This is Hajra! Today I'll be painting another watercolor versus gouache
comparison, as so many of you want to work in watercolor and gouache and liked my
previous watercolor versus gouache comparisons. And for those of you who
have asked you can support my making more of these art videos by
supporting me on Patreon or buying my art and art prints. I'm a self employed
author-illustrator and appreciate your support. Before we paint I want to talk
again about how watercolor and gouache are different. This time with a focus on
their aesthetic differences. These are some relics I have from previous jewelry
making adventures and also I find them useful to explain certain scientific
principles that overlap with art to students. I was a physics major in
college and it's very interesting I think how science effects everything so
I think it'll help us understand the differences between watercolor and
gouache. There's something in physics called
Snell's law. It's actually named after Snell and sometimes refers to Descartes as
well Rene Descartes, but it was actually first described by a scientist named
Ibn Sahl in 984 AD in Baghdad because they were really into optics and light
in that part of the world at that time. And it describes the relationship
between the angles of incidence and refraction, and so it talks about light
or other waves passing through two different media like water or glass or
air, in this case air and some transparent surface like a gem. You see
how the light goes into this and because this is transparent, some of it is
reflecting back at me and some of it is going through, and that's what makes this
gemstone so shiny. All transparent gems will do this, although they do
have to be polished to make the best of it, and so think of your watercolor
pigments as really polished stones. Now here's an opaque stone and this is lapis
lapis lazuli. And lapis lazuli is not only used as a semi-precious stone but
it's actually also used to grind up and make one of the most expensive blue
pigments in the world for many centuries-- ultramarine. So if you have ultramarine
on your palate, if it's real ultramarine, it'll be this stone ground up. If I move
all the opaque stones to one side, turquoise, lapis, some other
stones I have here, and if I move all the transparent stones together you can
see that they look very different on camera. The opaque stones look like they
have a lot of body and mass and they look pretty much the same in person as
they do on camera and it doesn't really matter how you light them because they're
opaque. This looks very dull on camera and so do a lot of these other stones
that aren't hitting the light just right. As soon as I move it and get it so that
the light hits it, it certainly starts to look so much more luminous than
anything on the opaque side. The same thing happens with any of these other
gems, and you can make a comparison that the gouache is going to be like the
opaque stones because it's going to be very opaque and matte and velvety in
any light, and the watercolor is going to be transparent and luminous like a
gem or a jewel and it can actually look extremely beautiful, sometimes even more
beautiful than any other medium, but it really does depend on how the light hits
it, and it'll look better in person than it does when it's scanned or when it's
photographed. Watercolor is not better than gouache, and gouache is not better than
watercolorl they both just have different properties and you can use them for
different paintings. When you're doing something that needs something that is
transparent and luminous and very sort of radiant then use watercolor, if you
need something that is opaque and needs to scan well and has a very velvety look
to it then use gouache. Make the best of both of them and I have been asked
before why don't I just mix watercolor and gouache. Well, you can certainly do a
watercolor background and a gouache foreground or vice versa,
but if you actually mix the water color into the gouache paint, all of it turns
into gouache paint because the gouache overpowers the watercolor and it just
turns the paint into an opaque paint. ut you can use the watercolor separately on
some part of the painting and the gouache separately on another part of
the painting and that's how you can use watercolor and gouache in the same
painting. To me, watercolor and gouache are like my parents, you know
they're equal, but not equivalent, and it's not a competition.
They both shine and come into their own in different kinds of painting and
different kinds of subjects. Now, the supplies: an HB mechanical
graphite pencil, erasers including a kneaded eraser, half mittens if you're a
lefty or prone to smearing pencil and paint like me, a half inch brush or
sponge for water washes in the background, plus a size 2, around 1/4"
angle, and small synthetic scrubber brush. You'll also need a water rinsing
cup and a clean water cup with a dropper to wet paints on your palette, and a
washcloth to meter the water and paint in your brushes, and some hot press or
cold press arches watercolor paper. I'll be using the back, less textured side of
some cold press Arches today. I know it's a French paper, so it's actually "Arsh" but
I'm American so I keep saying Arches. Let's talk about the paint's I'll be
using for this. It actually doesn't take very much paint to do an illustration.
