So back in 2016 I decided to learn how to use gouache.
For context, I finished my second round of art school in 2013, and that included a lot of drawing training and anatomy study, which I still use every day as an artist. I also already had some classical Russian academy style portrait painting training in oils, from back in 2012 and 2013:
gouache sure as hell doesn’t behave the same way, and there is something so alluring and entrancing about oil paint, especially for painting faces and figures! But it’s beyond my scope for a home painting setup, and I say this with four years of using it academically. Gouache just fits into my life so much better! And while it did initially feel like an alien tool compared to the softness of oil, learning it has been a fun journey!
Speaking specifically of gouache portrait practice, here’s a record of some of my stops along the way to where I am today.
2016 – started doing lengthy, and tiny (4×3″), photo studies, mostly of landscapes but also the occasional face:
then in 2017 i put photos away and just played with gouache for a year with minimal reference used, learning about the medium and learning a LOT about colour:
2018 was packed with freelance painting so i only snuck in a few proper studies, mostly still life work:
2019 saw me laid up on the couch most of the year so things were limited to digital iPad work mostly, with a few gouache sketchbook still life studies that really focused on pushing my control of the medium, not portraits:
2020 was a famously rough year but i did get back finally to my desk and my paint and my paper and started properly studying gouache portraits:
2021, i kept going, wrestling with anatomy and surface and value and temperature and just being both excited and frustrated by my gouache work:
2022 I think something started to click – between getting better at anatomy AND starting to see how gouache can be blended and worked up into lost and found edges:
in 2023 I really felt like I was getting somewhere! Painting bigger was making the drawing harder but I was really starting to get a feel for rendering different materials and surfaces with the gouache:
… and then i had my arm surgery and i couldn’t make precise marks anymore. Early 2024, done with mostly my non-dominant hand:
and now almost a year later, I’m slowly relearning how to use my still-healing dominant hand make the marks i want, and it’s so, so good to get back to gouache!
ok but how tho
if there’s one piece of advice I can give you if you’re trying to learn how to do realistic rendering in gouache, it’s this:
these rendered paintings take me three to 12 hours of work. i am not going to get a painting to this level of accuracy and polish in a single sitting. doing a good painting requires stepping away and refreshing my eyes and coming back; and it requires being willing to paint over entire features if they’re wrong.
give yourself the time to take a painting to finish so you can see what you are capable of, then, figure out what you need to work on, work on that discreet thing as a separate sketching process, and finally come back and try another long study and see where you’ve gotten to.
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