Carleton Variety Again...and Again

GOUACHE! I haven't touched it since college because they used it for colour theory lessons and it was so tedious and difficult, I swore I'd never use it again. James Gurney has inspired me, however, and as I still have a beginner set, I worked with it for the third version of this little store. Apparently the Pelican tempera jars we had in college were harder to work with than expensive, highly pigmented, non-chalky, blackberry honey suspension, flowing, levelling, quick drying, velvety professional-grade non-acrylic, Traditional Gouache.

So what has this exercise taught me? 

Firstly, when painting the same image multiple times in the past, I quickly got bored with the subject. Not this time- the interpretation had to change a little for each medium. The watercolour is cute but a little fussy, in my view. I really liked the acrylic for its lively unapologetic brushwork.  The gouache let me block things in like with acrylic, but maybe with a tiny bit of finesse, due to how well it thins down in water. Detail is much more possible, as are fine textures, because it is layered and opaque. Mistakes can be adjusted, dry brush works well, and it dried so quickly it could be finished in one session .

Today I got POSCA markers, which are like gouache in a marker, and work on multiple surfaces. Boy, things have come a long way. Even brushes evolve and improve as they develop synthetic and blended synthetic fibres. I love trying new stuff.

Carleton Variety. 5x7 in Watercolour on Fabriano 

The second version is 5x7 in, Acrylic on Illustration Board 

I may continue to try small versions of this in Gouache and perhaps Oil paint. The atmospheric quality is there, for a cold wet Toronto afternoon just as the streetlights come on at dusk. Small convenience stores are becoming scarce in our city, much to my dismay. They promise a bit of respite from ______________- (fill in the blank: loneliness, thirstiness, cold, heat, hunger, alienation)

Carleton Variety

 The photo is poor, really. Taken through the car windshield and wet snowfall at dusk, it has a certain atmospheric quality I want to mimic, somehow. The lights seem switched on to over-glow and the colours are grainy and warm. 

Winter paintings I admire use soft neutral colour to get the low light areas. John Kasyn, for example, who often shows the unflattering back  side of the house on an overcast day. A certain charm is there, in the airing of the dirty laundry and the daily mundane.

Preliminary Sketches

First Washes

Colour development