Artist quality paints go a long way because they're very saturated. The
watercolor paints I'm going to be using are in pans. you can use tubes if
you have tubes, you just squeeze it out onto a palette. So I'll be using lemon
yellow, manganese violet, and permanent rose. On the gouache side I'm using the
cretacolors this time. I do have gouache pans as well but these cretacolors
do work for gouache painting because they're thick and opaque so if
you have them you can use them. So I've got a Cadmium yellow a Cadmium red and a violet.
I also have ox gall which is just a dispersant then I add 6 drops or a swipe
across the top into a cup of water to help the paint disperse better and not
streak when you're painting with gouache. And I have also got white gouache paint
because in watercolor you don't use white, but in gouache you use white to
make the colors lighter. So in watercolor you'll use the white of the paper and use
water to make the colors lighter. That's my limited colors for both the
watercolor and the gouache, and of course you'll need a palette, so I've got a
separate little palette for my white which I sometimes do and for my watercolor.
What I've done here is that all the colors from here to the right are my
watercolor colors, and the colors from the center to the left are my gouache colors.
You can actually see even in the palette how these look opaque and
how these look transparent, because this is gouache and gouache is opaque, and this is
all watercolor and watercolor is transparent. I can just mix all
my colors here, I mix them in the same shape as the color wheel that I have on
my paper. I have always have yellow at the top like a sunrise, and
purple on the bottom, red on this side, and blue on this side.
My colors shown on my color wheel are not only the pure colors I'm using out
of the pans, but the various mixes from these colors. So I have lemon yellow, permanent
rose, and manganese violet on the watercolor side, as well as the oranges
made with lemon yellow and permanent rose, the red violet made with permanent
rose and manganese viole,t and the purpley tans made with manganese violet
and lemon yellow. In the center I have the neutral browns made from mixing all
three watercolors. I do a similar thing on the gouache side. I have the pure
swatches of cadmium yellow, cadmium red, and violet, and then the orange is made
with cadmium yellow and cadmium red, the red-violet's made with cadmium red and violet, and
the tannish purple is made with violet and cadmium yellow. And again the center of
the wheel is a good spot for swatches of neutrals mixed with all three gouache
colors showing all the possible colors. My limited palettes on these color
wheels help guide my color choices for my painting as I know exactly what
colors I can pick from having a limited palette of colors will ensure color
harmony and prevent any jarring color placement. I'm all set to paint a minimal
sketch of the Henry Clive pastel painting I'm using as a study for this
video has been drawn lightly on the paper.
Keep the drawing light and simple, aim to do more and more drawing and details and
rendering with your paintbrush and just have a simple guiding sketch underneath.
This develops your painting and drawing skills simultaneously, and also makes you less reliant
on an overly detailed sketch that you might be afraid to cover up or work over
in paint. I've got my smear preventing mittens on and I'm laying down a clear
water wash on the gouache side. I'm working around the figure. If I wanted to
I could have used masking fluid or tape or a frisket film to mask off the woman
and butterfly but I don't feel like it's worth the trouble so I'm not gonna use
it. Now I'm gonna lay down my background gouache color. I wanted a totally
even or solid color background. I need to mix a large enough amount of violet to
color the whole background, however, often times it looks too boring and monotonous,
so I like to just variegate the background color so it has lighter and
darker areas, and doesn't just look like a cheap fill color. Even digital artists
emphasize how they use gradients or textured fills, what they do is what I'm
doing. It's trying to avoid monotony with interesting texture and color
variation. It's subtle in this piece but it will still make a difference and I
can always smooth out and fix areas later too, as this is an opaque gouache. I add
more white near to the top. As the bottom of a piece is usually given more weight
and darkness, that's your foliage and other things are more dense. Also my
center of interest or focal point is the woman's face and her interaction with
the butterfly so if I make a lighter area of background there it gives
a sort of subtle spotlight effect where I want to focus the viewers gaze. Now I'm
going to work solely on the watercolor side and complete the gouache side in
part two of this demo. I'm gonna throw in some quick abstract lines with my clear
wax pencil on the watercolor side. You can use a candle or white crayon as well
since the last watercolor vs. gouache demo didn't have a background, I want to
have some fun with the backgrounds this time. now I'm gonna add a clear water
wash. You can also see me lightening some of the pencil lines this is more
important on the watercolor side as paint will be transparent. then I can add
watercolor paint wet into wet with my manganese violet and some permanent rose
and just watch that beautiful watercolor spread into a lovely soft cloudy
background. Can you guess where those thin wax lines went? That's where little
gossamer white threads seem to be weaving through this transparent
background. And no, gouache does not work as
well with wet into wet effects or resist techniques with wax as watercolor.
