These were gouache sketches from a couple of months ago that I’m just now getting around to posting. I’m still loving gouache but have been missing using it.
I’m working on two commissioned dog portraits in oils so have put aside most of my other art projects temporarily. I’m enjoying the difficult challenge of painting two very similar dogs with dark brindle fur for two different owners but I’m missing taking the time to draw my daily dream images, play with gouache and work on painting people portraits.
I really tried to focus on two things with this portrait, getting the drawing right and keeping the gouache colors light (gouache dries darker). For once I managed to keep a tilted head tilted in my drawing–for some reason my brain always wants to make everything upright and symmetrical. It doesn’t surprise me since I learned that the image that comes in from our eyes is upside down and it’s our brains that convert it to right-side up. My brain definitely has a mind of its own…oh wait a minute–it is my mind!
Below is the original pencil drawing over which I painted the gouache. I wish I could show you the photo I worked from, but I think those are only meant to be visible to members of Julia Kay’s Portrait Party, which you can apply to join on Flickr and play too, if you want to.
Practicing gouache with found items. The lipstick with purple case I found on the street, the journal at the recycling center’s little “shop” where you leave things you don’t want and take things for free. The pear and jar lid I found in my kitchen so I guess they aren’t officially found items. The cigar box the journal is sitting on was a freebie from the local smoke shop. I love cigar boxes so much! This gouache sketch made me happy…feels like I’m starting to get it.
Susan’s Dinner at Gaumenkitzel, graphite and gouache, 7×9 inches
When we met a Gaumentkitzel for sketch night I’d already had dinner so just ordered a decaf and sketched Susan’s dinner instead. I added gouache when I got home.
Zorn Palette color chart in gouache, 10×8 inches in A4 Moleskine
In trying to learn more about gouache I made a few color charts. I’m using mostly M. Graham gouache which I like much better than the Winsor & Newton and Schmincke I used before. The Graham gouache is creamy and brilliant, rewets well and doesn’t smell (like the W&N). I found that using fresh-squeezed gouache is more fun to work with than rewetting dried paint, but frugality keeps me trying to reuse dried. The best solution is to set up a palette for each session, squeezing out tiny blobs, adding more as needed.
Above is an exploration of the Zorn palette in gouache, a limited palette using only Yellow Ochre, Cadmium Red, White, and Black. The black paint, when mixed with white, is meant to serve as blue since it is a cool color that can look blue next to warm colors. Next I want to try using it in an actual painting.
M. Graham Gouache paint chart, gouache in A4 Moleskine, 10×4 inches
Above is a chart of my gouache colors straight from the tube and mixed with white and each other. Sadly when I removed the masking tape it pulled off some of the paper from the extra large Moleskine watercolor notebook that is my current journal. I don’t recall previous Moleskine WC notebooks having that problem but I’ve switched to low-tack tape now.
Before ordering any new brushes specifically for gouache I wanted to see how the brushes I already had might work so did the test below. I found a few that I liked and ordered a couple of others. I’ll do another post about my gouache palette and brushes I’ve settled on soon.
I painted Kathleen (from the Julia Kay Portrait Party) side by side with the flower below but decided to post them as separate images. I’m loving gouache but really struggling with the way light colors turn so much darker when it dries. I actually lightened the sketch above in Photoshop so that it wouldn’t look so scary.
Azalea in Gouache, 7×5 x 5.5 inches
I found this flower (I think it’s an azalea) growing along the sidewalk in the neighborhood and picked off a blossom to paint. The flower is too dark because of my lack of experience with gouache, but I had fun painting it. Gouache is so much fun and I’m especially loving M. Graham Gouache. Now to just learn to mix colors about 4 shades lighter than they look! I mastered doing the opposite with watercolor so I’m (almost) sure I can do it with gouache too.
