photo: recent sketchbook pages
It has been a busy and tiring week but I am so glad to be feeling better. The rain and fresher weather has been much appreciated by gardens and people alike (unless you are one of those odd sorts who likes to be fried).
This week I thought I would go back to my series of notes on painting with gouache. I was prompted to think about writing more as I worked in my sketchbook and considered how I like to layer and revise painting.
If you ever want to know a plain distinction between watercolour and gouache, it is the ability to build up opaque layers with the latter. Of course you can over-paint with watercolour - there are no rules to how you use the paint on your palette or back of an envelope - it’s your paint, remember.
photo: sketchbook pages before reworking
Now I don’t usually, or ever, share demos or tutorials but just for this I will share with you a few stages in my process. This, I hope, will show you how it is quite possible and even to an advantage if you go back into something and revise. I think that the first few layers of a gouache painting should be ‘wrong’ or at least not the intended final look. It is these first washes of colour and texture that lend a depth to the painting. I like a painted surface to have a history. There will be times when I will apply washes and lift by placing scrap paper over the top. I will let this area dry and then come back to it. There are other times, as I will show here, when I will return to a sketchbook page and think again, revise an area to make it quite different.
Above is how the page looked before revision. I like it as is - there’s no need to revise but I wanted to make the building on the left more sympathetic and doll-house-like to be a sister house to the red windowed house on the right. I went in with a wet brush - never scrubbing, sometimes lifting paint with paper.
Now this is when permanent white gouache helps the painter. If the area is dark, I will apply some permanent white to give the space some light and new coverage. I’ll let existing layers sink through - because, as I said, I like history and there’s so much here on pages that were already worked on quite extensively. I’m making here a building in front of another, so I revise the scene to make a small house in front of a taller roof.
photo: a page in the process of being repainted / revised.
I liked the yellow motif, it made a bold statement and was a bit intriguing - a sort of trellis come road hazard marks! But I decided to make it more specifically a trellis perhaps.
Here is what I have ended up with.
photo: the finally completed pages
The first pages were not wrong but this is more of what I had in mind. What I remind myself often is: there’s no right or wrong, just what works for my eye. If I have been working on something for quite a length of time, I will leave it alone and look again. I try not to be overly critical, especially when it comes to sketchbooks which are for me a place to play around with ideas and never make ‘mistakes’.
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A few small stories from this week
In desperate need of new library books. Just getting my energy back to face the outside world, I decide to get on the bus into town, go to the library to collect my reserved books, get the bus home. It can be done and I plan my timings, so that soon enough I am walking into the (oddly quiet) library. I see a few posters for events including a performance called ‘Spycatchers’. As I approach the reserved books shelf, ready to find my three books,I am accosted by a librarian who almost physically pushes me backward. ‘Sorry,’ she says, and I fear I will not be getting my books today. I look across the library to see a group of children and parents sat in the corner. ‘We’re not ready for the performers just yet, if you could give us just five more minutes, X will be giving the intro -’ I hesitate to correct her - do I look like a spy or a catcher? Perhaps my colourful skirt has made me look a little jaunty. I whisper that all I want to do is collect my books but already someone is waving at the librarian - someone wearing striped tights and has a Sherlock Holmes-esque look about them. ‘You can get your books,’ the librarian says to me without making further eye contact and I quickly check my books out, as quietly and as quickly as possible, using the self-serve machine.
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Late in the evening, most evenings just lately, I hear geese flying right above the house. I get up from reading in bed and lean out of the open window to try and capture a photo or video. Those geese are quicker than I think. I’m leaning so far out of the window, there is a moment when I panic and realise, quite giddy, I must tilt myself back into the room.The grapevine that is still steadily growing up to my window will not be enough to break my fall. I take a moment to look down into the garden and see a bat and then another flit and fly across the darkening space.
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I am so fortunate to have my sister living within walking distance. We are both busy people and so don’t see each other all the time - but it is so good to know she is there, just seven minutes walk away. When I go to visit I am greeted by three small dogs. They all like to greet me with a lot of barking and faux fierceness. This week I learned that they really love blueberries. I am not a dog person but have become more confident around them, so my sister tells me to ask them to sit and then give me their paw, and I feed them blueberries. Apparently, they also like carrots.
My nephew's girlfriend is teaching herself to knit a scarf using chunky pink wool. She tells me she started out with thirty stitches but now has about thirty seven. She worries about dropping stitches and so it seems she has been making them. Is this usually what happens, she asks me? I say yes and no but it doesn’t matte,r and she should just keep on knitting.
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photo: a group of sketchbooks from 2016
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I love reading about your painting process. I've never used gouache and you've inspired me to try.