Gouache Painting: It’s a Piece of Cake!
Using baking analogies to better understand the properties of gouache.
This past weekend I had the pleasure of teaching my first-ever, all-day gouache painting workshop, which was also my first workshop taught at Historic Yellow Springs in Chester County, Pennsylvania. It’s a beautiful spot in the countryside, and a complementary teaching environment to the large, urban, industrial campus of GoggleWorks in Reading, where I usually teach.
This article will serve as a review for my HYS students, as well as for my introductory painting students and intermediate painting students at GoggleWorks (and any other readers out there). We’re all about gouache this week! I’ll sprinkle in some baking analogies, because I have a few students working in the baking industry, and because it’s baking season, isn’t it?
The basic techniques
I published an updated Gouache Cheat Sheet article recently, where you can review basic concepts about using gouache. The main points are that gouache can be used thinly or opaquely; we typically start thin, and then use it opaquely for the majority of the time (it will have a consistency which feels like heavy cream or melted ice cream).
Because it dries so quickly and reactivates so easily, gouache requires special strategies to create smoothly blended passages.
Check out the basics article at this link.
Finer points, further explorations
Here are some finer points to consider about gouache handling, including new discoveries that students and I are making together as we create these cheat sheets.
Color shift—Gouache undergoes a slight color shift as it dries (more pronounced in cheaper brands). Lights tend to dry a bit darker, and darks a bit lighter, resulting in a painting with lower contrast once it has dried.
Palette—I always ask students to choose two, contrasting colors to do the exercise. Lately I’ve been really enjoying exploring this basic statement of color harmony. If you chose colors you ended up not liking for the exercise, try making another sheet! Consider the colors carefully, and practice improving your technique.
Crushing/bruising the paint—Gouache dries to a matte finish that, when scuffed or exposed to direct pressure, can “bruise.” These spots become a bit shiny and darker. Some colored pencils “bruise the gouache” unless I apply gentle pressure and build up layers of pencil color gradually.
Stippling, hatching, other gradients—We can make a gradient in gouache by creating an array of marks that vary in density. Hatching lines and stippling points are traditional methods, but you could also use many, small marks of any shape. A baker sprinkling colored sugar on a cake might create a color gradient in this way.
Blending medium—In yesterday’s intro class I forgot to do a swatch of paint with blending medium mixed in. I’ve since added that to my sheet done in blue/red (see below). I laid down an area of blending medium and painted directly into it; this extended the blending time, and it dried to a nice, matte finish. I also used it mixed directly with paint to correct my “wet blend” swatch.
Blending light into dark vs dark into light—When your brush passes through a darker color on its way toward a lighter color, the darker color can overwhelm and cover up the lighter one very quickly. For a subtle blended edge, try moving lighter paint toward the darker paint, wiping off the brush on occasion as it picks up the stronger color.
Neocolor II crayons—In addition to colored pencils and chalks, some students enjoyed using water-soluble Neocolor II crayons (from Caran d’Ache) with their gouache.
An evenly-mixed emulsion—When beating together eggs, butter, and sugar for a cake, we wouldn’t want to stop part way, leaving chunks of butter, runny egg whites, and clumps of sugar. Similarly, when mixing gouache with a little water to achieve a flowing, yet opaque consistency, we want to stir, flip the brush over, stir, until the gouache and water are mixed into an even emulsion all throughout the bristles, and on the palette. Otherwise we risk having surprise, watery, translucent patches.
Let it flow—For good coverage, mix enough paint to the right consistency (see “emulsion” above) and load the bristles. Allow the paint to flow off the brush, controlling your speed, rather than scraping and pressing very hard, which might create translucency. Re-load if needed.
Manage your water—People often struggle with putting too much water into the gouache mix. Keep checking how this might happen—did you dry the brush bristles on a very wet towel? Or forget to stir the paint to an even consistency Or try to extend dry paint with too much water? Did water run down the brush handle onto your painting?
Favorite gouache artists
This is just a partial list of gouache artists I admire.
James Gurney—In my Wednesday class we watched James Gurney paint an abandoned house, using gouache and secondary colors. By chance he meets a former inhabitant, who shares stories of growing up in that house. On Saturday we painted a copy of a Gurney painting, Lenny’s Barn, using a limited palette of sienna, ultramarine blue, and white. Warms plus cools make a nice neutral color that can be nudged in either direction, or lightened with white. Find James Gurney on Substack.
Lena Rivo—Painter of beautiful, light-filled gouache, oil, and oil pastel images with fresh, accurate color mixing. Find her useful, free art guides at this link.
Eyvind Earle—concept artist, art director, and background painter for Walt Disney in the mid-20th century. His strongly stylized background paintings for Sleeping Beauty (1959) gave the film its signature look. These paintings were made with gouache, starting with large, dark block shapes that were overlaid with gradually lighter-toned, filigree-like brushwork to create intricate textures and depth.
Gil Robles—Painter of portraits in gouache, acrylic, graphite, and digital, using a robust “tiling” method of laying down adjacent, closely-related tones of paint to achieve roundness and depth.
That’s all for now!
I hope I covered some useful resources following your workshop or class session with me. Please leave a comment if there are other thoughts or questions that you have!
Also, please periodically check my Linktree for updates on workshops and classes in painting, drawing, digital, clay, and more. Happy art-making to you!
Funny you should mention those Caran d'Ache water soluble crayons, I've got a small set of those and was going to experiment a little more with them. I've still not given gouache my full time and effort yet but I'm looking forward to that time. I think we'll be friends