Gouache Floral Experiments

I’ve been playing around with gouache again (instead of starting my taxes) and last night I painted three small floral pieces.

After my last try, I was pretty frustrated so I started looking around for some better instructional videos. I’ve been digging around YouTube and watching stuff here and there and I also finally signed up for a Skillshare membership. I found a couple of GREAT classes there and decided to give it another go. This time, I was determined to keep it simple and I painted some simplified florals on colored backgrounds. This allowed me to take advantage of one of the best characteristics of gouache paints — the ability to layer lighter colors over darks.

For my first try, really went for it. I painted a circle of black and then layered it with pink flowers and vines inspired by cherry blossoms.

Then, I used the pink paint I had leftover to put down a base layer and topped that off with some daisies.

Finally, I lightened up the green I had left from the daisy stems and painted some forget-me-nots over the top.

I was much happier with these paintings than I was with my house painting I did a few weeks ago. I think flowers are more forgiving in a lot of ways, and simplifying the patters allowed me to really concentrate on my brushwork and getting the right paint consistency.

Slowly but surely!