Wizardry and Gouache

My birthday was last month and I was surprised with art supplies. Art supplies are always on my wish list, as you may have suspected, but I received two things that I never put on my actual wish list even though I really wanted them. What were they? Gouache and colored pencils!

New to gouache, I borrowed one of my son's LEGO characters as a model and gave it a try. Despite being an "opaque watercolor," I quickly learned that it is nothing like regular watercolors. The paint is thick and fast-drying. Too much water also seemed to break the paint up after it dried, leaving plenty of cracks and flaking paint. I'm not sure if I put too much paint, but using colored pencils on top scraped some of the paint off.

I've got a lot to learn, but I love using the new materials and getting to know them!

Are you a gouache user? I would love to hear any tips or tricks you may have to share.

A Break from the Abstract

As much as I am loving playing around with abstract art work, I still need to make time for what I normally like to work on.

Just because I like to work on something, doesn't mean that I can't push my boundaries a little.  This is a little different than what I am used to.  Normally I like to work with watercolor and micron pens straight on to watercolor or mixed media paper.

This time around, I layered patterned paper on Bristol board and then placed a light layer of gesso over the whole thing.  The bird was drawn/painted with inktense pencils and highlights were added with gouache.  The whole time I was trying to ignore the itch to use micron pens.

A lot more materials were used than what I'm usually comfortable with, but overall I loved the outcome.  And I think that it still felt a like it was mine.  Definitely a process I would love to try again!

Playing with Gouache

I recently picked up some gouache give it a try.  This is a little something I made playing around with it.