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.