In the last
weeks months, I wanted to spend more time on a painting (gouache). This project started in September 2016, and is a kind of tribute to Alphonse Mucha.
Here is the final result afer 8 months of work (from 0 to 30 minutes per day):
The result isn't worth the huge amount of work,
but I've learned a lot. You can find here various observations I've made. All my studies in painting being self-taught, these observations must be taken with a grain of salt:
It is formative to work in front of a color wheel, by knowing that every color can be recreated by mixing two saturated colors (whatever the target saturation is*), and black or white to adapt the
luminosity.
* It is not true in certain cases: for example by mixing yellow and green, we can't get a
pure yellow-green, but a
lightly unsaturated one. Buying more colors can be comfortable, in particular if it is a main color of our painting. Here, I limited myself to the ten colors contained in my box (
Neocolors II). For every unsaturated color, on the other hand, ten colors are enough because the human brain cannot distinguish any hue difference between them (whether a grey is more greenish or yellowish doesn't matter).
Arround this circle are the saturated colors, in the center is the grey.
We can unsaturate a color by mixing it with its compementary one (its oposit color in the color wheel : yellow/violet, red/green, orange/blue). In the same proportions, we get a
colored gray (because getting a perfect grey is very unlikely).
Being able to qualify any color by its
hue/saturation/luminosity and recreate it, opens the door to nearly endless possibilities.
The spontaneity of the brush strokes are primordial. A painter must behave like a warrior, because the fear will be visible.
Water and pigment proportions have a strong impact on the rendering.
With a correct dosage, it is possible to apply very thin but opaque layers.
The
Neocolors should never be sharpened and their lifetime is remarkable.
Gouache has a quick drying time, in comparision with other techniques, but still requires a few minutes.
The way brush strokes will mix with the painting is a play between quicker or slower executions, as well as longer or shorter waiting times.
