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How to Apply Color Using Gouache

Lesson 3 from: Color Techniques for Drawing

Cleo Papanikolas

How to Apply Color Using Gouache

Lesson 3 from: Color Techniques for Drawing

Cleo Papanikolas

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Lesson Info

3. How to Apply Color Using Gouache

Lesson Info

How to Apply Color Using Gouache

Now if you guys want to follow along just take your indigo paint as a dark blue. It's gonna look, that's gray. There's indigo. I've got some in my palette right here. We're gonna do the same thing with gouache in the next lesson and see how it's different. Gouache is opaque water color. And what does that mean? Water color is transparent and gouache is opaque meaning the paper is gonna show through a lot more. And people use gouache for a lot of graphic design and illustration because you really want to get that exact color and put that color somewhere. If someone is telling you, "This is our color range and we're" "matching this because the trim is that," and they want your drawing that color. This is how you mix the color and you put it in the right spot. The other thing about gouache is like acrylics or oil paints you can paint anything dark and since it's opaque you can put white highlights on top. So you don't have to worry about saving out all your highlights. That's kind of one ...

of the biggest differences. In water color you have to leave all the whites first and then paint darker. With gouache or acrylic or oils, you can start out with a medium tone or any tone you want and put the whites on top of it. So you saw what I did around here. Now we can just feel free to experiment and do the same thing to the next ones. I'm gonna go around with gouache. And you should be able to do this if you want in studio, we have the navy blue paint. And we're gonna start off here real thin. See how that looks. It's a slightly different color, it does seem to go on a lot stronger, it's more concentrated. So I got it pretty dark right in the beginning because it's very concentrated. But I can lift some and make it light, let's see what happens when we put it on here. I'm gonna put that away. Okay. Seems to be sticking to that pretty well. So that's thin. Now let's see how thick we can get it. Now this is where gouache really gets thick. What you want to do is mix the stuff that comes out of the tube with just a little bit of water so you get this kind of creamy consistency, and just lay it on thick and solid in one heavy coat so you don't see any of the paper coming through. Okay. So that's why people use gouache, because it just completely covers solidly. You don't see any paper through. Let's do that over here too. You can tell on the coated it keeps wanting to run away and form little beads. It attracts it to itself. Okay. Thick, thin. Now let's try fade. Okay. That's fairly similar. So it's opaque but you can still get it transparent if you want. Okay. This one really shows up a lot more bumps. See how this one kind of smooths out and it melts into itself? This one you get a lot more variation. This is one of the reasons why I paint on this, because I actually like that messy look. I think it's kind of fun to get something messy on there and just clean it up a little bit and leave the natural marks that it makes. Now I'm gonna paint all the rest of these in medium because I just want to try showing you what's it's like when you remove it. Okay. Okay. Okay, I'm gonna dry that just a little bit. Okay. So you can see how that dried with all these crazy textures and washy things in there. And this one kind of soaks into the paper and it smooths itself out a little bit. Now let's try removing some, just do a few dots on here, and then do a few dots on here. Okay. Let's see what happens. Yeah, that one lifted off pretty well. There, so that's why I like it, because you can do that. Just like I like to use a regular eraser in my pencil drawing as a drawing tool so I can knock highlights out, this one I can also knock highlights out with too. And then that one doesn't really remove as well. So really if you're not comfortable with how messy this gets just go ahead and stick with this. But I just want to show you that this is an option. And you may see it come up in some of my samples that I show you. So you know how it's done.

Class Materials

Bonus Materials with Purchase

Color Tools and Materials List
Candy Drawing
Daisy Drawing
Sharks Drawing

Ratings and Reviews

marcelle gray
 

I love this class!!! Cleo is such a natural, enthusiastic and funny teacher. She shares her ideas very freely and makes learning so much fun. She likes to explore her materials by experimenting and also making charts. In art school I always thought this was a little boring, but Cleo makes it fun. It is a good way to warm up and prepare to draw and then begin paint. I have learned to enjoy this process so much by taking this class. I would recommend this class to both beginners and experienced artists.

user 43495d
 

Cleo does start quite nervous, and not very clear in her explanations. Thanks to the guy asking the questions throughout the class…I guess he was as confused as us in the beginning. BUT…the class does get better!! She gets more confident and does give good examples to take your simple drawing to a colorful piece of art you can sell on products or share on social media. I really enjoyed later lessons. And I always say-if I can get a least ONE good advice or trick – then it was not a waste of my $20.

Student Work

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