Experimental Guru: gouache

I thought I'd write a little bit about the gouache I use, and how it can be used. Not many people know this, but gouache comes in 2 forms. There is a and polymer emulsion gouache and a gum Arabic gouache. The main differences are that the gum arabic gouache can be rehydrate once dry, and you can make adjustments to your painting, and the polymer emulsion based is permanent when dry. Gum Arabic is the based used in watercolours, so you can use that as a guide to remember which one can be adjusted later. Gouache is almost always Matte in appearance, and depending on techniques can be painted like watercolours, or like acrylics. Its a very diverse medium!

The gouache I use is Holbein Acryla Gouache. Its a polymer emulsion based gouache made by Holbein (the German named company from japan lol). they're artist quality designer paints, and they come in sets or individual tubes. they have 2 series, A, for all the colours, and C for the metallic and some odd balls. one of the nice features of the packaging is the wide range of information they give you.

Permanence: They use a star rating for the permanence of the colours. 0-4 stars. 0 stars is a fugitive colour that will fade, 4 stars is a permanent colour. Gouache are a little notorious for not being light fast since it was created for designers and used for painting backgrounds for animated films, so the permanence wasn't an issue, the images were reproduced on film or in printing, but they've come along way in becoming an artistic medium and they've developed much better permanence for these paints.

Pigments: They list the pigments used to make the colours, so its easy to identify your paint colours. For example, you could look on the back of the tube and see the pigments used to make a certain mix colour, and then get just those colours to mix your own. Its a potential money saver, since you don't have to keep buying tons of different tube colours, you can just buy a few colours and mix the rest.

Munsell Score: They list the munsell score of Hue, value and chroma on each tube so you can more easily control your colours (again, these were made for designers, so that's of value to them but maybe not so much to painters of other types, but good to know)

These paints are water soluble, meaning you can mix them with water to paint with them, or you can mix polymer mediums with them for different looks. They are matte, and opaque. you can paint with them on a variety of surfaces. Illustration board is one of the best surfaces, but you can also use Bristol board, watercolour or print paper. Its fantastic for mixed media work. I've used then with my airbrush (and in my airbrush), watercolours, markers, pencil crayons, acrylics and painted sculptures with it. Its extremely versatile.

Here are some of my works that have used gouache in a variety of ways.