How to Paint With Gouache

Paint a black strip across scrap watercolor paper and let it dry. Squeeze out a generous blob of gouache and pick some up with a damp brush. Paint a swatch over the strip. Then add a little water to the mix and paint another, and another. Watch the black line. Where it vanishes but the paint still glides, that is your creamy consistency. Where the line shows through, you have gone too thin.

Tape a panel on your watercolor paper and fill it with one even color. This forces you to mix a big batch, which is good practice because most beginners mix far too little. Keep the paint creamy and work in overlapping strokes. If you start to see brush marks or patchy spots, the mix has too much water. Add more paint from the tube and go over it.

Paint a strip in a dark color and let it dry all the way. Load a brush with thick white and press a few marks on top. Lay each stroke once and lift away. Going back and forth with a wet brush will pull up the dark paint and turn the white grey. If you want it more solid, let the first coat dry and add a second.

Start at the top of a panel with dark ultramarine. As you work down, add a little more white to the brush each pass so the blue fades out. Then rinse, pick up pure white, and brush it upward into the blue. Sweep back and forth across the middle until the steps disappear. A clean, barely damp brush over the join smooths any last bands.

Paint the top of a panel blue and the bottom in a second color like magenta. Leave a gap in the middle. Then sweep a damp brush across where they meet, pulling each color into the other until the line softens. You need plenty of paint on the paper for this. Once it feels easy, chain colors together: blue to purple to pink to orange makes a sunset sky.

Wet the brush, squeeze most of the water out on a paper towel, then dip into the paint. Drag it lightly across the paper. The bristles catch on the tooth of the paper and leave a broken, scratchy stroke. Play with how much water you leave in. Too much and the texture fills in to a solid line. Too little and the paint will not leave the brush at all.

Glazing is the opposite of dry brush. Thin a pale color with lots of water and sweep it over a dried dark area in one long, gentle stroke. It reads as a soft beam of light. Because the brush is wet, the layer below wants to lift, so make one pass and leave it. Let it dry and add a second ray beside it.

Take a blunt round brush and press the base of the bristles so the hairs split apart. Pick up thick green paint and dab straight down on the paper. Each tap leaves a cluster of little marks that look like leaves. Build darker clusters first, then lighter ones on top for sunlit patches.

Tape six small panels and paint a sky gradient in the first one. Let it dry fully. Then load a round brush with white gouache, blot it, and sweep thick strokes across the sky. The dry brush texture makes the clouds look soft and wispy. For brighter centers, wait for the first white to dry and add a second layer in the middle only, so the edges stay see-through.

Block in the field with a very dark green that lightens toward the horizon. Once it is dry, take a filbert grainer brush, whose split hairs make several fine lines at once. Flick upward strokes from the bottom, working dark to light and building toward the front. Peel the tape off the panels at the end to reveal the clean edges.