GOUACHE FOR BEGINNERS | tools, blending tips and more

[Music] hey everyone my name is ham and today i'm going to be doing a little crash course on gouache the things i'm going to cover in this video are first of all what gouache is the supplies you're going to need how much water you're going to put in your wash when you're working with it or the consistency and then i'm going to end it with a portrait painting time lapse while i go over some general tips that i have for working with gouache like blending and layering and all of those fun things so first of all what is gouache gouache is very commonly described as opaque watercolors and that's because it's very easily re-wetted and it has this matte finish to it but most of the time people painting with it go for a more similar style to acrylics and oil paints where they go for more opaque layers on top of each other and that's because gouache even though it's very similar to watercolors it's a lot heavier than watercolors its particles are larger and so it's harder to achieve very flat and even washes with gouache when compared to watercolors and one thing that's very noticeable right away when you're painting with gouache is that the values dry very differently when you're painting with it than when it dries so now we're going to talk about supplies you'll need and first you're going to need your actual gouache paints i've only tried two so the first one i have is my hemi mia jelly gouache and it's more affordable and it has so many colors and has just more paint and so it's great for practice um when you want to get to know the medium i would say that when you're using it to take advantage of the many different colors that it comes with so rather than choosing um mixing your own colors just go for colors that are closest to what you need and that's because there is not that much pigment on the paint and after mixing so many colors together your colors might start looking a little bit muddy and so it just doesn't stay as vibrant as something like say the whole bun gouache and holbein gouache is the other brand that i have its pigments are more pure so it doesn't dull down as easily as the mia wash also it reactivates to its original consistency better and because the colors don't dull down as easily it's much easier to get just a handful of colors from this brand and just mix mix your own just because i think mixing your own colors they become more predictable that way but ultimately you can go with either one of these they do have some very important qualities in common and that's they're easy to reactivate they dry matte and they're mostly opaque so think about what you use your paint for if you're someone who's just trying to get into gouache and trying to get to know the medium better i would say to go with the mio gouache just because there's much more paint to play with and also there's much more colors to choose from and i have found that that's just inspiring by itself but if you're someone who's looking into selling your paintings i would say just go for higher quality wash just because not only are they easier to work with they're also usually more light fast and they just last longer than student quality gouache so now we are moving on to the brushes that you'll need i prefer two kinds for brushes for squash the softer brushes for my loose watery washes and brushes that aren't very floppy for what i mostly use squash for so usually i start with watercolor brushes just for the under painting but i'm then move on to multimedia brushes or acrylic brushes for the actual painting on top as for your papers it's really best to use watercolor paper especially if you're doing an under painting which you're going to use very light washes for since that kind of paper just handles and absorbs water better but if you're working with a little bit of water for your whole painting i feel like non-watercolor paper can do i think you can go as low as 120 gsm which is what i have for my sketchbooks and i've also painted a lot of gouache on that one as for your surfaces you can go either hot or cold pressed um i have found that cold press just holds on to paint much better and so it helps with preventing layers from reactivating constantly but lately i have liked using hot pressed paper for its smooth texture and it just feels like the paint glides on top of it much better and makes the experience a lot more fun as for what i'm working with today i'm using my bauhong hot pressed watercolor paper it's pure cotton and it's 300 gsm and that's because i'm thinking of doing a lot of different consistencies i'm starting from very light washes moving on to the paint so now i'm going to talk about the consistencies that you want to work with with gouache and i'm so happy to have found mary sanchez's youtube channel and she works mostly with gouache she has this very helpful gouache tutorial and i will be linking that in the description on this one too in that video she talks about explaining the consistencies better by giving them names so the on this one is called tea to butter consistency this mostly explains how much water that you're adding onto your gouache so the first one is tea and it's really just mostly water and the colors will look like a lighter version of what's in the tube i think this is great for the first few layers so like for your underpainting and usually do this with watercolors but it's also doable with gouache so you achieve this by mixing a little bit of pig to mostly just water so think of tea and its consistency and that's how your painting should feel like so the second one is coffee and it's still has a lot of water it's still very loose but you will see that the paint looks a lot closer to what it looks like on the label but it's still a light version of it so this one still feels like watercolors and how your paints will react so i use this as a supplement for my under painting just to get those darker values in so we're moving on to the third one which is milk and the milk is a lot thicker than coffee so in this consistency the your paint will look the closest to what it looks like on the label but still be transparent so i use this to start my main painting and still have some under layers showing through so the fourth one in is the cream consistency and this is how i mostly work with my gouache especially for when i'm painting with non-watercolor paper just because there's less water on it and so it's less likely to ruin the paper if you've seen my last video i think i was using the same consistency for the whole painting so on this one is when gouache is truly opaque and still glides onto the paper so to achieve this you want to make sure your brush is wet but wipe off excess water from it and just mix that onto fresh paint and so the last one is butter it which is mostly just paint straight out of the tube and you really want to leave this consistency of paint towards the end because it's the thickest and so it's easiest to reactivate and you don't want that to happen very early on but i you do use this for my absolute brightest highlights and just some details that i want to save for last also one thing because it's just paint and it gets super