What is urban sketching? It is the practice of drawing what is around you, for instance, in your sketchbook. It does not necessarily mean that you draw cities, but instead you capture your own vision of the world where you live, and the places you visit.

This week I’m celebrating my birthday week with sketching! I’ll be combining pen and ink with gouache but you can do the same idea with watercolor – perhaps even more easily since watercolor is typically very transparent. (Gouache is opaque watercolor and can affect black lines.) I’m putting my TWSBI Eco to work!

Tutorial: Garden Steps | Wash & Ink (Urban Sketching)

If you’d also like to sketch this picture, you can download it for free from Paint My Photo, (You just need a free account there to download and use the photo.)

Watch the video below and scroll to the end to leave comments or questions — or click HERE to watch it on YouTube and leave comments over there. I read both dutifully!

Use leftover gouache or watercolor

Got a palette full of muck? That’s perfect for something like this! Typically colors found in nature are more desaturated than manmade bright paints; that means mixing the mush together will give you all kinds of great neutrals. 

That’s because read, blue, and yellow make neutrals of various types – so between everything on a typical mixing palette you’ve got at least a little of all that!

Decide what’s most important to you

When sitting out in the world around us – vs a photo that’s carefully cropped by the photographer – it’s easy to get overwhelmed. The world is full of STUFF! Picking what to keep and what to delete can be tough.

Decide what attracted you to that spot, or that photo. Put your time in there, and find graphical ways to treat other elements so you can simplify them. That can be done with line work but also with color!

Nervous about drawing in public?

Don’t be. The average person walking by will be truly impressed with you! I’ve made terrible drawings that shouldn’t see the light of day and had people ooh and ahh. Seriously – they WANT to compliment you! (I mean really, who walks around the world wanting to peek over an artist’s shoulder just so they can say, “Dang, that’s garbage!” NO ONE.)

Join a group!

Check to see if your town has an Urban Sketchers group. Any kind of drawing group! You’ll find there are people of all levels of experience – people you can learn from *and people who need you to help them.* Yes there will be people newer than you and they could use your encouragement and your presence! 

Supplies

1. Hahnemule Nostalgie sketchbook 
2. TWSBI Eco Fountain Pen F
3. Daniel Smith White Gouache 
4. Random gouache on my mixing tiles:
   1. Daniel Smith Gouache 
   2. Winsor and Newton Intro Gouache Set 10 colors 
   3. Holbein Gouache set 18 colors 

Subscribe to receive blog posts by email:

This whole week has been a celebration of International Colour Day (see my last post with a Fibonacci spiral here) and today’ll be the topper with pretty sunflowers! I’ve got some new gouache in the studio and had to get them paletted and swatched, and have been practicing with a new brush set too.

Tutorial: New Gouache in the Studio & Painting Sunflowers

A quick peek at the brands that are now here in the studio…then a little painting with the Winsor & Newton set. Sunflowers! 

Watch the video below and scroll to the end to leave comments or questions — or click HERE to watch it on YouTube and leave comments over there. I read both dutifully!

Working with a mixing set

A mixing set like this one from Winsor and Newton offers fewer colors in general – and relies on at least a little color theory…or just a willingness to experiment! You don’t have to be elbow deep to try out mixing each of the warms and cools with each other – and warms WITH cools too. Don’t think that they have to stick with their temperature buddies!

Mixing browns is a little challenging; red blue and yellow make brown, and you can do that with 2 colors if one of them is made up of two colors….like red with green (Y+B) or blue with orange or brown (Y+R).

Brushes

James Gurney, a wonderful painter and teacher, recommended these Jack Richeson brushes. So far so good! I’m getting used to short-handle brushes, that’s not what I’m used to. But they work wonderfully; you want brushes that won’t secretly hold a bunch of water to add to your paint.

Winsor and Newton swatches

As promised….WN’s Introductory set has a cool and warm RYB, a black and a thie, and a green and yellow ochre. Great colors!

Holbein swatches

The 18 color set from Holbein is quite nice – I painted a couple things with it so far and didn’t like it as much as WN or DS but I need more experimenting to figure out just what is different here – maybe user error. LOL. 

Holbein sample

On a YouTube short yesterday I painted this sweet little bird – stay tuned for the end, there’s a little moral lesson for life that I learned from it!

Daniel Smith

Daniel Smith gouache wasn’t shwn in today’s video but I’m including this for comparison to the above. Their introductory set has a red yellow and blue, and a white, not even a black…but that’s it. if you can’t mix that red yellow and blue to make what you want, you need to buy some more colors. 