It also doesn't work as well with soft, bloomy effects. Gouache is thicker and opaque
and it wants to stay put. Transparent watercolor works better with more
effects because it wants to move. Once the watercolor background is dry I'm
going to come back with my small synthetic scrubber brush and soften any
undesired hard edges. This isn't terribly necessary but it does tidy up your
outlines which is something you have to be more careful about when working
transparently. Let's start with the shoulder and since it's soft, smooth skin
I'm going to wet the paper first and add the paint wet into wet for smooth blends.
I want a happy golden rosy color to her, so I'll start with a yellowish skin
tone which is a mix of lemon and permanent rose, laid right into the wet
paper. I'm not doing a grisaille or value under painting in this demo. This
painting will be easier to do for some of you as a result. I'm just gonna build
up the value as I'm painting with the color instead.
Okay so now I'm finished laying down the base skintone. Don't worry it'll look
less yellow and jaundiced when the rosy tones come in over it.
I'll also quickly put pure lemon yellow down over the butterfly, just wet on dry
which is wet paint on dry paper because this is a small area and also a
butterfly doesn't need the smooth soft blending that human skin does. The
clothes and hair will be done in a loose and impressionist style, which will also
make them easier to do than their counterparts in the last watercolor
versus a gouache demo. In order to do that I'll just wet the clothes area and
lay in splashes of color wet into wet to suggest her sleeve and bodice. Keep it
fun and loose, reminds me of this feather boa I had to wrap around myself for my
high school yearbook picture. They were so tacky,
I don't know if many other high schools did that, but it was a pretty dumb idea.
My mom came with me for my photos and she wouldn't let me wear the boa off my
shoulders, so I had it hiked up high around my neck and they looked even
stupider. Okay, so I've come back to the dried butterfly, and I'm adding the black
lines on the butterfly wet on dry now. Back to the tacky yearbook dress and I'm
going to define a few edges and the sleeve top wet on dry this time with
some soft edges. Don't over render it. Every painting doesn't have to be
details, details everywhere. In fact, you'll find that when you render the
focal point like the face and the hand in this case and leave most of
everything else looser, it makes a more powerful and captivating portrait. Many
masters took advantage of this not to be lazy but because we really do see what
we want to focus on in more detail and contrast and our eyes blur the less
important surroundings out, so apply this in art. Let's start building up the skin.
Now I'm putting down various tones, warmer and cooler, darker and lighter, how
I see them and also how they feel right to me mood wise. I do this wet on dry
then I soften one of the edges with a clean damp brush with just some water in
it. The result is one hard edge and one edge that is soft and blends away. This
is one of my most used painting techniques and it works so well to
render form. it's like shading from dark to light, hard to soft, but you've
actually switched to your paint. The hand is one of the harder bits, be
careful where the shadows and shapes develop, it needs to look accurate; look
at your hand if you need help placing the shadows. Outlines are not
found in nature, they are a lot of fun to emphasize stylistically in comics and
other ink illustration, and also in a lot of Art Nouveau style art, but unless you
want them for style, try to avoid them and render with shading. Even really
thin edges where it looks like fingers are outlined, close-up you
can see that I'm still shading and blending out the outline and not
actually leaving it there. Henry Clive has these sort of long talon like
fingernails which I put in, and then I don't like so I'm giving her a manicure
and blending them out so they look shorter. It leaves a few magenta
stains in the background right by her fingernails but luckily my background is
purple and magenta so I don't have to care because it'll blend right in.
