I really like Wayne Thiebaud’s nearly edible paintings (thanks Mykelle). His layering of rich, luminous color and texture are so enjoyable and engaging. Common objects attain a kind of sublime transcendence, forcing the viewer to see them in a new way.
Here are some process shots for the second gouache robot/guardian-inspired painting. This time I started with a blue ground. Unlike the first one, I skipped a step. Rather than brush ink the figure after transferring him to the prepared page (a la graphite transfer), I decided to jump right into painting after darkening the lines with a ballpoint. I ended up doing ink touchups last time anyway and figured I’d save some time and work. Stay tuned for the finished painting.
Step 1: Free hand drawing with my ink-filled waterbrush.
Step 2: Redraw with pencil, rub 6B pencil lead on the back side of the drawing and trace with ball-point pen to transfer image onto the prepared sketchbook page.
Step 3: Begin filling in flat sections of color.
This gouache sketch started out as me using up some extra paint by painting an entire page yellow. Once that was done, I sketched a running figure in a funky futuristic armor. I redrew the sketch larger and worked out some details.
After carbonizing the back of the enlarged sketch with a 4B pencil, I traced the drawing with a pen, transferring a light pencil image onto the yellow background.
I inked the drawing with my rapidograph ink-filled Niji brushpen. I then began painting, filling up the inked areas with various colors. They were really bright and obnoxious so I went over them with a muddy red to mute them. I added the highlights with slightly dirty white paint and the shadows with blue. I left the goggles yellow.
In the background I doodled a futuristic city, adding some shadows and few ink lines. I painting in the ground plane and added orange to the top corners to add focus to the main figure.
I still have paint left over so I began drawing 2…
I wanted to do a goauche painting and found a nice window view to sketch from. I’m really loose in my use of the materials and I hate wasting paint so I try to use my various tiny mixtures through the painting in order to minimize waste. This has the beneficial effect of creating unity. I haven’t been able to find any really excellent books that deal with this medium alone. I’m in awe when I see smoothly and realistically modeled gouache paintings. However, I enjoy flat illustration usage as well.
If anyone knows of any helpful print or web resources drop a comment, per favoré
I felt like painting something so I pulled out the gouache tubes and my waterbrush pen. This started out as freeform pencil lines on bristol board. I looked at the doodle until I could “see” the character and then just developed the lines. After scanning I applied some Photoshop fun and…Voila!
I thought it might be fun to just start drawing combinations of animals and objects. The top several were first drawn with a LePlume brushpen which accounts for the much more even lines. The bottom two were drawn with my ink-filled Niji which accounts for the more expressive and varied linework. Colored with gouache and watercolor.
I’ve been itching to experiment with Gouache and I recently got the chance during a brief visit to the park. The subject didn’t move the entire time. I think I’ll try a scene next time…
