Yeah, I’m not saying gouache isn’t at least somewhat malleable, its just that ultimately it’s opaque watercolor.
You can’t layer it in the same way you can oil or acrylic.
It doesn’t have the translucence of oil, so getting a transparency effect is far more difficult.
It doesn’t dry nearly as quickly as acrylic unless of course you’re not watering it down at all.
And yeah, editing or making major changes to the work requires you to basically wash off the old gouache which depending on if you’re working on paper or canvas can be varying levels of pain.
I love gouache paintings when used masterfully, as basically when done right it usually creates a look that is unique to it IMHO. It’s like pastels, watercolors, and acrylics got together in one medium and gave the middle finger to oil and said, “yeah, we can do something you can’t.”
Not that I hate oil, but gouache is the only medium I think rivals it in its range of potential artistic effects (i.e. lighting and atmosphere). Oil is obviously the far more commonly used medium, so it’s just nice when I see gouache done well. That said, it takes a lot longer to master gouache than oil, and gouache is so much more expensive than oil, so its understandable that most artists wouldn’t choose to try to master gouache.
And yeah, no modern artist would touch the physical mediums anymore as sadly it’s just too expensive to paint in anything other than pixels these days, not to mention it takes far more time to master.
I’m not shitting on digital work, honestly I’m a fan of a lot of digital art as well, but I’d be remiss if I didn’t bemoan the fact that something is lost with the fewer physical medium artworks, specifically paintings, these days.
Anyways, sorry for going on. Obviously I have a background in this stuff and so am very opinionated about it.
Yeah, I’m not saying gouache isn’t at least somewhat malleable, its just that ultimately it’s opaque watercolor.
You can’t layer it in the same way you can oil or acrylic.
It doesn’t have the translucence of oil, so getting a transparency effect is far more difficult.
It doesn’t dry nearly as quickly as acrylic unless of course you’re not watering it down at all.
And yeah, editing or making major changes to the work requires you to basically wash off the old gouache which depending on if you’re working on paper or canvas can be varying levels of pain.
I love gouache paintings when used masterfully, as basically when done right it usually creates a look that is unique to it IMHO. It’s like pastels, watercolors, and acrylics got together in one medium and gave the middle finger to oil and said, “yeah, we can do something you can’t.”
Not that I hate oil, but gouache is the only medium I think rivals it in its range of potential artistic effects (i.e. lighting and atmosphere). Oil is obviously the far more commonly used medium, so it’s just nice when I see gouache done well. That said, it takes a lot longer to master gouache than oil, and gouache is so much more expensive than oil, so its understandable that most artists wouldn’t choose to try to master gouache.
And yeah, no modern artist would touch the physical mediums anymore as sadly it’s just too expensive to paint in anything other than pixels these days, not to mention it takes far more time to master.
I’m not shitting on digital work, honestly I’m a fan of a lot of digital art as well, but I’d be remiss if I didn’t bemoan the fact that something is lost with the fewer physical medium artworks, specifically paintings, these days.
Anyways, sorry for going on. Obviously I have a background in this stuff and so am very opinionated about it.