thick sometimes it might get hard to work with and just hard to get a very even layer with this one thing that might help with this is to just apply your paint very thickly and just move your paint around more so it's very important to use this in this order from most water to no water at all because the thicker your paint is the easier it is to reactivate and you don't want your layers underneath to re-wet when you're putting more looser consistency on top also one another thing i learned from mary's video is that gouache can crack when you work very thickly because it doesn't have the flexibility of oils and acrylics so it's definitely better to keep the butter consistency for later on and very sparingly so now we're going to be painting this portrait that i did i started off with the tea consistency to go over the whole thing i just like to work on a toned down paper than just the white i feel like it's a lot less daunting that way and and it's easier for me to start the painting and then i'm adding the darker values with my coffee consistency i really want to work with these two for my under paintings because the more water you use the more the paint will infuse itself into the paper making it harder to reactivate later on i have found that the higher the quality of your gouache is the more it will react as closely to watercolors when you add as much water because with the mia gouache when i'm trying to put in loose washes like this one it was very hard for me to get it to work the same way as watercolors i feel like it's not the particles aren't as finely ground as the whole blinds because i'm using the whole blinds right now and it really does feel like watercolors in that way so now i'm adding blue yellow and white to my palette before that all i was using is my burnt sienna by the way burnt sienna is such a beautiful color there is actually a lot of red in there and that's why i'm only adding blue and yellow to my mixture i did end up adding more red later on but this print sienna is so beautiful and this time my paint is in the milk consistency and try to think of what milk feels like it's a lot more it's a lot creamier than coffee but it's still very loose i like to think that this milk consistency is the under layer for the actual painting so it's not really the under painting anymore it's part of the painting above but i still suspect that most of this will be covered later on so really what i'm doing is i'm carving out the details and while i'm also cementing the values that i want for the actual painting [Music] and what's interesting that you guys see me do right now is i'm actually glazing with gouache which is something that i didn't think i would have been able to do with my mirror wash just because it's not like i said it it doesn't lay as easy as watercolors but with whole buns i can do that also it's possible this time because this part like on her cheek especially it doesn't have any thicker layers underneath that and so i can go over those areas with more loose paint so now this is the fun part i will be showing you guys how i blend with gouache and i'm working with the cream consistency now so the first thing i do is i mix the darkest colors and lay that on my paper and then i mix a lighter version of that color sometimes usually just adding white or another lighter color to the mix and i'm laying that right next to the darker paint before so to actually blend them what i do is i clean up my brush and i'm making sure that i'm taking out all of the excess water from it and it's just wet enough to be clean but not dripping at all and that i really wiped it down before i just gently move it over to the paint and i'm really just moving the brush back and forth across those harsh lines that i've created before and what this does is that it blurs out any hard edges but it doesn't really just melt all of those together because if i did add too much water that that's also a risk so just really make sure that your brush is dry when you're doing this and this is also why i prefer using mixed media brushes or acrylic brushes for gouache just because this blending part especially works better with stiffer brushes than with the softer ones like with watercolor brushes so before i start first started out with gouache i thought that the quality of it it being too easy to reactivate was so frustrating and i hated when it happens sometimes well now i'm using it to my advantage because what i'm doing is really reactivating those harsh edges and melting them onto each other so there's softer transitions this time one other quality to gouache that takes time to work around on and to get used to is the paint trying to a different value than when you were painting with it so you might have laid down the values that you want initially but it will end up looking completely different when it's dry and that's because the darker colors look lighter and lighter colors look darker so you'll notice it especially on the left side of her nose every time it looks like i've made it dark enough it ends up looking a lot lighter and so i just went over that area multiple times just so i can get it to be the contrast that i want to the lighter areas it's really frustrating when it does that because just the contrast sometimes it's something that's very important to the painting and it just ends up evening out so the best way to help this is to really just wait for it to dry and then go over it again with a darker color than the last one my next tip with gouache is to use as much fresh paint as possible because squash it does re-wet so easily and you might get tempted to work with old paint and while it is very much possible and very much doable it's still i would still suggest using as much fresh paint as you can so when you're using tubes it's a lot easier just squeeze out as much as you'll need and when you're using jelly gouache just scoop out a little amount of paint at a time because it might be easy to get dry gouache up to a milk consistency it's very hard to get move it up to a butter and a cream consistency which is what you're gonna be working with most of the time with gouache so just use as much fresh paint as you can it will really make the whole process a lot easier for the last one i'm doing her earring separately and in one go this is with me only working with the cream and the butter consistency i just want to show you guys what it's like so it also makes it possible to do paintings on non-watercolor paper because you're not working with that much water and it won't it's not too much for the paper to take so that's what makes gouache also great for painting on your regular sketchbooks and that's just something you can keep in mind for when you already have your wash is that you can also paint over your sketches with them and that is it for this whole video i hope it helped you guys in any way thank you for watching and i'll see you again soon

Channel: HamRib Art

Views: 26,905

Rating: 4.9942112 out of 5

Keywords: Gouache for beginners, Gouache guide, Gouache tutorial, Gouche painting, Himi miya gouache, Jelly gouache, Holbein gouache

Id: DEIlsX4Yojs

Length: 18min 41sec (1121 seconds)

Published: Fri May 21 2021