Core Skills: gouache

Artist and illustrator Laura Bifano demonstrates the versatility of gouache and the importance of edge control using four basic techniques to paint clouds

Grasp four painting techniques for varying the appearance of edges, with Laura Bifano.

One of the reasons I love using gouache is that it comes with all the advantages of watercolour, yet can be used similarly in opaque, painterly layers. Depending on the moisture of your paper and the consistency of your paint, you can achieve effects such as large gradient blooms, soft feathered edges, expressive brush strokes or nice crisp lines.

There are four basic combinations that will give you varying degrees of control over your edges: wet brush on wet paper; dry brush on wet paper; wet brush on dry paper; and dry brush on dry paper.

Each method has its pros and cons. Some offer more control than others, but sacrifice the spontaneity of letting the paint do its thing. With a dry brush you’ll pretty much know what you’ll get, but nothing can replicate the look of a well-done paint bloom.

The frustration of gouache often comes with not knowing exactly what the paint will do once laid down on the paper. Sometimes I’ll put down a brush stroke expecting to achieve one effect, but get another instead. This can be frustrating if you’re trying to produce a thin, crisp line and end up with a soft bleed. Knowing exactly what the paint’s going to do comes with time and experience. Luckily, I have a little bit of both, so I’ll do my best to outline four basic techniques for painting some nice clouds, although these principles of edge control can be applied to almost anything you’ll need to paint.

Laura is an illustrator and production artist from Vancouver, BC. She’s worked in film, TV and on children’s books. See more at www.laurabifano.com.

1 Backlit clouds with wet-on-wet

I begin with laying down a heavy wash using a broad brush. I’m using the white of the paper for the clouds, so I’m going to paint in the sky around them and fill the middle in with a warm grey. Make sure your colours are mixed and ready to go before you wet your paper. I’ve made the mistake of mixing my colours on the fly and laying them down: the paper is too dry. This is almost impossible to fix and still maintain that spontaneous look.

2 Painting clouds using wet-on-dry

Here, I’m starting with dry paper. I still want a nice, bright edge on my clouds, so I’m only wetting the paper section by section, working from top to bottom. The main drawback is that this method takes a long time because you have to wait for the paper to dry before wetting the next section.

3 An overcast sky with dry-on-wet

This technique is similar to the first one, and starts with a heavy wash of water. Only this time, I’ve squeezed almost all of the water out of my paint brush and am working with a thicker mixture of paint.

4 Cumulous clouds using dry-on-dry

When I’m working with gouache, I usually work this way! It offers the most control over the medium because there’s very little chance of the paint picking up or bleeding into adjacent colours.

5 What if we put it all together?

Here I’ve combined a few techniques to their best advantage! I painted the feathery cirrus clouds using wet-onwet, and the bottom row of clouds was done using dry-on-wet. The nice, crisp edges help push them back in space. The centre cloud was painted using dry-on-dry.

You can see a mistake on the bottom-left of the page near the hills. I handled the paper when it was still wet and left a thumbprint. Normally I would Photoshop this out, but for the sake of this workshop I wanted to show how easy it is to make...

Once I have the right shape outlined in water, I lay down some pigment using a wet brush, making sure to leave the outer edge alone. I still develop a nice bleed within the wetted area, but the edges stay nice and crisp. This is good if you’re going...

This sample took about four minutes to do. I used one brushload of paint and worked very quickly from top to bottom and side to side, making sure to leave gaps between strokes where the light would be coming through the clouds. You can see that there’s...

I’ve worked my midtones in first, just painting in a medium grey blob vaguely in the shape I want. The nice thing about this method is that I can rework things a lot more than using the wet-on-wet technique. I’ve started this sample by painting a...

I work front to back, laying down a wash and painting the sky around the wispy clouds. Having a variety of edges in a composition can help to lead the eye and create focus. The eye will naturally be drawn to contrast, like a hard edge against a soft...