Gouache Favorite Things: Preclass

Welcome to the preclass lesson!

Before we start…a little housekeeping

I retain the copyright to the content you are learning in class. That means…

1. Do not sell or give away the concepts from my classes – you may not re-teach my instruction contained or created within these lessons.
2. Do not post a video tutorial or step by step photo tutorial of your own redraw of class content.
3. Do not repost any handouts you receive in class.

However…I love to see students making strides and taking this teaching and personalizing it with your own skills.

1. DO make your own designs and develop your own style! I love that!
2. DO gift your creations made with these techniques, of course!

At the bottom of each lesson you’ll see some ways to share your homework and ask questions, so that’ll be handy for you.

Video: Supplies

A discussion of supplies needed for this course.

Supplies list:

As with all my classes, use supplies you love, being prepared for different results. (Which is not a bad thing!)

Gouache

I recommend as always to get the best quality you can afford; poor supplies don’t prepare  you for what you’ll need to know for that day when you step up to artist quality materials. Please note that I do not recommend the super cheap brands for this course; I found a bunch of them to feel like painting with pudding, and that’s just…ick. LOL.

There are 2 brands I can definitely recommend; at the time of this writing, the WN set is about $60, and purchasing the DS would be about twice that cost.

1. Daniel Smith makes quality gouache, and out of all the brands I’ve been trying, these stay creamy far longer than any of the other brands. 
   –Ultramarine OR Cobalt (I’ll be testing out both, and for the purposes of this course, you won’t notice a huge difference with whichever you pick)
   –Yellow Ochre 
   –Titanium White
   –Lamp Black
   –Burnt Sienna 
2. Winsor & Newton is my second choice, while it dries out a little faster in the airtight palette, it’s not bad – and the paints are less expensive.
   –Ultramarine or Cobalt
   –Yellow Ochre
   -Zinc White
   –Ivory Black
   –Burnt Sienna

A note about acrylic gouache: once it dries, it’s not rewettable like gouache, so some techniques that rely on lifting may not work. Though there’s plenty to still learn in this course, you might find a few spots where you’ll need to adapt. Let me know if you run into those situations!

Palette

If you’d like to try a palette, I can highly recommend the Joybest airtight palette – but you can also just squeeze out a little paint as needed onto a mixing tile, and keep your paint tubes in a basket on your desk! In this course I won’t be working with paletted paint.

Paper

A good inespensive paper option would be Canson XL Pad:  BLICK – • AMZ   It comes in a 9×12 pad and it worked wonderfully for this course.

Brushes

You can easily get away with your cheap brushes! Sizes to consider are in this Jack Richeson travel brush set that includes flat 1/4, 1/2, 3/4, round 2 4 6 8 . If you’d like the JR set, it’s here: Blick • Amazon

Miscellaneous

1. A white palette or dish of some kind for mixing; I use cheap white tiles from the hardware store
2. Kneaded Eraser 
3. Artist tape  1/4” 
4. Optional: Dorlands Wax Medium 4oz (Blick • Amazon) or  16oz ( Blick  • Amazon ) (see video below about protecting your cards)

Colors for this class

I chose a modified primary palette which would contain red, yellow, blue, black and white. But they aren’t traditional brights – they’re more muted.

You’ll notice two blues in this chart, because as we go through class I’ll be playing with both of them as tints to see how I like them compared to each other.

Your black and white can be any kind of black and white.

Video 2: Protecting  gouache paint on a card

If you send someone a card painted in gouache, if they get it wet, the paint will lift. Think kids and sticky fingers! You can easily protect it by applying wax, so the video below is included. Additional note after this was filmed: a student tested her Micro Glaze and found it did not work on gouache. Links to find the Dorlands Wax is in the supply list above.

Video 3: Getting Started with Gouache

This is a public YouTube video you may have seen, but if not, enjoy! Lots of tips in here. The blog post has more info too.

Video 4: Stamping and Gouache

This is another public YouTube video you may have seen, but if not, enjoy! This Jumpstart class has no stamping in it, but once you learn how to deal with the paint in the course, you can create cards using stamps and gouache!