Gouache is a medium that’s clearly under estimated. In comparison to the popular watercolor or oil paints, it falls shy of the limelight. In today’s post, I want to highlight the beauty of gouache painting and how it can be a wonderful addition to your art supply stash.
Gouache? What’s that? If you’re thinking this right now, don’t worry because you’re not alone. I have had so many people give me confused looks when I talk about it. A while ago, this wasn’t even a medium I was willing to try. I’ve heard of it but I was not very educated on the subject. After months of experiments and practice paintings, I’ve learnt a couple of things I want to share with you. We’ll tackle that in baby steps!
What is gouache?
Gouache(pronounced as gwosh) is an art medium similar to watercolors with higher pigment ratio. In addition, chalk maybe added to make it opaque. It works the same way as watercolors (using water to make it workable) but dries in an opaque manner. The texture is heavier which makes it similar to acrylics. In a way, gouache imitates the properties of both watercolor and acrylic.
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A few helpful tips about gouache painting based on my experiments:-
- Invest in good quality gouache. Don’t settle for a cheap brand that will make you hate it. Some examples are Winsor and Newton designers gouache and Royal Talens gouache. You can also invest in individual tubes like this one.
- Treat it like watercolors by diluting it but don’t use excessively. Use enough to make it workable.
- The inherent nature of gouache is it’s opaqueness. Layering rather than blending would be the best course of action
- You can mix gouache and watercolor together.
- Rough bristles work better than softer ones.
- A tiny bit of gouache goes a long way.
I’m going to now show an example of a few Valentine’s day “fruit pun” illustrations I created for my Zazzle shop. One of the things I learnt is that for designing purposes, gouache seems to work slightly better than watercolor.
Materials you’ll need for gouache painting are:-
- Gouache paints- I used the Winsor and Newton set
- Brushes- Simply simmons filbert, spotter and liner brush
- Tombow mono zero eraser
- Palette
- Pencil
-
PEAR ILLUSTRATION
Step 1: First off, I outlined the illustration and lettering in pencil. The illustration is a pear with the words “You’re pearfect” ( get it? ) . After sketching, I removed the extra lines using a Tombow Mono zero eraser. This eraser has a fine tip and works beautiful for detailed erasing.
Step 2: The gouache set I have does not have green in it. I mixed a tiny bit of yellow and blue to get the color I need. I used a water spray to get the water I need for mixing. One spritz should do.
At this point I started with the lettering first. After creating this particular gouache painting, I realized that it is best to go from the background to the foreground. In fact, I overlooked the opaque nature of gouache. This made things harder because you’ll see that in the next few steps, I had to go back and perfect the lettering again.
Tip : Start with the background first.
Complete the lettering and wait for it to dry.
Step 3: While waiting for the lettering to dry( it dries quickly ), I painted the lone leaf sitting on top. I used the layering process here. Lay down a layer of green and let it dry. Take a darker shade of green and paint a few strokes at the top and bottom. Next, paint the veins in yellow and shade underneath with darker green.
This is the part where I struggled and so I don’t want you to do the same mistake. I had to carefully do the background color so that it wouldn’t go over the lettering. Even then a few places had to be corrected.
After laying down a shade of yellow, I did the shadows using orange and placed dots around the pear to show texture. I also perfected the lettering once I completed the background.
2.TOMATO ILLUSTRATION
Step 1: Here I started with the background first. Using a filbert brush, I laid down a layer of red. Wait for the gouache painting to dry.
Paint the stem of the tomato in the same way I explained the leaf earlier. Also lay down the highlights and shadows of the tomato.
Step 2: After that write down the lettering in pencil and complete it using a spotter brush. After finishing the lettering in black, I realized it needed to pop. Create a shadow in white wherever required.
And that’s it! I hope you enjoyed reading through today’s tutorial. I’m sure this will inspire you to pick up those brushes and give gouache painting a go.
What do you think?