That Himi gouache

In the video I showed that awful gouache – please don’t get sucked in by it! And if you HAVE been painting with it, that’s great but – you’ll be super thrilled if you ever get artist quality gouache. Just sayin. 🙂 

Supplies

1. Winsor and Newton Intro Gouache Set 10 colors 
2. Holbein Gouache set 18 colors 
3. Daniel Smith Gouache 
4. Jack Richeson travel brush set for gouache
5. Joybest airtight palette

Subscribe to receive blog posts by email:

In this real time gouache painting, I’ll show you how I painted the Horseshoe Waterfall in Tasmania – and the process to build up lights on top of darks! I’ll be working from a photo, and you can, too –  just download it from Paint My Photo where you can create art from uploaded photos without any worries about copyright. Consider a donation to the site if you end up using their images, it’s not cheap to run a website!

Tutorial: Real Time Gouache Painting: Waterfall in Tasmania

Download the reference photo if you’d like to try painting along!

Watch the video below and scroll to the end to leave comments or questions — or click HERE to watch it on YouTube and leave comments over there. I read both dutifully!

Gouache Tips

After beginning with a loose wash to leave only the whites of the falls open, and add in darks, making the areas covered *larger* than needed. Later layers will be able to cover those edges, but it’s better to get the darks in early than try to add them later.

Working from darks, move to dark midtones, middle midtones, light midtones, then lights. The more delicate the jump between them, the more steps of dimension you can build.

Auction ends tomorrow!

Last chance to bid is sneaking up….go see what’s available and add your bid to the site!

Are you interested in gouache?

I’ve had a couple questions about a gouache class, and while I’m NOT ready to teach one yet (I’d want to do a jumpstart class and I’ve still got questions!)….I’d like to start finding out if there’s even interest in that kind of class. Let me know!

Supplies

1. Daniel Smith Gouache 
2. Joybest airtight palette 
3. Etchr Postcards, Hot Press 
4. Blick Master Synthetic Round 6 
5. Winsor Newton Kolinsky Sable Series 7 Round #8 

Subscribe to receive blog posts by email:

The last thing I figured I’d be doing right now is swatching Daniel Smith Gouache – all 22 colors. Or any other brand of gouache! 

I had misconceptions about the medium that, at least at first glance, seem to be very wrong. I’m just at the beginning of this crazy journey though, so stick with me while I learn!

The good folks at Daniel Smith gouache sent me these paints for swatching and painting with – I almost think as a dare. Or encouragement? I’m not totally sure. They do know me well enough to know I’ll try most things, but with my misconceptions about gouache, I’d have said no if they told me ahead of time a box was coming. I didn’t know gouache was so much like watercolor – that you can re-wet and re-activate it. I knew you couldn’t do that with acrylic, so it’s already been a great learning curve!

Tutorial: Paletting and Swatching Daniel Smith Gouache

In this video I’ll be putting together an airtight palette of paints, then swatching the 22 Daniel Smith Gouache colors.

Watch the video below and scroll to the end to leave comments or questions — or click HERE to watch it on YouTube and leave comments over there. I read both dutifully!

Airtight Gouache Palette

Once I began researching, I realized the palette was going to be much more important for gouache than for watercolor. With regular watercolor you can just squeeze paint on a plate – doesn’t matter if it dries, it’ll be fine when you re-wet it.

Gouache will re-wet as well – but it changes consistency some when that happens. The “sweet spot” for mixing gouache is just wet enough to move, but thick enough to remain opaque. When pigment is re-wet from a dried puddle of color, it’s harder to get it thick again. From what I read, different brands handle this differently.

I watched a great video by a gal who tested a bunch of airtight palettes. This is the one she came away with as the best to keep paint fresh longest. The one she had was under a different brand name, but that one wasn’t available at the time I shopped, so I picked up this Joybest palette. (I think a lot of companies use the same one and just brand it with their name.)

KEEP THE LID ON IT! I’ve already found it’s best to put a blob of colors to use on the tile and close it up.

Swatching Daniel Smith Gouache

Swatching to see the color isn’t necessary for gouache; the colors in the pan and on the paper are the same. But it’s still a good exercise to do to practice getting that “correct” mix. I tried opaque, semi opaque, then transparent like watercolor – and most of the time I got it right. Ha! Painting with these is much better practice but this is a great exercise for a new gouache artist.

Gouache buzzard card!

Yesterday was the first of my “Friday Fun” card shorts – did you see it? Click here to watch! You can also catch up on the gouache paintings I’ve been posting this week on my Fine Art instagram account.

Is gouache on your want-to-try list?

Right now I’m new enough that I’m not sure I have much to offer for advice. Perhaps pick a warm and cool red yellow and blue plus a black and a white? You can mix them into a lot of other colors! Be prepared that you’ll use more pigment more quickly than when using watercolor – I’m trying not to panic about making it through 31 paintings in January! ha!

Supplies

• Daniel Smith Gouache 
• Da Vinci Maestro Kolinsky Sable Round 4 
• Da Vinci Maestro Kolinsky Sable Round 0
• Joybest airtight palette

Subscribe to receive blog posts by email: