Gouache Painting: Asleep at the Beach

Here’s a recent painting I made in gouache media. It’s based on an old pencil sketch I had made of the main figure several years ago. The surface is Canson Montval paper that I’ve coated with shellac primer (still playing around with that.) On the left is a photo of the painting in progress.

In process

Final painting scan

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I began the piece with a light colored (raw sienna) watercolor pencil sketch, applied a wash for the sand, and then worked out each figure.

It’s been awhile since I last worked in gouache, a lovely medium. I found I had to buy a few new colors that I didn’t have on hand, and one shortcoming of commercial gouache is it’s only available in small sized tubes. The largest size brand I’ve found is Da Vinci, which comes in 37ml tubes. Most of the others are much smaller, which can be a drag if you like to use lots of paint. Turner and Lukas make decent sized tubes also, and their paint handles well.