With this painting I have become increasingly frustrated with Gouache. I’m beginning to think that it is not the medium for me.
Then I wonder… Have I said this for all mediums before I have learned them?
The color on this painting is terrible but that is not what has frustrated me. I had limited my palette too much and the mixtures I was making were all about value not trying to match color.
I’m having trouble with the consistency of the paint. I can’t seem to get it right, it’s either too watery or too dry.
I would say that I’m having trouble with the paint re-activating previous layers but I’m used to oil paint moving around all the time. The issue here is that it doesn’t re-activate evenly, it seem that the previous layers just lift off or get pushed into ridges.
The biggest and most frustrating thing of all though is the value change. Once I put the paint on the canvas the value changes within minutes to something completely different than I want. I had thought I solved this issue by just following the value changes with my constantly wet mixtures on my palette but that doesn’t work either. It seems that I could have a perfectly setup value gradation we on my palette but once it’s dry the value shift all over the place and not consistently. It could be me, or just some of the colors, I will have to do some tests.
Anyway, I’m unhappy with this painting. I’ll either work on learning gouache more or I’ll abandon it. I haven’t decided my course yet.
This was before I decided to try and get some value gradations on the canvas.
I tried, but didn’t spend a lot of time on it. This is another thing about gouache. I’m not sure that it’s a faster medium than oil. I feel like I can get more done with oil and faster, then with gouache.
