#30×30, 2025, Day 05: Opaque Watercolors!

Ok! Finally some painting in the studio with my new home-made Gouache set!

This is one of a series of 4×4″ on 140lb cold press paper, with my gouaches, using this ‘comber’ brush from Rosemary and Co. As you can see, the brush is a kind of ‘rake’ that does a really great job creating texture.

Here; some close-up’s of the mark-making. I intended to do more mixing of opaque and transparent watercolor, but I ended up just painting directly with the gouache. I’m to impatient to do layering!

When I paint this kind of subject in oils, I mix the oil with calcium carbonate to enhance the impasto. This is similar to adding the kaolin to watercolor to make gouache, but not anywhere near as stiff.

Of course, I’m pushing the oil around with an actual knife, and I’m using a sable brush here. Still – the feeling is very reminiscent of my oil painting, but with all of the simplicity of a watercolor kit, and of course – the fast drying. With my limited experience, the gouache seems to dry much faster than watercolor, because you’re not soaking the paper. (Unless you wanted to! No reason not to pre-wet, except that I like to paint wet-on-dry to control my edges).

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Here’s a second study, trying to keep up the impasto. And push the scale of the marks.

At this scale (4×4″) the texture of the paper is very noticeable, and the relative dryness of the gouache (as compared to watercolor) give you really terrific dragging effects.

Actually the whole nature of gouache is so much dryer, there is the added benefit of not needing to use top quality paper. It doesn’t really matter how good the sizing is or how well the cotton fibers absorb – because it’s not really wet-in-wet.

So, that’s one thing – you’re spending more on paint, but you can save on paper :) I’m glad to be able to use up a lot of 140lb paper that I have on my shelves, and keep my good 200 and 300lb for watercolors.

Detail shots! This kind of texture is hard to get in a full-sized work. On a wall sized panel, you might need an intentionally roughened surface, like a textured primer. I have had a few accidental successes in oils where I painted over top of an old painting – even after power-sanding, its an *extremely* coarse surface and can look a bit like this at 24 or 30 inches.

Perhaps with this gouache, it’s time to try out a really rough paper! I don’t usually use rough-surface paper – but I might have a few sheets in storage.

Hmmmmmm.