Race weekend 4

Another race weekend, with another good batch of lessons learned about watercolor gouache painting.

I’ve abandoned my pencil in favor of underpainting, which is allowing me more flexibility with shapes, as well as more speed. The yellow of my underpainting shows through on the clouds here, but I kind of like the effect.

I didn’t hit quite the level of differentiation I wanted between the furthest row of trees and the mountain beyond it. But the other trees and the mountain itself came through with approximately the varieties of green I was aiming for. My color-mixing is finally starting to feel natural! Color-mixing has been a weak point for me for a long time, so this is exciting 🙂

After reading a fascinating article in Artists magazine on the detailed techniques of plein-air gouache painting, I focused this time on softening my edges. Watercolor gouache paint, unlike oil, produces hard edges to everything unless you fight it. These hard edges detracted from my last gouache painting, so I was excited to try some methods of edge-blending.

Unless I brought a little extra paint with me, I wasn’t able to soften edges without bringing up the lower layers of paint from the paper, and creating ugly watery white spots. This is a little nerve-wracking, as it means I need to have some color-matched paint in the palette while softening edges, and I’ll have to remember which colors are which—an unexpectedly difficult task with gouache, which tends to shift in value pretty dramatically after it dries.

I have yet to walk away with a perfect painting, but I learned a good deal during this outing. It was worth the mild sunburn.