ADVENTURES WITH GOUACHE

My humble Gouache collection - top row is from the Winsor & Newton Designers Gouache Primary Colour Set, the bottom ones are just additional colours

Lately I've become pretty obsessed with Gouache. I've been consciously trying to bring it a lot more into my digital works, to add texture and a bit of life as well as just experimenting in my sketchbook with it. I love it because I find it so simple to mix the right colours without getting muddy. It seems like everytime I use acrylic I just end up liberally using phaltho blue when all else fails, brandishing crappy, crappy results. There's so much pigment with Gouache so it definitely owns over watercolour for me (plus I'm way too impatient for layering with watercolour).

While I was in London earlier this month I hopped over to Cowling & Wilcox Shoreditch to pick up some intermediate shades of my Winsor & Newton Designer's Gouache. I would definitely recommend these over any other Gouache I've tried, the pigment is awesome! When I was in Australia these were super expensive, but they seem kind of doable in the UK - £9.95 for the Primary Colour set at the aforementioned Cowling. I haven't been able to find this brand in Berlin so far, or Palomino Blackwing Pencils for that matter - (damn where they at? - hook me up!).

a colour chart from my sketchbook - (yeah the greens are messed)

I picked up Orange Lake Light, Opera Pink, Brilliant Green, Brilliant Purple and Cobalt Turqouise Light. I probably could have done without Brilliant Green, because of it's similarity, but it will still be useful for mixing. All the others are absolutely beautiful on their own and for mixing. The reason for grabbing intermediates is so I don't have to use up pure yellow and red everytime I want orange etc, it just speeds things up. (Is my lazy/impatient streak showing?) The only lame thing is that my now well used Opera Pink kind of gets killed by my scanner because it is Semi-Transparent, so the scanning light goes right through. It scans as a dull pastel pink when in reality it's super neon. Next time I will have to get Permanent Rose (CMYK Magenta).

stroke practice for photoshop brushes, you can see here that pastel pink is actually opera pink - so dull when scanned

So in general I've been using the gouache to create strokes to make photoshop brushes and textures for backgrounds. It's a new type of process for me where I draw the linework first, then roughly decide what parts need to be hand painted. Then I just paint those into my sketchbook and scan those bad boys in. It's more deliberate than before, more back and forth. Where are usually I would just paint first, and make the linework fit.

back in december, obsessed at that time with the idea of gamma rays & radiation mit confetti, largely becasue of Beck

I'm still very much trial & error-ing with this, but I'm really just enjoying ramping up my away-from-screen & tablet time. Rather than just splashes and texture that I was making in December, I'm testing painting little series of objects, devoid of linework and taking advantage of the pigmentation.

rag rug, neon sushi, palm trees, kokeshi dolls & mountains - the first of my little series experiments

You might have seen these on my instagram quite recently. I'm trying to post more sketches on there. I have a couple of ideas in mind for what I'll be making out of these little series, but you'll have to wait and see! Expect to see more Gouache painting filter into my work in any case. (holy crap - sick of the word Gouache yet? Hey - at least I didn't say 'pops of colour'!)
xx