Mixing Gouche. Anyone?

[mad187]

hey guys... I've spent the longest time trying to learn, understand and figure out gouche...it aint working at all. there seems to be a lack of information on that medium online.

The biggest problem is the mixing of the pigments. im using daler and rowney gouche...does anyone have any experience with it?

Every single time i spend countless hrs reading and thinking i finally got it...i find that i didnt. I thought it would be easy, for example to shade a color...jsut add a dark blue etc. but apparently pigments make a difference and doesnt work the way i want it too.

I cant blend blue and yellow when i try to paint morning sunrises, the colors where they meet turn green but in real life...as we all know, that does not happen. Ive asked my teachers in school but i havent really got alot of good help regarding it...the pigment names they throw at me confuse me further and they use different brands which go by different names. can anyone help me?

I refuse to use anything else cause i really wish to master this medium before moving on, id feel incomplete if i dont...you know what i mean ;) thanks guys. any info is welcome

[Craig D]

If you are referring to your edges between your colours going green, you just need to wait until the one colour is dry before applying the next one. Use a hair dryer to speed things up if you want.

If you are referring to mixing, paints behave differently from light. Blue and yellow paint combine to make green. In your case the brands don't matter so much. Lots of books to read on this or see http://www.handprint.com/HP/WCL/wpaint.html for a lot of technical info on water based paints and pigments. (paint being what you slap onto your paper, pigment being the chemical substance in your paint that gives it a particular colour)

More important for you though is the practical knowledge you can get by just sitting down and mixing your paints together and observing what they do. keep samples or take notes and then use that knowledge to paint what colours you want in your next piece.

[Quicksilver]

Maybe you're not mixing enough colours in? Say, to paint this sunrise (http://www.pmel.noaa.gov/foci/freeman/photo_graphics/pics/mf_3_13_2000/10%20-%20Sunrise%20near%20Umnak%20Is..JPG) I think you'd need a blue, white, grey and a hint of green wash for the sky then yellow, white and tiny portions of crimson and grey for the middle section (I'm just generalising, here). Colours aren't straight forward unless they're primary as there will always be light and other colours bouncing off one another.

Next time you paint, really look into your subject/model and think of what colours are involved and in what quantity. It might help to hold your paintbrush in front of the subject to see if the colours match, since they'd both be under the same light. :)

Have fun~

[mad187]

Thank you craig D for the link. im going through it now. How come theres so much help online for watercolor but never gouche specifically? isit considered the same so I should be able to apply what i learn from watercolor onto gouche? Ive read that its the same thing just with a different binder. gouche uses gum arabic. But mixing colors doesnt seem so easy.

Im gonna try using more paint...its so expensive ive been afraid to use alot. and when i use it like water color... the colors turn up muddy. I feel in traditional painting i cant "feel" the colors. Like i cant just mix based on how much blue and red are in something...the pigments dont seem to wanna be friends.

Thanks for the reply quicksilver. Im really trying to do that. i do see the colors to a certain extent but mixing it to get the same hue doesnt seem to work...i get colors completely unrelated and never ever match up with what i see on the photos

[dbclemons]

Gouache and watercolor traditionally use the same binder, gum arabic, or a simialr substitute. The difference with gouache is a higher binder to pigment ratio to allow it to be opaque. Different brands may use different combinations of additives, but the basic recipes are the same.

A good approach for blending fast drying mediums is to pre-mix the ranges you want ahead of time on the palette, and blend those together, rather than trying to blend extremes. For example, instead of going from white to black, mix up some greys. Gouache isn't really designed to be applied thickly, so adding more paint won't help much.