Thursday, September 16, 2010

Gouache Made an Oil Painter Out of Me

Apple Pyramid
oil on canvas
12" x 12"

I'm having a little break from drawing. Recently, I had the good fortune to come face to face with a Daniel Tennant gouache painting, "Here Today, Gone Tomorrow". It was absolutely gorgeous. It got me to thinking about gouache, which is an opaque watercolor medium which is know for it's ability to produce brillant colors and fine detail. So, I up and ordered some to see if I'd like it better than oils. After one afternoon with gouache, I'm feeling a renewed kinship with oils. Yeah, I know Rome wasn't built in a day - I'll keep playing around with gouache. Half a day should certainly not be the basis for throwing out what, in the hands of many other artists, has proven to be a wonderful medium. I just couldn't get the right amount of water in my mix. Either it was way too runny to cover the paper properly, or when I had a mixture that covered well, it simply dried in 15 milliseconds. On looking back, I admit part of my problem was probably my frugality. I was just not squeezing a goodly amount of paint out of those expensive little tubes to properly work with.

To comfort my self esteem which had taking a slight beating that day, I pulled out my oil paints the other day and painted the apple painting shown above. I'm starting to think about holiday small work shows that will be coming up in December. This painting is on a gallery wrapped canvas which I didn't want to frame, so I painted a little black and gray border to give it a more finished look.

2 comments:

Bonnie Heather said...

I love your apple painting. It's so true to life. I like to experiment too, but usually come back to my oils as well. keep trying new things.

Sheila Cantrell said...

Thanks Bonnie! I agree that as artists we do need to try new mediums, subjects, and approaches from time to time. You never know when you'll come across a new love and if nothing else, it makes that old love so much better when you return to it!