Gouache Workshop

 As I mentioned yesterday I took a gouache workshop this past weekend that was offered by the NYC Urban Sketchers. It was given by Maru Godes from Madrid and held near the model boat pond in Central Park. Originally a workshop was offered in the morning only but there were enough people interested so that she agreed to host an afternoon workshop too. That's the workshop I took. 

Maru paints in very bright, sometimes unusual colors.  She began the workshop having us use the gouache with assorted amounts of water to see how it covers the paper each way. Then we used assorted materials like colored pencils, graphite, and neocolors to texturize the dry gouache. Our next assignment was to use non-local colors and a dry material in a similar color combined together. Here I used gouache and colored pencil.

For the next sketch I used non-local color, some colored pencil, and neocolors. You can see that I was able to add the texture in a similar shade of colored pencil or neocolor. Lighter colors show well on top of darker gouache.

Our last piece was a larger painting combining gouache, the texture techniques, and the additional materials we had with us. In front of us was the model boat pond and a man making giant bubbles. At first I felt my painting was too similar to just watercolor, so I worked on it more. Maru kept telling us to "use less water."

Here it is when I stopped at first...very watercolor-like.

Then I used the gouache darker and thicker in areas. You can see some of the texture from the colored pencil and the neocolors I added. I stayed true to the local color.

 

One of the problems I had with the workshop was not anticipating that it would be very hard to sit on my painting chair and be able to juggle all the materials I needed. I should have sat so that I could reach the materials on the ground or brought a small table. It didn't work so well in my lap. I kept dropping things and couldn't reach a lot of what I wanted to use.

Maru is a really good teacher and I definitely enjoyed the class.