Gouache is essentially a form of opaque watercolor. It’s a fun and versatile water-based painting medium that is well suited for landscape painting on location.
Gouache dries more quickly than watercolor and can be used opaquely to work from dark to light, like oil. The opaque nature of the paint allows for easy corrections and changes in the course of painting. Gouache dries to a beautiful matte finish that has its own unique character.
Like transparent watercolor, gouache is readily portable and cleans up with water. Dried gouache can always be reactivated, so areas in a painting can be blended or lifted, and dried paint on palettes and brushes can be easily removed.
What’s the difference between gouache and transparent watercolor?
Gouache and transparent watercolor are different formulations of the same binder (gum arabic) and the same pigments (though they may be ground more coarsely for gouache and more finely for watercolor.)
Contrary to popular belief, most high quality gouache is not usually made opaque through the addition of calcium carbonate, titanium dioxide or other opacifiers, though that can be the case in some of the lower quality student-grade lines of gouache.
The primary difference between artist-quality transparent watercolor and gouache is the pigment to binder balance. Transparent watercolor has more binder and less pigment — allowing for transparency, and gouache has less binder and more pigment — contributing to opacity. There are a few pigments, phthalo colors for example, that are inherently so transparent that it’s difficult to achieve sufficient opacity without an opacifying agent of some kind.
Online Gouache Resources
Resources for gouache information are still a bit thin compared to other painting mediums, but interest is growing. Here are a few sources:
Wikipedia, general article on gouache
Gurney Journey, James Gurney’s blog (link includes a search for “gouache”), with lots of gouache resources and Info
Gouache in the Wild, Gurney’s excellent video on painting outdoors in gouache. (Here is my Lines and Colors review.)
Lines and Colors, this is my general interest arts blog, with a search for “gouache” in the link.
Handprint, this is an excellent source of information on watercolor and, to a lesser extent, gouache.
Some Gouache Artists — Historic
Luigi Loir (Lines and Colors article)
Eugene Galien Laloue (Lines and Colors article)
Stepan Kolesnikoff (Lines and Colors article)
Adolph von Menzel (Wikimedia Commons), also: The Athenaeum, Gurney Journey
James Jacques Joseph Tissot, link is to Wikimedia Commons. Though he painted his society paintings in oil, Tissot did an extensive series of Biblical paintings in gouache. Many are in the collection of the Jewish Museum.
Some Gouache Artists — Contemporary
As I mentioned in the resources section above, James Gurney’s blog contains a lot of information about gouache, as well as examples of his own paintings. You can also find his short videos on YouTube.
Paquette works in oil and gouache (link is to his gouache paintings). His gouache paintings are small in scale and simply beautiful. You can still get copies of his wonderful little book of Gouaches. Here is my Lines and Colors article from 2008 on Thomas Paquette.
Larry Francis is a Philadelphia artist who works in both oil and gouache. As far as I know, he doesn’t have a dedicated website; you can find some of his gouache paintings on the site of the Gross McCleaf gallery. Here is my Lines and Colors article on Larry Francis.
Tiemens is another film industry visual development artist, working for Industrial Light and Magic. He paints wonderful gouache paintings, often in the tradition of 17th century Dutch “Golden Age” landscapes. He has a few videos on Vimeo.
Hernendez is a Production Designer at Dreamworks Animation, and paints wonderfully immediate plein air gouache paintings.
Fowkes is another film industry concept artist who paints plein air in watercolor and Gouache, the “Landscape Sketchbook” part of this gallery page is mostly gouache. You can find more on his blog.
Lena Rivo is a Crimean artist living and working in Portugal. She paints bright, colorful landscapes, particular of beaches, as well as still life and figurative work. She also works in oil, but the link above is to the gouache page on her website. See also: her blog and videos on YouTube and Vimeo
Bradish ia a painter who uses gouache in bold and inventive ways, with strong contrasts, textural brush work and lots of spatter. Link is to his primary website; see also his Behance portfolio and Vimeo videos.
