Oh My DOUBLE Gouache!
November 2024 - Course Material


Please check back here for material covered in class and any notes about the upcoming class and what to bring. See you soon!

Week 1 CURIO CABINETS and Dry Palettes - Nov 7

Week 2 - LANDSCAPES - Nov 14 (Coming up this week)

There are many ways to approach a landscape in gouache. I'll try to cover a few here, but there isn't really a "wrong way" so just experiment lots!
​ I often base it on the time I have to paint it (on location vs. in studio) as well as the focus or style or what I'm interested in (the glowy feeling or capturing a landscape in a more illustrative style, or making it appear very painterly...)
This slideshow includes a bit of a guide on sketching out each image and shows a colour picker for reference. We can try a few of the ones below together, and you can apply the practice to starting one of your own photos.


​I ALSO RECOMMEND experimenting with PHOTO editS TO VISUALIZE BRIGHTER COLOURS OR HIGHER CONTRAST WHEN YOU'RE STRUGGLING TO SIMPLIFY or add interest to THE SHAPES OR COLOURS. SAMPLE BELOW:
Picture
Original Photo (a little washed out)
A few extreme adjustments for contrast, saturation, brilliance, vibrance, blur... can be quite helpful in the early stages and help to pull out more colours.
  • This landscape above was started with an underdrawing and premixed colours (add more later if you need).
  • Painting wet on wet at a medium thickness - creates a base layer amount of paint that subsequent layers can be blended into and serves as a background. While the paper is wet, the  edges will appear softer, allowing us to choose where to add detail and sharper focus. For this piece, the colours were prepared in advance. Wet the paper and loosely block in areas, then allow it to dry.
  • Next, we can layer on top adding some midground trees and a few trunks adding variation to the texture. Since the previous layer is dry, the edges will be sharper / more in focus. We can blend the colours together where less focus is desired now or later.
  • Picking out more definition as we go, tree branches can be layered over the dry sky and background trees.
  • Dabbing in bits of colour with different brush shapes can help differentiate the types of foliage. The more we look at the image, the more detail and colours we can find. 
  • Allowing the whole piece to dry to a uniform level now and then is helpful (as different areas you’ve been working on are damp, while others are dry.
  • The painting process is often just a lot of little adjustments.Try to be loose and expressive where you can, it doesn’t need to be exact, we are trying to capture the mood
  • When the image starts to look too busy or if I add in too much detail, I can always knock it back by blending areas or a bit of glazing (which naturally does that a bit too (and adjusts overall colour)
  • Saving tiny foreground details for last (the railing for example) is a good way to make the areas behind it appear more seamless (though you can also paint the background around these items too, depending on the subject, the style, etc.
  •  When I find that I’m just fiddling and I’m not sure what else to add, I take a step back, maybe it is about done. I can add more, but the thicker the paint, the more opportunity for muddying areas, so I try to touch less as I go.

Another STARTING approach:
  • This sunset landscape was built using thin watercolour like layers to reserve the glow of the white paper in some areas. By slide 4, one could continue layering and blend back as needed, building up the paint layers, or pick out just a few details to paint in, leaving some of it vague and painterly.
  • Again, I exaggerated the colours and adjusted the contrast in my version to suit my liking and style, but one could also just paint it with more of a silhouette.
  • With a sunset like this, it is more important to keep the colours separated in the sky (since blue and yellow would mix into green.
  • Generally speaking, paint background to foreground - (I'd save the posts and wires for last)
  • ...

Week 3 - SENTIMENTAL STILL LIFE - Nov 21

Please plan to bring along a sentimental item for this class! =)
​
We will paint studies of our sentimental object (like the process image below - notes optional but a nice touch) and then combine them to paint a still life set up of all of our objects together. I'll bring along a few items myself so we have a few to choose from.


First we will paint a study of our object, getting to know it and figuring out colours, experimenting, etc. You can do one single sketch or a page of snippets like above (I prefer this way)

Below is a slideshow to see how I went about this recipe box sketch (around 4" big in my sketchbook).

​After that, we will set up our objects in a grouping together and paint the scene. 

general Still Life References can be found here: 
​

Week 4 - Nov 28  - SCENE STUDIES



We will be watching
My Neighbour Totoro
(Studio Ghibli 1988)

Below are screenshots from various moments in the movie: