Loose Acrylic Gouache Painting: Recreating Nature's Colors

By lindywhitton on July 16, 2024

Postcard No 20 : Life by the River

As autumn moves to winter the blackberry bushes begin to change and the leaves take on a range of hues: oranges, deep crimsons and dark purples. They add colour and interest along the river banks and in the paddocks when other bushes have lost their leaves altogether or become more muted.

It's mid winter now and the blackberry colours are fading so today's postcard is taking a bit of artistic licence. I've added in more leaves and glowing colours to make a more vibrant and interesting painting.

It's a simple painting that relies on the complimentary contrast of the orange against the blue for it's appeal.

I've kept the whole rendition very loose and broken up the blues and oranges with a little green. The clouds also have a bit of warm colour against all that cool blue.

I tried to create a sense of movement and recession in the sky by the placement of the clouds and added a litle warmth against the cool blue of the sky.

Something about this didn't really work for me so out came the brush again!

I realised I'd put too much variety in the foreground so I simplified it all down to the main idea of blackberries and set up a little dancing rythm across the top of the blackberries to get rid of that curved shape.

There seemed to be an equal amount of green and orange so I also added in more of the warm oranges.

While I was at it I added more warms into the cloud.

The quick drying properties of acrylic gouache means I was able to easily overpaint those problem areas.

It's a medium I've largely ignored until I started this year long project and now I'm finding how versatile these opaque, quick dry and matte paints really are. What new medium have you tried lately and how have you found it?