How to Color on Gouache Painting？

The performance characteristic is to be in opaque and translucent, color can produce gorgeous and soft run, bright and thick artistic effect on the picture.

The inherent color

The grasp of the inherent color, accurately is the grasp of the hue of the object. Since inherent color occupies the largest area in an object, it is very important to study it. Generally speaking, the most obvious part of the object's inherent color is the middle part between the light and the backlight, which is the gray part in the sketch tone, which we call the half-tone or middle color. Because in this range, the object is less affected by the external conditions of color, and its change is mainly the change in brightness and hue itself. Also, its saturation also tends to be the highest.

Drawing tools

Gouache color has stronger ability to cover, but it cannot be carelessly randomly besmeared. It has its own coloring method and step.

First, the coloring order.

1. From whole to local. 

The gouache painting is a kind of color painting, it is the same with watercolor or the oil painting, which is from the painting of large block to dark block. Overall focus and starting from the general is our painting principle. Large color blocks and large color, play a decisive role on the screen tone. We should first draw quasi color relations of the main blocks of the picture, and then care about local modeling and detail carving.

2. From dark colors to bright colors. 

Bright colors are suitable for thick coating method. Drawing dark colors first, because it is easy to be covered by bright colors. On the contrary, it is generally the first step to draw a large area of deep color (including dark and light and heavy color), to determine the frame color and gradually move towards intermediate and bright colors. The picture that's mainly bright color should be besmeared first and the deep color is added to small area later. If the middle color is dominant, apply the middle color first, and apply the juxtaposing method to the small dark and bright colors respectively. The method is not constant, and it should be flexible according to the situation.

3. From thin to thick. 

Thin coating means to dilute the pigment with water. According to the color perception, quickly thin coating, resulting in the overall environment of the picture, then gradually thickened, in-depth performance. Gouache paint unlike the oil painting, acrylic paint adhesion, can be arbitrarily thick.

The second is specific coloring.

Dry and wet. 

In the gouache painting, dry painting usually refers to the thick overlay method. This method can be repeatedly drawn and not drawn, and the performance of the object is relatively full, deep, also suitable for beginners to master. The picture of this kind of thick painting, similar to the effect of oil painting, has the feeling of fullness. Wet painting is based on thin painting, playing the effect of water color infiltration. Coloring times should not be too many, even the white part can be empty white paper, with the wet flow of watercolor. Of course, some local thickening is also possible, dry and wet combination will enhance the performance.

Juxtapose and reset. 

Juxtaposition is the brush stroke on the paper. Juxtaposition began to use color which is thicker. Resetting is a method of overlapping colors with dots, lines, and blocks. Most paintings are used in combination with rearrangement and juxtaposition to fully represent the object.

The gouache painting is a process that requires a lot of practice. So pick up your brush now.