Gouache vs watercolor for a rainy Sunday sketch session

Woke up to rain and couldn't decide which paint set to grab. Went with gouache cause I wanted that flat, solid look for the old buildings out my window. Used a size 6 round brush and a scrap of cold press paper. Messed up the roofline twice but the second fix actually looked better than my original plan. Has anyone else switched mediums mid-week and found it changes how you see your subject?

3 comments

3 Comments

janarivera3d ago

Oh man, the rainy window painting struggle is real! I did the exact same thing last fall but with acrylics instead of gouache. There was this big old oak tree outside, all those leaves turning gold and I kept trying to paint every single leaf with a tiny brush. After three hours I gave up, switched to a palette knife and just slopped on big chunks of yellow and orange. It looked way more like a tree than my careful little leaves ever did. Sometimes your first plan is just a suggestion, you know? And the roofline thing, yeah, happy accidents always seem to happen when you're not trying so hard.

faith_king3d ago

Wait, don't you think switching mediums in the middle of a piece is kind of like giving up on the challenge you started with... makes it harder to learn your tools? I've always felt like sticking with the first choice pushes you to problem solve instead of just changing the game.

wells.olivia6h ago

I actually tried that whole stick-with-it thing once with a watercolor and ended up with a muddy mess that looked like a crime scene. Faith_king, I think there's a middle ground between ditching a challenge and stubbornly sinking a whole afternoon into a dead end. Sometimes switching tools halfway forces you to solve a new problem instead of banging your head against the same one.