Gouache paints are closely related to watercolor but they are really a different medium. As compared to watercolors, they are opaque instead of transparent, and they dry incredibly quickly. Gouache also makes frequent use of black and white paint, which watercolor rarely does. Finally, with watercolor one normally paints a scene from light to dark values, whereas with gouache you don’t need to.
I picked up a starter set of colors, a small 3×5 inch sketchbook, and here is what I’ve been up to.
For my first experiment I found a short tutorial on Youtube–looking for “gouache for beginners”. My initial thoughts are “how do I tame this beast?” Although I like part of what I did (especially the foreground) the darks aren’t nearly dark enough.
I tend to learn better from books so after a bit of online research I found that this book from Emma Block is consistently recommended. This is my main study guide for now.
I’ve included a gallery of my attempts from the first few lessons.
