Painting the 4 seasons in Postcards with Gouache

Description

Painting Postcards is lots of fun and Gouache is a great medium to capture the beauty of each Season. Gouache is a medium that is overlooked by many, while it is an awesome medium for those beginning with painting and for all those who have been painting and want to try a new medium. While it's close to watercolor, it is way more forgiving and has some special powers that watercolor lacks, it can be used opaque and transparent and is a fast drying paint.

Winter

A new exciting series Painting Gouache Postcards. We're starting this series of Paintings with a Winter Impressionism. Together we will be painting a lovely winter postcard using a very limited color palette and just a few brushes. Is that even possible? Yes, for sure.

This Class will show you how to approach painting a landscape with Gouache, while focusing on the overall landscape without getting bogged down by all kinds of details. The end result is very impressionistic, a style loved by many. I'll share my approach with you on painting an impressionistic postcard. Easy to follow and not hard to master once you've gone through this Class.

You don't need any experience with painting. I'll show you all the secrets you need know. Now if you know all or some of these things already, I'll still definitely recommend you going through this Class. The impressionistic part alone will be interesting to discover. I'll show you how to set get started, how to paint with only 2 colors and using to black and white to create some tones and shades. The sketch and all the needed photos and the finished artwork as a guide are included in the Project Section.

Let's get some brushes, yellow, blue, black & white paints, some paper and let's start painting.

Spring

After exploring a Winter Impression with Gouache in the previous Class, it is now time to discover painting the next season, Spring.

In the Spring Edition we're going to focus on painting in a slightly different way than before. Perhaps not painting differently, but we will not only be focusing on painting alone. We're going to work with 3 colors and black and white for support. I'm going to show how to use yellow, red and blue to get a nice range of colors, like greens, pink, browns and greys.

While we'll be mainly painting a landscape, I'm introducing a new element to this series, animals. What is Spring without some birds? As if that isn't enough, I'm also going to show you how to use a reference from a different season and turn that into a Spring painting.

Plenty of element to discover in the Second Part of the Gouache Postcards Series.

Summer

When I think of summer it won't be long before Sunflowers come to mind. How about painting a Summer Sunflower Postcard with Gouache? Not just regular Gouache, but painting with Gouache in a slightly different way than usual.

To accomplish this we're going to take a couple of steps. First we need to prepare some Brushes. We're actually going to make our own Brushes, more or less. We're going to change existing Brushes and make them suitable for the Painting Style we're after, Stippling.

Once we've created the Brushes, we're going to prepare our Paper. When the Paper is prepared, we're going to paint a Background to match our subject, the Sunflower.

Once that Background is done, we need to transfer the Sketch to the dark background. I'll show you how to get your Sketch on dark or black paper. Once that is accomplished, we will move onto painting the Sunflower. We're going to use a technique called Blocking, that is roughly in painting the subject and after that use Detailing, adding details through lighter and darker parts.

Step by step we'll arrive at a slightly different than usual Gouache Postcard with a lovely Sunflower on it.

Autumn

Usually not the final season, but in this Art Class we will lastly paint Autumn. As soon as Autumn arrives, my Photo Camera and I are ready to go exploring together. While Fall has a lot to offer, I'm always looking for my smaller friends, the Mushrooms. Technically I should call them Fungi, but Mushroom sounds way better. They come in many shapes, colors and sizes.

We explored a number of styles with Gouache already in the previous Seasons and now it's time to capture the beauty of Fall. We're going to work more on details and for that we're going to Paint one of Autumn's stars, the Toadstool. Since we're zooming in on a smaller object, painting it more realistic might also be a good idea. Since we're still focusing on painting Postcards, we're not going to so ultra realistic or super detailed, but definitely further then we've gone before.

Once we're done, we will have a lovely Autumn Postcard with some really nice light and shadow going on and some great details.

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