Gouache Study Painting Process ｜ ＂Pink and Purple Cloud Sunset＂

Hello, my name is Noelle. I am an artist that primarily uses watercolor, but for this painting I'll be using gouache. I did not film any of my preparations, but I'm using Holbein Artist's gouache on Arches 140lb watercolor paper. I used a variety of brushes, including a Grumbacher Golden Edge and a few Winsor & Newton Cotman brushes. I set up two cups of water for cleaning my brushes and two ceramic palettes for mixing my paint. If you want to find out what art supplies I like using or what watercolor painting supplies I recommend for beginners, you can visit my Amazon storefront affiliate link in the description. I'll receive a small commission for items purchased following those links. If Amazon doesn't work for you, you can still browse and find the products elsewhere. The first few layers of this piece are meant to be a rough underpainting that I would refine later, so as you may have been able to tell, I'm not being picky about my brush strokes and color mixes. When I paint with gouache, I like to pretend they are oil paints since I feel like I can blend paint at least easier than acrylics. Because with gouache, I can blend by re-wetting already dried paint with water and using my brush to make a smooth transition from one color to another. My biggest inspiration for this piece was Emily Mackey, who paints these gorgeous cloud and wave oil paintings. You can find a link to her Instagram and YouTube channel in the description below if you want to check her out, which I highly recommend you do. So my experience with gouache is fairly limited compared to watercolor. I do get my gouache paints out from time to time when I'm in the mood for a more opaque medium. When I painted this piece six months ago, which was September 2018, I had much less experience than I do now with gouache, so while using a strange medium, I also thought I should tackle a subject I'm not necessarily familiar with, which brought on a lot of challenges I wasn't necessarily prepared for. A big thing I'm trying to work on as an artist is my ability to mix colors. I always want to be able to mix colors in a way that depicts a sense of atmosphere or feel of a scene. To me, that is what I love most about a painting. One of the biggest complaints people have with using gouache is the color shift that occurs when the paint is wet versus when it is dry. With wet gouache paint, lighter colors when dry appear darker and darker colors appear lighter. This makes it difficult to get the right colors mixed when you paint, and I'll be honest and say it can get in the way sometimes. Fortunately, it is easy to fix mistakes with gouache. You can always paint over an area if you don't like how it turned out, and that's exactly what I did a lot of in this piece. I've never painted a scene like this before with pink, purple, and peachy clouds glowing in the sunset. Because of this, I struggled with the and colors of the clouds on top of manipulating a medium I'm not entirely comfortable with yet. The areas that troubled me the most were the pinkish-orangey areas on the clouds. I kept trying to mix the colors perfectly, and when it looked funny, I'd just paint over it, and this happened several times. Especially in the sunny spot on the lower right side, I must have painted that over at least three times. Many areas became overworked in an effort to closely resemble my reference photo, but I think the painting turned out fine. It's not perfect, but it's also my first try at something like this. I learned a lot from painting this piece. It may have taken three and a half hours to paint, but it was an educational three and a half hours. You can also follow me on my social media accounts to keep up to date with my art endeavors, which are also linked below. I am the most active on my Instagram. I hope you enjoyed watching this video. Feel free to leave a comment or ask any questions you might have below, give me a thumbs up, and let me know if there's any way I can improve my videos in the future. I'm still learning, and of course, make it a great day. Bye-bye.