For the Fun of It - Gouache Pt. 3, mixed media magic

Crayons, color pencils, and pastels, oh my

This week, we're returning for our final installment in our gouache series! I hope this little primer series has made you more excited about my favorite medium.

Pt 1: Intro to Gouache
Pt 2: Washes and Painting

I enjoyed doing videos last week, and might try to make that a more regular thing! I was thinking though, of doing just one long video showing the process of a piece. We’ll see!

And of course, if you have any questions, please feel free to reach out or leave a comment!!

Layering

One of my favorite things about gouache is the ability to layer things on top of it. Like watercolor, it leaves enough of the paper's toothy surface to layer other media on top. I love mix media and have started adding more and more into my repertoire for illustrations, instead of just as experiments in my sketchbook. When you're starting with a new media (whether it's completely new to you, or just the first time you've touched it in a while, or the first time you've used it on this particular paper), it's a good idea to keep some rough scratch paper nearby to scribble and layer and smudge. Give yourself some side area to play so that when you take it to your final piece, you feel more confident. There's nothing more frustrating than painting something beautiful and then starting to layer on top and having it all go wrong.

Here are our pieces in gouache only from last week:

Acryla gouache

traditional gouache

Here are some of my favorite layering tools!

Pan Pastel

Pan Pastels are new to me, and I love the soft silky way they spread across the page with just a bit of smudging. They're great for underpaintings, too, but also great for adding soft diffused layers on top of gouache.

For the traditional piece, I added a soft shadow under the cloud, and diffused some of the cloud edges.

Crayons

Neocolor (both 1 and 11)! These are grown-up, artist's crayons. They go on creamy and thick and come in many different colors. Neocolor 1 are wax based, and won't reactivate with water (and are a bit harder, great for details). Neocolor 2 are in the Instagram darlings of the moment- they can be reactivated and pro tip, you can keep the shavings and put them in a watercolor pan and use those as paint too.

On this piece, I added some pan pastel, and also started deepening shadows with neocolor!

Pencil Crayons

There's a lot of pencil options- I am unfortunately a sucker for the pricy Caran D'ache Luminance pencils. They are a soft pencil that goes on top of gouache very easily. If you prefer to work smaller, try a harder pencil like a Faber-Castell polychromos!

We’ll reveal our final pieces at the end…

Spatter and other textures.

Once you've done your more flat layers of gouache, I think it's fun to think about how you can enhance the textures. I like a good spatter (use your finger and the brush in multi colors to make the painting sparkle), or stamp with a sponge or a paper towel. You can combine this with the above techniques- layer some paint, scrape it off, add some pencil, add some paint there are no rules that you have to use any one media. That's the biggest part of mix media that excites me. You can collage, you can layer transparent sheets of paper, and you can play with edges. If things are starting to feel a bit messy, you have my permission, my final technique to impart with you:

Digital!!

It took me a while to realize that there are literally no rules bout finishing a piece digitally. I actually "ink" or do all the final lines in my book (on top of my gouache paint) in digital ink lines. I 'm simply too scared and too perfectionist about it to keep it all traditional. And you can do that! You can adjust colors, add new lines, carve out edges. The only downside is that the final piece will be different from your traditional painting- so keep track of that for sales if you're interested in selling your traditional work. Scan things BIG, always, I started doing 600dpi because I'm scared of resolution loss (even though 300 is the standard for print).

And here are the finals!! Are they different from what you expected? I think the layering really is integral to the process for me.

I hope you had a good time with this series!!

This week’s substack of the week is

Veronica Mang

! Another wonderful kidlit author and illustrator whose pen and ink drawings have a life and joy to them that I just love.

Would you believe that I’ve been drawing CARS this week?? Of my own free will?? I have this idea of drawing just random things, but a lot of them in whatever way I like, and I loved making these silly little toy-looking cars <3

ok love u bye