Happy New Year!

In the spirit of all things new I wanted to art something new so I experimented with gouache. I did a really simple study of a mug on my desk, the only thing in view while sitting next to a humble porcelain plate palette.

Well, I have noticed with great displeasure, that it is not oil paint. While this may sound self-explanatory, after years of painting a certain way and having to change this process is just a strange experience (but I was going for that anyway).

It feels just wrong to have to entice colour with water to get on your brush, but if you use too much water it will lose the intensity. Not even mentioning that it all looks darker when wet, and I hope you are not planning to paint anything brown because it looks literally like mud. That being said, this medium is not fussy when it comes to preparation and finishing. You can paint in a sketchbook and just close it once you finished. This relaxed attitude is just a funny aspect of the process being that you had to labour so much to get the paint on the paper.

The next surprise happened when I reopened my sketchbook the following day: it looked better than when freshly painted, having lost that touch of muddiness and wet darkness.

I am using a limited palette (for a change) that is somewhat different than my oil one as I removed cadmiums and cobalts as the binder in watercolours is too loose for my taste and I do not want pigment particles flying around.