I recently was inspired to try gouache after seeing some original paintings by Pittsburgh artist Joan Brindle at the Irma Freeman Center for Imagination. Her rich colors and lush landscapes drew me in. I admired the way that she used repeated strokes in water ripples and grass stalks.
I pulled out my 5 tubes of Winsor & Newton gouache: Burnt Umber, Burnt Sienna, Cobalt Blue, Cadmium Yellow Pale & White.
Summertime goldenrods along the fence with the neighbors' cowpasture.
An Anglewing butterfly from a reference photo by Brad Silberberg.
A new medium changes how we see possibilities, and gives us a new venue to express our creativity.
I laid a 3 x 3 grid over a reference photo, and cropped the image until I got a pleasing composition. After making a quick pencil sketch, I began painting.
The limited palette would seem like a hindrance, but it turned out to be an artistic advantage. I mixed the paint to match as close as I could to what I saw, but with only five colors, exact color matches weren't possible. How freeing to know I couldn't be perfect, so I could focus on getting close enough.
The resulting paintings had a wonderful feeling of unity and harmony due to the narrow color palette. And because gouache is opaque, I could paint light colors over darker colors.
The white clouds in the November scene above were created by leaving the paper unpainted, then adding shadows, but the light colored grasses along the roadway were painted over the green. I liked the effect of repeated grass strokes in pale yellow, green and indigo blue.
An autumn color scene.
A Canada Goose in winter from a reference photo by Brad Silberberg.
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