Now the nails are shorter and I've reshaped the fingertips here and there
and it looks better to me, vary your edges, skip some, make them thinner and
thicker, it'll keep your whole piece from looking outlined when you want to
minimize that effect. Continue up to the next shadow area and mold the neck and
jaw and her earring area with more wet on dry application of skin tones and
blending out one edge of most areas with a damp brush. The face is typically
divided into three temperature zones, yellow and warmer across the forehead,
reddish across the eyes, nose, cheeks and ears where blood pools and shows through
thin skin, and bluish and colder around the chin and jawline. With men it's even
bluer and darker, this is due to shadow from stubble, so I'm gonna keep this in
mind when I'm doing this study. Even though these colors and temperatures are
not in my Clive reference, I'm gonna put them in as it'll make the skin glow,
especially because I'm working with transparent watercolor. Darkening up the
neck area and watercolor requires numerous color glazes basically you're
gonna glaze and dry places in between, until you see what makes you happy. When
you get to a place where it looks good, stop! This is important because unlike
digital artwork you do not have an unlimited
number of tries and to me that's a good thing. It means I have to commit to how
something will look and be able to move on. Not only would I miss the paper and
water and paint and the feel of the brush on the paper if I painted digitally, I
think I might also just be working forever on one piece, so it's a good
thing for me that I'm a traditional artist. Now back up to the face to shade
and render the features. Remember all the pencil lines and pencil shading that I
left out? This is where that drawing is gonna keep coming back in the form of
pigment shapes. If any edge looks too hard when it dries you can also go back
and soften it with a damp brush which will work fine with dry paint too. In
fact this paint is sitting over other paint so it's even easier to lift and
blend it. You'll discover that usually it's the very first layers of watercolor
paint that touch the paper that are the hardest to lift or remove. Later on, it's
easier. In the reference the woman is paler. I've chosen
to keep her cheeks less rosy and actually heighten the golden color on
her forehead, and also later her neck so she harmonizes with the butterfly more.
Because I'm a writer, too, I imagine narratives when I paint. They
help the painting. Maybe the butterfly is drawn to this woman because she is so
fragrant and beautiful and she smells like a rose, or maybe the more golden hue
I'm adding to this woman is because she's a magical fairy in the process of
turning back into a yellow and golden butterfly, and maybe the butterfly is the
fairy prince in disguise looking for her. I'm sure the first thing he's gonna ask
her is why she's dressed for a high school yearbook photo! Onto the earring
which can be pulled from the shadows on the neck with thin wet on dry lines and
then yellow in the center. And while I have yellow on the brush I might as well
add the yellow for her barrette in her hair again. All of this yellow helps bond
her to the butterfly and tie the whole piece together. More ear work wet on dry,
then on to the lips which will also be wet on dry try ro save the highlight on
the lips. This is traditional watercolor so you can't add white to the painting.
An easy way to save it or any other small highlight is just to
go over it with a clear wax pencil. I don't know why I've been avoiding it
because it seems like such a good idea. Just keep in mind that the wax pencil is
permanent so be precise about where you apply the highlights and think about
them. The central lip line is in the shape of a little W across the mouth
opening and the top lip is usually darker than the lower lip in most people.
Again my low res reference is too small to show this but if I know this about
Anatomy I can put it in my rendering of the mouth in my painting. Putting in the
nose wet on dry, and I'll work on it some more later to adjust the nostril but now
I'm going to go work on the eye. Remember the eye is a round ball sitting in a
socket, so shade the eyelid and the lashes like they are round and not lying
in a flat line pasted across her head. Clive worked in the very very
early 1900's, so she's a flapper era girl from long ago, so I'm gonna give her
thin eyebrows. Not only do you change a color palette to make it more limited
and resonant with you for a particular mood, but you can change anything else
about a painting to make it something you like more. You do
what you want with it. A little lifting on the lip, now onto the
hair. Like the clothes I'm keeping the hair loose, fun and easy for this demo so
I'm just gonna paint in some general hair area wet into wet and then I'm
gonna define some of the harder edges wet on dry to make it look more like
hairspray or moussed up hair. Keep it as loose as you want, remember the
hair is not the focal point and it shouldn't have as much work and detail.
And that's a wrap for the transparent watercolor side! Hope you had fun and
learned stuff, too! Stay tuned for part two of this watercolor vs. gouache demo
which will complete the gouache side! until next time, epic art adventures!