Paul’s 100 Day Challenge; Sketchbook

[Bryan Mccabe]

Hello Paul. I really like your gouache studies. I’ve never tried the medium, but it looks like a good way to study/plan before you commit to a full oil painting. I’ve seen some artists do oil painting “posters” as a quick study before jumping to canvas, but I keep thinking about how much money I’d burn doing that.

[PaulDidier]

Hi Bryan. Thanks for the comments.

I agree with what you say about using gouache for planning a full oil painting. I’ve seen lots of artists do that. Particularly landscape painters seem to like doing lots of on location gouache studies before committing to an oil painting. I know several who will use gouache during an oil painting to experiment with color or lighting before doing it on their oil painting.

 

[PaulDidier]

Here’s day 50. Should have been gouache, but feeling a bit tired. Thought I’d work on some ideas that would help me get excited again. Here’s three ideas I was exploring a bit. The last one feels best so far. Think I need to begin getting a bit more experimental with gouache. Pretty soon I want to begin very gradually bringing color into the gouache studies.

 

[Natacha]

Hi Paul ! I love your last work : the portraits and the dynamic poses are well done. We can feel the mouvement

Also, your last thumbnails look very great. I have no clue at composition for the moment but it’s pleasing to see (particularly the stairs spiral movement and the focus centered rabbit). I also can’t wait to see how you’ll use colors to these kind of illustrations 🙂

[PaulDidier]

Thanks Natacha. Getting into color should be interesting. It’s always been where gouache got really challenging for me. Hope this time it goes better.

Here’s my gouache study for day 51.

I liked how this one came out. It’s from a photo I took of a bunny in our backyard a while back. I’m thinking of doing a painting from this in oils or acrylic. Hopefully I’ll have the time. This bunny hung around our back porch for a couple of years starting when it was a baby. It seemed to enjoy hanging with me when I had my morning coffee, actually getting to within a couple of feet of me and lying down. Didn’t know if it was male or female so I named it Alex.

 

[Ramona]

I think your gouache studies have improved a lot, Paul! The bunny one looks really well balanced in terms of composition and value. I seem to remember that you had difficulties with the application of the gouache colors, because they would smudge together, right? You certainly have overcome this difficulty, good job!

[PaulDidier]

Hi Ramona. Thanks for the comments. I really appreciate it.

The main difficulty I’ve had with gouache color was how the value changes from when they’re wet to when they dry. It obviously happens with the black and white too but when using color the value change seems, to my eye, to change the hue and saturation too. When I used it in the past I’d just get lost trying to mix new pigment to match the dry colors when the appearance was so different.

That’s why I’ve spent so much time doing these black and white studies. I’m trying to establish a system to keep track of this. You may have noticed on some of my pages I paint small squares of the different values on the side and number them. I’ll also write numbers next to the painting to remind me which wet value it was. This has helped me a lot. I’m hoping it will continue to work when I start painting in color.

[Debbie H]

Hi Paul. You seem really confident with your gouache work now. The lighting on ‘Alex’  works really well – it defines him/her as the focus even though most of him/her is the same values as the background. That seems really clever and successful to me. Do you do an under drawing or paint direct? I also love your ink studies – they’re always great!

[PaulDidier]

Hi Deborah. Thanks so much. I appreciate the encouragement. The photo had some pretty nice lighting coming from the lower right of the picture and I pumped it up a bit to try to make Alex’s fur kind of glow on the right side. I also knocked back some of the background lighting. Glad you liked it.

I just lightly sketched in the the main elements of the picture with a 2H pencil then started laying in flat values in gouache. I did a thumbnail value study which I posted the day before so I’d worked out the values ahead of time.

[PaulDidier]

Here’s Day 52. Trying to switch things up so I used ball point pen and just tried to stay loose and have fun.

 

[PaulDidier]

Probably not going to post today. Decided to try to take a better approach to color so I’m working on a color chart in gouache and will try to take a picture of the colors and their values both wet and dry so I can refer to it when I actually start painting. Been a long time since I did a color/value chart and I don’t think I ever did one in gouache. So I spent today planning how I”m going to do it, laying out a grid and laying tape down. Will post tomorrow.

[PaulDidier]

Here’s my gouache study for day 53. Decided to start with the initial gouache studies I did in black and white, except do them now in color. Hopefully this’ll keep me from trying to do too much too fast. The purpose is the same. Get a feel for blending, paint consistency and a feel for how it behaves, (dry brush or wet into wet), except now I’m adding color. Also started a color mixing and value chart. I’ll post that when I get further on it.

 

 

[Chi Varjus]

Wow! I love the brick wall. So excited that you’re moving into colors now, can’t wait to see more!

[Lucas a.k.a “Roams”]

damn havent been on in a bit….that rabbit study looks great man 😀 tbh man pretty much everything here looks great xD lookin forward to seeing more colour stuff

[PaulDidier]

Thanks Chi and Lucas. Appreciate the encouragement. I’m going to take the color slow. Initially just do some of the same studies I did at the beginning of my black & white gouache studies.

As for the brick wall, I’ve always found doing textures, (stone, wood, metal etc), to be really fun. I just hope I can get as comfortable with doing flesh tones, still lifes and landscapes in color! Maybe this challenge will finally get some things to click.

Thanks again.

[Author]

Posts