How do Artists Make Amazing Art with Gouache? (2024)

FAQs

How do Artists Make Amazing Art with Gouache? ›

It can paint dark on light, or light on dark. Artists smear gouache paint with a palette knife to create cool textures like oil paint. Gouache paint also thins with water to perform like watercolor pigments. Sponges, brushes, rags, and even twigs are sometimes used to create different effects.

Dilute the gouache with water to obtain a hom*ogeneous, creamy texture. Load your brush with enough paint to avoid streaking or having to refill it during a stroke. For larger surfaces, work in successive bands across the surface. Our advice: Add a small amount of white to your paint to increase coverage.

The wet-on-wet technique with gouache involves applying wet paint onto a wet surface, allowing the colors to blend and create soft, flowing transitions. It is a technique commonly used in watercolor painting, but you can also apply it with gouache to achieve similar effects.

Gouache is known for its opacity, whereas watercolor is a more transparent medium. This opacity allows artists to create bold, solid colors unlike the soft washes of color achieved with watercolor.

Infinite blending and working time

Gouache is workable and reworkable, unlike any other paint. Because it is water-soluble, a wet brush can go back to soften edges or lift colour even after the paint dries.

The fact that gouache is rehydratable makes it a difficult medium. Beginners often find that when they build up gouache in layers, they reactivate the paint beneath, which smudges and disturbs the painting. You'll probably have to grit your teeth through a few such mishaps.

Con: Gouache is difficult to colour match

Burn this into your brain: always mix more paint than you think you need. When gouache dries, the shade changes ever so slightly, usually a bit darker if it's a light colour and a bit lighter if it's a dark colour.

Gouache is unpopular as it was considered an art supply rather than a painting medium for a long time. Designers used it for flat surfaces, animation used it for backgrounds, painters used it for plein air studies, and kids used it in school. Very few artists used it as their main medium.

Pronounced as “gwash,” gouache is a painting medium that's related to the watercolor family. This water-based paint boasts a cream-like consistency, matte finish and vibrant saturation. Thicker than watercolor, more flexible than acrylic... Professional artists favor gouache for its versatility.

Which artist was attracted to gouache? ›

Adolph Menzel

Adolph Friedrich Erdmann von Menzel was a German artist well known for drawings, etchings, and paintings. However, oil painting did not come easy to him, so eventually, he turned to his preferred medium of gouache.

Some brands use pigments that tend to be naturally opaque and load the formulation with so much pigment that opacity is the result. This makes gouache more expensive than watercolor or acrylics. Those other types of paints don't need as much pigment in order for them to dry opaquely on paper or canvas.

Using acrylic mediums, particularly the gloss medium, will increase the transparency of gouache. Water resistance can be achieved by adding small amounts of Acrylic Matt Medium to your Designers Gouache colour. It is also possible to use Acrylic Gesso Primer with Designers Gouache.

Watercolour as a material is more complicated in technique because of the transparency of the paint: layers are seen through each other, they are transparent and the previous layer is visible, so watercolour forgives less mistakes than gouache, which allows the possibility to add more layers in case of failures and ...

A heavy cream consistency in your paint results in the flat, matte, opaque finish that makes gouache so unique. Gouache straight out of the tube can be thick and hard to work with, but adding just a touch of water will help your paint easily glide across the page while staying completely opaque.

You have to adjust the amount of water in your mix until you get something that is fluid to move on the paint and not too liquid. Also a very important thing is don't rub just place one single brush stroke, and you won't lift the color below.

Most people who like to use gouache in dried form treat it just like watercolors: pouring the gouache into watercolor pans and letting it air dry. This makes traveling with them much easier and less worrisome. So far I'm really enjoying using it in my Portable Painter.