born. My family as a whole cherishes it. And for the last year I have been able to call it home. As I drive around day to day I find inspiration to create and grab photographs of what I can to later paint from. As a practice exercise, I have decided to paint as many as I can in my sketchbook. This has been great practice for me with my gouache paints.
My first is the view of a road I drive down each day to work and each day I am in awe of the beauty of these old oak trees. I am very happy with how this painting turned out and this may have been the painting that made me 100% fall in love with gouache! By the end of it, it made me feel like I had a handle on how to use them.
I took a small break from "finished" paintings after watching a simple Instagram video on how to paint leaves in watercolor. So I selected a brush and gave them a shot! I spent days on this page. I created a pale yellow background and just practiced leaves the first day, not intending to add anything else. The next day I decided to play with some flowers and did NOT like how they turned out. So the next day I came back with some metallic watercolors and paint pens and added more to the page. Its not my favorite page, but it was a good learning page and those are just as important as serious "finished paintings" pages.
Back to painting my favorite places I went! My favorite little farmers market is the most picturesque market and it screams to be painted. So I went and took multiple pictures and created a painting of it. I was very happy with the way this painting turned out because I had never painted a building. I spent lots of time in a separate sketchbook working out the perspective. Once that was worked out I moved onto painting.
My latest page is my favorite beach the night of the 4th of July. I wanted to use the gouache to get a more watercolored effect. I am neither happy or unhappy with this painting. I feel like I captured the colors well but it just doesn't seem to be a finished painting to me. A good practice with a different effect but a page I am just not sure of.
Thank you for walking through my sketchbook with me! I enjoy sharing my work and I hope you enjoy viewing it. I will continue to share my works.. the good, the bad, and the unfinished with y'all.
Find peace in yourself. Create peace around you.
Comments