Wednesday, March 4, 2015

A whimsy painting

My daily painting practice has taken a whimsy turn from time to time and that has inspired me to try a whimsy painting outside of the sketchbook. It was also my first try with some artist quality gouache paints in tubes.

When I do my morning paintings I usually use student grade gouache in cakes (Caran d'Ache brand) and I really enjoy them too, but it was fun to experiment with the 'real thing' (Royal Talens brand). One of the first things I noticed is how full of pigments the tubed paints are. A little goes a very very long way and it took me some time to find the right amount for mixing certain colours because of that.

Anyway, here's the painting plus some close ups:








The painting is done on thick paper meant for acrylic paint and measures about A3 in size (a little bigger). After I did the basic painting in gouache I put in tons of details with acrylic paint markers (UniPosca's are still my favorite brand for these). I really like that technique: using the gouache for the big shapes of colour and then putting in details with markers.  I've been using that approach a lot in my morning paintings lately as well.

I like how it turned out, especially for a first try. I think I would like to explore further and see if I can't put some more life into these paintings by putting more birds and animals in, but I'm not sure yet about how I'll go about that. We'll see. One painting at a time.

Hope you are doing something colourful in your neck of the woods too and wishing you a wonderful and artsy day!