Al Fresco Art Club Aug 25, 2019 -- Gouache Painting of the Siskyou Mountains from Memory
/Today’s art club challenge was to paint anything using gouache. I’ve been shying away from gouache for years, but now the look has great appeal, and I find that I can’t get the look digitally. I want to give gouache a try in my future children’s books and I know the most reasonable way to get the look is to use the real stuff.
I bought scant palette of seven colors: cadmium red and red light, cobalt blue, cadmium yellow, yellow ochre, and cadmium orange, as well as some titanium white and zinc white. I painted the view of the Siskiyou Mountains, as I see them from my back yard, from memory. I was going for a purple haze for the atmospheric perspective, but I wasn’t able to mix the color I wanted. I see now that I was on the right track, but I could have mixed in more white.
When the painting hour was over, I felt that I’d broken some long standing ice. I liked my painting. My dread of real painting with real paint was lifted. I could see that my fear of creating an ugly painting had kept me from taking the plunge. Fear is such a waste of time.