SF Bernal Heights Sketchcrawl, ink, watercolor, gouache, 7.5 x 11″
When it was time to leave for the Sketchcrawl in San Francisco I couldn’t find my sketch kit containing all my favorite sketching tools. I scoured the studio and the house. No sketch kit. I feared I’d left it at my figure drawing class the day before at the community college where it had probably already been adopted by a needy art student. Sad and frustrated, I cobbled together some pens, pencils, brushes and paints, threw them in a bag and drove across the Bay Bridge to San Francisco.
Catching up with my friend Susan Cornelis who came down from Sebastopol for the day, and connecting with some other local sketch buddies helped me forget about my missing precious pens and paints for a little while. Since I was so late, after a quick walk around the neighborhood, I decided to sketch what I could see from a bench on the porch in front of the library where the final meet up would be. The lamp post in the sketch above was up on the porch too, which is a little confusing perspective-wise, being up about 8 steps from the sidewalk in this hilly neighborhood.
The good news is that I had a great time at the sketch crawl AND the next day when I was getting ready to go out to the studio I picked up the basket I use to carry things back and forth from house to studio and my sketch kit was in the basket! YAY! And I put a “Reward for return” note in the bag with my name and phone number on it in case it ever disappears again.
I think I like the sketch better broken into two separate ones (below). What do you think?
SF Bernal Heights Sketchcrawl (crop 1) ink and watercolor in XL WC Moleskine
SF Bernal Heights Sketchcrawl (crop2) ink and watercolor in XL WC Moleskine
Portrait for Julia Kaye’s Portrait Party, gouache in XL WC Moleskine, 9×6.5″
When I learned that Julia Kay’s Portrait Party (Facebook) (Flickr) was coming to SF in March for a weekend of live portrait party events I signed up. My goal for 2015 is to develop my portrait drawing and painting skills and this seemed a perfect way to get started, along with the excellent 4-hour figure/portrait drawing/painting class I’m taking at my local community college.
Since I’ve been experimenting and teaching myself to paint with gouache (more about that soon, with reviews of paint and brushes for gouache). I thought it would be a perfect medium for my first Portrait Party attempt. One thing that I know about gouache but am not yet accustomed to, is that it dries significantly darker than it looks on the palette (unlike watercolor which dries lighter). That explains the very vibrant tones in the portrait above compared to the original photo (which I don’t have permission to post here)! Below is the original sketch that I painted over in my X-large Watercolor Moleskine.
Sketch of Jan Jaap for Julia Kaye’s Portrait Party, graphite, 9×6.5″
EDiM 8 Mirror Image in Copper Pitcher, ink and watercolor, 7.5x 5 inches
This one was really fun to draw. It was a surprise to see that I was reflected twice, right-side-up and upside-down. I had to stack the pitcher on top of a box of kleenex on top of a box of rubber stamps.
EDiM 9 Mirror Image in Copper Pitcher, ink, watercolor, gouache, 7.5×5 in
I drew this in pencil sitting outdoors at a little round table in the sun. I sketched in the shadow of the flower and painted everything with watercolor. By then the sun had moved and there were more shadows so I painted them in too. I didn’t like the way it messed up the composition so I brought the sketchbook into the studio and painted over table and extra shadows with gouache. It only partially hid the “mistake” but I decided I liked the way there’s a shadow of a shadow showing through.
I used rubber stamps for text on the page but got that wrong too (9, not 8) so just used the X stamp to cross out the 8. I love work that is fresh and just right on the first pass. This isn’t that, and shows a bit of the struggle. Sometimes that just makes things more interesting.
John Muir Home and Orchard, ink, watercolor & gouache, 8×10″
After I filled the jumbo Moleskine watercolor journal I discovered I forgot to post several pages. From March! So here are a few of those sketches from early spring. Above and below are the John Muir home, with a bit of the fruit tree orchards and redwoods on the property. I sketched and painted these on site, with a little gouache added to the fruit tree blossoms at home.
John Muir Landscape, ink, watercolor & gouache, 10×8″Spring at Blake Gardens, watercolor, 10×8″
Above is another spring sketch, painted directly with watercolor, of magnolia trees and the pretty little flowers planted around the tree.
Jana Bouc, Artist 