A gouache copy from a poster by Adolfo Hohenstein, inspired by watching Jeff Watts copy the work of master illustrators in his Friday Night Workshop.

In the link above, Jeff Watts gives a three hour demonstration of painting in gouache, full of useful advice. All his demonstrations are well worth watching as they let you look over his shoulder as he works in real time while he discusses his technique and art training in general. Particularly useful in this episode are his thoughts on how the consistency of the gouache paint affects its properties. Thinned down it can be used as a light wash or stain, useful during the initial underpainting. But to take advantage of the unique ability for gouache to reactivate even when fully dried it needs to be applied much thicker, so edges can be softened and colours blended.

It’s one thing to make a copy of these illustrations but quite another to come up with the striking graphic design in the first place. This rather sinister figure is enticing us to buy matches.

Following on from the previous post, I wanted to create a similar illusion of light areas made brighter by contrasting them with areas of dark, but this time using my own photos as reference – these are taken from a holiday in Malcesine on Lake Garda in Italy.

The picture by the lake seemed to be a bad choice for this experiment as the whole scene is flooded in bright sunlight. The lightest value is on the shirt of the figure in the centre, though the whole of the stone jetty needed to look strongly sunlit. The contrast is provided surprisingly by the distant haze of the receding lake and mountains which even in the bright sunlight appear as a relatively dark blue grey.

In the original photo, the eaves of the house on the right were very dark, almost black. One of the dangers in working from photos is that the shadow detail can often be lost, though in this case I thought that would work to my advantage as I wanted to create more contrast and avoid what James Gurney calls ‘middle value mumbling‘. After painting the eaves nearly black, I tried to add a highlight along the outside edge, but I overloaded the brush with paint and created an unnaturally thick white line. As I wiped it away with a finger, it blended with the dark under-eave colour. The result by happy accident looks much more realistic, with the eaves reflecting the bounced light from below. The house dimensions are way too small compared to the figure in the centre (which is slightly too large) – imagine the size of the figure looking out of the top floor window.

The second sketch was more successful in terms of contrast and perhaps composition but I’m not sure I’ve captured the light glancing across the uneven surface of the pink wall in the centre – it looks more like a wall of drying plaster. This is another hazard of trying to be too faithful to a photograph: what makes sense in a photo might not translate into paint.

A quick gouache copy of Terry Miura’s oil painting The Philosophers.

I’m always struck by how the illusion of glowing, light-filled areas can be produced by surrounding those areas with dark. The strong sunlight transmitted through the red canopies can only appear that bright if the whole scene is painted in a low key. Ignoring the white highlights, the lightest values in the painting are the red canopies and the foreground in the sunlight, but they’re not that bright at all when you examine the paint used: a dull pink/brown for the foreground and a not very saturated lightish red for the umbrellas.

The gouache I mixed up for the background lightened dramatically as it dried, taking away from the illusion. This is perhaps partly due to the matt finish of gouache, but it’s something I need to keep in mind when mixing paints. And somehow I’ve managed to chop the philosophers’ legs off and put them on baby chairs – perhaps that’s what they’re discussing.

A gouache on Seawhite Kraft paper copy of a picture that I found somewhere on the internet. I forgot to note down the artist’s name when I saved it, something I do religiously now (usually) because it’s frustrating not to be able to find more of their work or to give credit in a blog post.

The Seawhite gouache (04 Mauve) looks almost fluorescent when lit by a daylight bulb. The other colours were burnt umber, burnt sienna (close to the tone as the Kraft paper background), and titanium white, painted with a 3/8 inch flat brush to keep it loose.

I recently discovered the work of Terry Miura who paints in a style I love: a mixture of loose painterly expressionistic brush strokes with areas of tightness and detail. I love the effect of moving from abstraction to realism within a painting. Oh, to be able to paint like him! His blog is a fascinating insight into his working methods and vision. Here’s a list of sticky notes he has taped to his easel to help him with composition:

-Unequal distribution of dark and light masses. Don’t make them 50 – 50.
-Have one dominant color. Additional color masses need to be clearly lesser in visual impact.
-Use a variety of edges on every shape. Lose an edge on every shape if you can.
-Paint the concept, not things.
-Have a hierarchy of interesting areas.
-Manipulate this hierarchy with value contrast, hue choices, saturation, edges, opacity, impasto, brush activity, and textures.
-Big passive area vs. small active area
-You don’t need two big passive areas.
-If the focal point is in light, simplify the shadow. If it’s in shadow, simplify the light.
-If the focal point is in light, lower the key. If it’s in shadow, raise the key.
-Connect shapes wherever you can. (Same thing as losing edges)
-Whenever you break a rule, make sure it looks intentional.
-Repetition and variation. Over do them. Then pull back.
-Less is more.
-Make Only One Statement!

On the top his easel, in big black letters, he has written the word MYSTERY.

Foxhole Point at the far end of Millook Haven in Cornwall, painted in gouache from a photo.

The colours of the sandstones, shales and slates (I looked it up) in the spectacular geology of Millook Haven are a beautiful mix of purples oranges browns blues and greys. I did attempt some on-location sketches of the rocks, but I envisioned a translucent multilayered watercolour to do it justice. This isn’t it, but I had fun with the gouache.

Compared to acrylics there seems to be much more of a colour shift as the gouache dries. It’s most noticeable at the extremes: the rich deep dark colours of wet paint can dry with a slight matt sheen and lose some of their vibrancy, and whites tend to fade considerably unless applied thickly. The wetness and consistency of the paint together with how well the brush is loaded affect the covering power and final result.

I love James Gurney’s sketchbook portraits, often done rapidly with the subject in front of him. This was an attempt to imitate his style using gouache to paint from a paused video. I took heart from watching how he builds up detail from seemingly formless swirls of loosely applied colour using opaque gouache. He also uses casein, but I’m not sure if that’s available outside the US.

I found the gouache dries to a slightly lighter colour, and fresh layers can reactivate the paint below if they are too wet and worked for too long. As always, it’s hard to know when to stop: there’s always more detail to add or corrections to be made. Sometimes it’s useful to keep on painting, just to see what will happen. Other times it seems best to stop early and use later paintings for further experiments.

I chickened out of starting the freshly bound book and carried on using a spiral bound Seawhite sketchbook which contains “all-media” paper, a sized cartridge paper which I’ve found can take a watercolour wash or several layers of fairly dry gouache. Too much pen work with a fine nib will roughen the surface enough for water to get in and break up the fibres.

These heads were inspired by seeing the court drawings of Jane Rosenberg and heads drawn by James Gurney. Both artists manage to divide the head up in to distinct planes which are painted with confident strokes. In trying to imitate that approach I find I fiddle and blend too much, especially when I mix up the wrong colour, with a result that some of the vitality of the figure is lost.

The stone head was snapped in a church doorway near Stoney Littleton, Somerset. The portrait on the right was drawn from a paused video of a David Malan lecture. Paused videos can be a great way to find a specific pose or expression for a quick sketch.