Opaque Paint

Being in the canyon country of southern Utah earlier this month made me want to use opaque paints. I have oils, acrylics and soft pastels, but I don't really want to drag all that stuff out.  All three of the opaque mediums I am familiar with are bulky and require big cleanup.  As I've thought about this and wondered how to handle painting those amazing red cliffs, I've felt the need for something that I could use to layer color in a different way than usual.

(Check these little gems out)

There is a paint that is portable, water-based media, is easy to clean up- and is opaque.  That paint is gouache.  It hadn't even occurred to me till last week.  I used to have some but only used it for decorating things.  In fact, it is often billed as an illustrator's medium.  I decided to do some research on it. Looking on Amazon, I saw very few books about it.  Google didn't bring up much about it, either.  There are some very fine painters that come up on a Google search who are turning out cool work with gouache, but most of what I found was cute dolphins or turtles that looked like they were for children's books.  I even looked to Youtube- not even much there.  After looking at the work by fine artists that I did find, I decided I'd like to learn more.

Me, waiting for my new paint.  FedEx needs to show up already.  

Going to my favorite time-wasting website -Dickblick- I made my selections and ordered some gouache paints.  They were supposed to be here yesterday.  I can only be patient for so long, and they are a day late.  I wish Amazon carried art supplies; they'd get my goodies here in a timely manner!  Oh well, if they had come on time I'd have tossed my current painting aside like a dirty shirt till I got the new ideas out of my system.  As it is, I'm fighting my way through the background on it.  Sigh...

You can be sure I will be posting more about gouache as I work my way through this phase.  Till then, I'm going back to see if my package is here yet.

Thanks for stopping by! Alice