A Gouache Portrait

Note: There is a video of my painting session at the end of this post.

I sat down on the 14th to sketch and for some reason turned on the camera. I don’t do that very often because I’m not teaching.

But I am always learning—and one thing I found interesting in making teaching videos is that it was fun for me to see the early starting moves and the key decision points—and use those as reminders when I go forward in another painting.

I thought it would be fun to share this video with you. 

After a year of not painting much (but sketching quite a lot) I’ve been carving out time to paint. But I’m also making time to think about process again because it has been several years since the gouache has been unpacked. Yes I paint opaquely with regular watercolor, but there are differences, and I’ve missed gouache while we’ve been going through the protracted move and the supplies have been boxed up.

The video below isn’t a teaching video—I wasn’t going to do any voiceover or instruction like I used to do on my teaching demos. However, I did end up making some “points” about what I was doing. (You could watch it at 2x and still hear my cartoon voice make those few comments.)

If you’re interested in how to handle gouache you can watch and see how I let areas dry before adding more paint. To do that you’ll probably want to view it at normal speed.

I suggest you watch my brush and how I move it when applying paint. The early work is mostly with a filbert because I love the strokes I can make with it. Filberts have edges.

I encourage you to watch the jacket button in the bottom right. You’ll see how I build it up at various points in the process, this is the important thing to remember. It gets started early on, but it doesn’t get a final touch until almost the last moments of the painting. The paint had to dry enough so I could pull smoothness into it.

Speaking of smoothness, for some painters my painting is probably not finished because I didn’t “pull smoothness” throughout the painting. To me that’s a matter of taste. I like to see the brush strokes. Could you work and work to make all the transitions smooth? Yes, you’d just apply the strategy of the “button effect.” Do a little, do something else, come back when the paint is the right level of dryness for the action you want to take, do that action, leave that area alone, and so on.

This is all something you learn as you execute your taste on the application of paint over many paintings. And it’s a hell of a lot of fun, it isn’t work. Think of it as play and experimentation. If I do this than what?

For me painting is about getting some things down because you need a base to do what you need to do later. But you still need to hold what you’re going to do later in your mind at the present moment. So your brain is both present in the moment and logging away all the things you’re going to get to later. It’s amazing fun.

If you’re new to painting such a proposition might seem impossible because you don’t even know where you want to “go” with the paint.

That’s why I’m showing you this video today—I want you to see the mess of the beginning and how I work my way out of it. In that initial mess my brain is telling me which shapes are going to be the basis of what I want to do and which aspects I need to keep in mind for later. I’m exploring. 

Ultimately it’s about values. Where are there shadow shapes, highlights?

If you want to paint with gouache but you aren’t sure how to start begin by working monochromatically.

Monochromatic painting is like learning to juggle with only two balls in the air—light or dark values. OK, three balls in the air—light, dark, and midtone values.

You can squint and quickly look at a face and decide where each of those are and develop a strategy to get where you want, without introducing the rotating power-saw of color theory into the juggling mix.

Baby steps. Then we walk. Then maybe someday we run. 

Also I wanted you to see this video so that you could be empowered to know you don’t have to have something looking like something straight off.

Enjoy the messy start. Let your brain think. Try things.

If something doesn’t work out you can paint over it, as I did that ear on the left—multiple times. (Now that ear one of my favorite parts of the painting.)

Just know that you need to let the paint dry to a certain point before you can lift it or paint over it without damaging your paper. (Fresh paint can of course be blotted right up, but if it’s dried at all or if it really dampened the papers it is often best to let it finish drying before you try to lift it because the paper isn’t stable under the paint at that moment of wetness.)

If your paper starts to give out (something that has not happened with me when working on Strathmore 500 Series Mixed Media Paper, which is one of the many reasons I love it) let it rest and dry out. Then you can lift a little if you want, and let it dry and then repaint. Or you can let it dry and paint right over it. That’s the beauty of working opaquely.

Another reason I wanted to share this video is I wanted to make a point that you can get rich thick color even with gouache that has become bone dry on your palette. This might help some of you get over the idea that you’re “wasting” paint when you put it out on your palette and don’t use it all up.

Really, put the paint out and start painting. The next day, paint some more even if it has dried up. If you want to have it “fresh” then bag your palette after your first session as I’ve discussed many times on this blog.

In other words—get out of your head and start painting.

“Wasted paint” isn’t on your palette, it is all those tubes sitting unused in a drawer or some creative storage system that you came up with to display colors you’re simply not using. Don’t be one of those artists who dies with a lot of unused paints.

I hope you take time to carve out painting time as the year draws to a close. Allow yourself the joy of moving paint around.

If the video doesn’t run here you can view it at this YouTube Link.

As you watch, remember this isn’t the only way to approach gouache. You can work in a more orderly fashion—make a thumbnail sketch, a value sketch, and work out all the bits you want to do before you start painting. Including your color choices.

I like to jump in and start sketching with the brush and make decisions on the fly. And change my mind.

Partly it’s the fun of playing with the leftover paint. The idea of “what can I do today with these leftovers that is different from what I did yesterday…?” And the resultant painting is that answer that tells me what I need to think about for my next painting session—so ultimately for me it’s about momentum.

Oh, and one mystery solved—the blue on my palette was Delft blue gouache from Schmincke, which is also a PB60, which is of course my favorite blue pigment. And all the white paint on this palette is Schmincke Titanium white. (Over various sessions I kept putting out a little bit more fresh white.)

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