Vivid & Colorful Skies in Gouache and Watercolor
What you'll learn
- Painting skies in gouache and watercolor
Requirements
- Beginning art skills
Description
In this class, we’re going to explore two different approaches for capturing skies in a way that’s fresh, lively, and colorful.
First, we’ll use watercolor to do five-minute, wet-into-wet skies.
The idea with these skies is to do them very quickly, onsite. These are going to be loose and quite abstract.
And then, once they’re dry, we’ll add some details from the landscape with ink or watercolor to help give a sense of scale and place.
And if you really only paint in gouache, you can do this class in gouache as well. Just water it down a little and pretend it’s watercolor. You can get a lot of these same effects.
In the second part of the class, we’re going to take a little more time to paint really vivid, bold skies in gouache.
I’ll show you how to treat gouache kind of like watercolor to get light washes for clear skies, and also as backgrounds for something like a sunset.
Then we’ll do some dramatic daytime and sunset skies, and work on blending and shading to get convincing cloud shapes that still reflect your own style.
I’ll also show you how to use watercolor like gouache, by mixing tube watercolors with white gouache. So this is a great trick for watercolor painters who haven’t quite made the leap into gouache yet, because you’ll only need that one tube of white gouache.
Also, if you happen to have a color you really love in watercolor, but you don’t have that color in gouache, well guess what? You can just mix a little white gouache into it and bring it right into your painting.
Whether you’re primarily painting in watercolor or gouache, and whether you’re usually drawing from life in a travel sketchbook or working in your studio from photographs, these loose, colorful approaches to skies will add life to your urban sketches, cityscapes, and landscapes.
Who this course is for:
- Basic and intermediate artists
Course content
- Preview03:23
- 02:52Supplies
- 06:25Exploring Blues
- 07:40Washes
Instructor
I'm the New York Times bestselling author of over a dozen books, including The Drunken Botanist, Wicked Plants, and Girl Waits with Gun. I've been a full-time author for twenty years, and in that time my books have sold over a million copies worldwide and been translated into 17 languages.
I love talking to writers and artists, and bonding over the creative process. I started teaching so that I can inspire others to take the leap.
I believe that writing, drawing, and painting are all teachable skills. Forget about talent--it doesn't exist, and you don't need it. With some quality instruction and lots of practice, any of us can make meaningful, honest, and unique art and literature.
When I'm not writing or traveling on book tour, I'm painting and drawing in ink, watercolor, gouache, and oil. Come find me on my website or on Instagram to stay connected.