As I continue to try and develop layering techniques, I wanted to try and use gouache on its own as a thicker paint, to see what effect came about. I haven't used gouache undiluted with water before and it reminds me of acrylic.
I'm used to using quite a lot of water with paint, creating large areas of wash as a first layer. With the pigment being stronger with gouache I considered what colour should go as layer one, in order to still be seen if painted over in layer two.
I was mostly mark making without thinking about form, but still maintained an element of the representational.
I'm not sure the quality of the gouache paint I have is that great, and I'm seeing more and more how this can impact what is produced. However, I liked the variation of green tones over the mustard. I also like that although the texture of neat gouache is similar to acrylic, you don't get that plastic like sheen across the paper which I'm not keen on.
Layering more green tones over yellows. Trying to create a sense of place in the marks.
Before layering up with pencil lines to find definition and form. I'm not sure about all the white space though and think having a background colour filling the page would work better.
In order to scale up these experiments and work bigger (one of my ongoing aims) then I'll need to get some larger tubes of paint.
Marking in figurative forms but then 'knocking them back' or concealing them in some way by layering paint over paint and using pencils adds a sense of the unknown to the page and I want to keep developing this. It's certainly helpful (despite still using recognisable forms) to focus mainly on process though.
Next steps will be to use larger areas of paper so more paint needed. I'd like to try some different coloured pastel/pencils over the top too as I only have graphite and I'm wondering whether this is somewhat limiting.