"Gouache on the Fly" Course at Winslow Art Center

 

I have painted in gouache for.....

.....many years, decades actually, but on and off.  It is a marvelous medium, very forgiving and convenient.  Compared to oil paint, some control is lost.  It doesn't exactly dry in a value that's similar to the way you mixed it.  It also goes matte, losing some of the color intensity from what it looks like in the liquid state.  That sounds frustrating and it is....but it is compensated by its fast drying, allowing the ability to quickly make it lighter or darker and go right over the top.  Sometimes it's important to accept something uncontrolled and new.

A few years ago I began a notebook of heavy weight card stock paper in several color tones as a foundation for sketching with gouache (gouache is basically watercolor with calcium carbonate added for opacity and body).  With a small kit I could carry it around with me almost anywhere and do sketches quickly, close the notebook and walk away with dry paintings to use as a library, of sorts, of material for other paintings or personal exploration.

Missing for me was the transparency mixed with opacity effects so I began mixing in some watercolor.  Soon the watercolor was the main medium but it was used with white gouache for the opacity part.  Eventually I stopped carrying the colored gouache in favor of less expensive tubed watercolor.  By using watercolor thinly in washes, but also thick like butter using straight paint or mixed with white gouache, I could realize the best of both worlds and that made it more fun and descriptive.  

Beginning March 28th, 2022 I will be teaching a course in this technique through the Winslow Art Center online courses.  The notebook I will supply for free once you sign up and the other supplies you will need are inexpensive. It makes for a great travel medium and its speed allows for many more studies than other mediums.  Once dry, they can be covered with a variety of media that makes them very impervious to being harmed and can be framed without glass.

Here is a page from one of my sketchbooks showing a painting right on the notebook paper and another pasted in using a different paper:

Both of these paintings use a combination of transparent and opaque effects as well as warm and cool, dark and light, soft and hard edges and various textural paint effects.   I like nothing more than sitting down in any old spot and painting these satisfying pieces.

The course is 4 weeks long for three hours each meeting day.  When you are finished you will have a notebook full of your artistic excursions.  We will do weekly optional critiques, I'll do frequent demos and we will explore lots of compositional experiments.

 Please join us.  The class size is limited so come join us at the:  Winslow Art Center .

Black and white gouache with a couple spots that show through to the paper for color.