Which is your favorite of these illustrations ? Mine is the pear one although it took me the most time to make. What other tutorials would you like me to include in the blog?I’m on Instagram if you loving sharing your work there and if you try this out, use the hashtag #makeinkstruck.
Cheers !
I love this tutorial as well as your wreath tutorial! I especially love the strawberry! You are so talented!! Is there a tutorial which might show how to paint the little flowers or buds in your wreaths? I LOVE your tutorials! You are so kind and it was a joy to hear from you. I hope your tutorials will continue.????
Thank you so much Deborah. I’m so excited that you enjoy my tutorials. That’s the best thing that I get to hear in my profession and it makes me very happy. I don’t have one specifically for the buds and flowers but I’ve got that noted down and will try and create a detailed tutorial in the near future. Thanks so much once again. Have a lovely weekend. x
I was wondering, what paint medium do you personally find most difficult? I like watercolors, since acrylics definitely aren’t my thing. But I have yet to try gouache!
Definitely acrylics. I admire people who can work with that medium. I’ve tried it a couple of times and can’t seem to get the hang of it. I probably need to get that fear out and give it a go once again. Well, gouache is like when acrylics and watercolors have a baby! Haha. It’s a super nice medium although watercolors will be my favorite.
This is so cool! I totally didn’t know anything about gouache until I read this post. Thanks!
That’s amazing! I’m so glad you found this post useful Chantal. Thanks for stopping by!x
Wow! These are beautiful. Thanks for the pronunciation of gouache. I’m not an artist but I really do have much appreciation for art.
Thanks for sharing this tutorial!
Lillian
So sweet of you Lillian. And thank you so much for appreciating my work. Very kind of you to stop by. Have a lovely weekend. x
I too never heard of this medium. I really like that it is similar to watercolors but more opaque. Thanks for sharing this. I may be in trouble now with yet another obsession.
It is quite interesting and takes a bit of time getting used to if you’ve been using watercolors for long. But like anything creative, you ultimately get the hang of it if you keep trying. Thanks for stopping by Patti ! x
Your cards are so colorful & pretty!! I haven’t painted with gouache in a super long time. Might be time to give it another try.
Thanks Randi. Oh I can’t wait to see what you create. I love all the super amazing things you come up with on your blog. Thanks for supporting as always. x
Zakkiya, first of all…in awe of your crazy mad skills. Second, thanks for teaching me something new today! I’ve heard the term gouache, but never really knew what it was. Third, I really love working with oils, then watercolors and acrylics. Looks like I need to add gouache to my inventory of paints. Finally, I’m a tomato kind of gal, so that’s my favorite. And in terms of what I’d like to see in the future? I’m pretty sure anything you sent my way would make me happy. Pinning for future inspiration.
Lynn
Thanks Lynn for sending such kind words my day. I’m honestly so honored. You know the funny thing is I’ve trained with oils for 2 months but never really enjoyed the process. Maybe I should pick my oil painting brushes soon. Gouache is amazing and I’m not saying that because I’ve made a post here. My acrylic skills are not great but this medium produces results similar to acrylics but the process is similar to watercolors. Thanks again for stopping by and for pinning as well 🙂
Thanks for the tutorial. Your work is beautiful! I hope you will do periscope as well 🙂
Thanks so much Dwiana. Very kind of you. I will hopefully as soon I get some time to. 🙂 x
This is a great walkthrough! Thank you for the high quality photographs and explanations of the steps you took. This was really informative. 🙂
Thank you so much for the lovely words. I’m so happy my post was super informative and hearing that from my readers makes my day. x
What a fun and inspiring blog. Your illustrations make me happy. I’ll definitely come back! Thank you 🙂
Thank you so much for the lovely words Shelly. Totally made my day! And I absolutely love your blog. I’m not a kitchen person but I love looking at beautiful photos of food and drooling over them. Have a lovely rest of the week. x
Wow this is so lovely, really dig your style! Thanks for the tutorial! <3
Question: I'm making holiday cards this year, was just wondering if there we need to protect the gouache somehow to make it more permanent? Or is it generally okay to kind of send just as it is? 🙂
Hello lovely. Thank you for the lovely words. Honestly, I haven’t tried using fixative with gouache only because most of the work I do is usually reproduced as digital images or prints. But I don’t think the cards will need to be fixed because
1.It won’t be in direct sunlight unless its going to be framed.
