Today's tutorial is an easy take on painting with gouache. This medium is gorgeous but very underrated. I'm going to teach you to paint an easy heart-shaped gouache leaf painting today. Enjoy!
If you’ve never heard of the medium gouache before, I suggest you read my introductory post on gouache first and then come back to this post. Done? Okay, let me explain a bit about today’s tutorial. Since I wanted to make today’s post as simple as possible, I’m using only used one color plus white which is essentially making a tint.
COLOR + WHITE = TINT
I’m also sticking with one element-a simple leaf. You can have your own take and use a simple element like an easy flower or a smaller heart. The possibilities are endless.
Step 1: I like to prep my palette first so that it’s easier for me to paint using the colors I require. What I’m essentially doing here is making different tints of pink by varying the amount white with opera rose. I’m also using just enough water to make it workable.
Step 2: Draw a rough heart shape using a pencil. I’m going to fill it in with simple leaves to create the gouache leaf painting. Start with painting a cluster of leaves using a medium pink that I got by mixing equal mounts of pink and white.
Step 3: I painted the next set of leaves with the darkest pink, the true opera rose color. You’ll also notice how I move the direction of the leaves as I fill the shape in.
Step 4: Add more leaf clusters. It is okay to layer on top of the previous leaves as well. The gouache leaf painting is coming to life!
Step 5 & 6: The only thing you need to do is repeat what you’ve been doing. Change the tint and paint.
Have a look at the images closely and see how I’ve repeated, layered and moved direction of the leaves. Observing this will help you get an idea of how I managed to balance the heart shape.
And that’s it! You’ve painted your very own heart-shaped gouache leaf painting with these easy to follow steps. I hope you try this tutorial and don’t forget to tag me on Instagram using #makeinkstruck.
x