2.It’s not a dry medium like pastel or colored pencil that have the high possibility of smudging.
But if you really want to fix it, I’m assuming any watercolor fixative should work. Please don’t experiment on your finished card directly. Try on a sample first please. I hope that helps.
How to convert these into digital images without compromising on the looks of the image?
Hi Hamsa. This question in itself is a blog post but I’m going to cut it short for you here. I usually scan my paintings at 400 dpi using a regular scanner. I have a cheap Canon printer plus scanner and it works well. Once it’s scanned, I take it to PhotoShop and remove the background if it’s white. The scan usually washes out some colors so I use curves, hue-saturation and color balance to balance it all out. Once I finish, I save it either using PNG orPDF depending on the purpose of the painting. I hope that helps. 🙂
Great tutorial. When I teach people about the awesomeness of gauche I tell them it was the versatility of water colour and the fullness of colours acrylic has.
Could you do another gauche tutorial on how to use it for galaxy paintings and splatter effects? I get asked that a lot, but I don’t blog, so I’d love to send people to your work.
Also huge thanks for noting the BIG difference in quality between student and professional, like there just isn’t difference they run in completely difference marathons.
Thank you son much for writing this comment Thea. Means a lot to me. I will definitely get a galaxy painting with gouache tutorial on the blog. I’ll be back from my vacation in September. Thanks once again. Have a lovely day .
I love your pear and tomato…and all your tutorials. A friend gifted me with a very large set of Turner Acryl Gouache plus many extra tubes that I haven’t touched yet, never having painted with any type of gouache. Have you or anyone reading this thread ever used the acrylic version of these more opaque paints? I’ve watched a couple of videos and these seem more like acrylics than watercolors in nature. Thanks.
Hi Linda ! Thanks so much for the lovely comment. So gouache is basically acrylic that can be thinned down to work similar to watercolor. I think you should be able to use acrylics the same way. They may dry faster so you’ll need to be quick and also they may not be workable once dried on the palette. But do experiment and see how it works. I’ve used water based acrylics before and it’s worked similarly although they’re my great for blending. For layering, it works. I hope that helps
Wonderful explanation and visuals! Very much appreciated. I have worked mainly with acrylics, so I am wanting to expand to gouache.
My question is does the paper have to be watercolor paper, or can you use a thick acrylic paper or mix media?
Hi Susanna. Thank you so much for the lovely words. You may use any thick paper and not necessarily watercolor paper. Only thing to keep in mind is that matte would be best. I would steer clear from anything glossy. Hope that helps .
Thank you Zakkiya. I love your pear the best. For those who are deciding on whether or not to invest in gouache paints, note the difference between traditional gouache and acrylic gouache.
I invested in a trial set of Turner acrylic gouache paints. I both loved and disliked the intensity and opacity of them. However, for the same reasons I have difficulty with regular acrylic paints, I found these very tricky and often frustrating to work with. They dry very fast and, unlike watercolors, and because they are acrylic based, they are permanent when dry. Blending is really difficult as well. I haven’t tried traditional gouaches and I suspect I’d like them much better simply because they would behave more like watercolors.
That is really good advice Linda. Gouache behaves a lot like watercolor but with a lot more opacity . It’s dries fast but can be re-wetted easily.
Acrylic gouache can be tricky. I think you’ll need to know how acrylics behave in the first place. I’m not rest fond of acrylics but I would like to try it out someday.