Oh My Gouache: An Introduction to the Popular Painting Medium

Oh My Gouache: An Introduction to the Popular Painting Medium

Class | Available

All levels / Age 16+
1/10/2027-1/24/2027
12:00 PM-2:00 PM EDT on Sun
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$150.00
Member Discount Available
01/10/2027

Oh My Gouache: An Introduction to the Popular Painting Medium

Class | Available

Gouache is hot, hot, hot! In fact, it's the #1 medium artists are newly turning to at this time. It's not a new medium. It has always been the favored medium by illustrators and animators. And it was used by many masters, including Vincent Van Gogh and John Singer Sargent.

Today, studio and plein air artists are rediscovering the medium. Why? Because gouache, a water medium, delivers the body and control of oil paint, yet can be diluted for a watercolor-like effect, and its high pigment lends to vibrant creations. Regardless of your painting experience, this focused three-day course is designed for you.

Those new to painting will find gouache, a very forgiving medium, a good choice to get started. You will learn practical gouache techniques and a clear process you can use immediately. Experienced watercolor, acrylic, and oil painters looking for fresh inspiration and an interest in exploring new approaches will learn how to mix color, build confident layers without creating mud, simplify complicated scenes, and leave with techniques you can immediately apply to your own painting. All participants will discover why gouache is rapidly becoming many artists go to medium when painting plein air and traveling.


If you have them, please bring your smart phone or tablet to class. Otherwise, all materials will be supplied with the exception of gouache paint. Please bring your own gouache paint to class. If possible, purchase Winsor & Newton, Holbein, or M. Graham gouache paint. (There are cheaper brands, but they have less pigment and more white in the mix, so you will likely be disappointed). The instructor suggests buying gouache paint online at dickblick.com or jerrysartarama.com. BE SURE TO PURCHASE DESIGNER GOUACHE and not acrylic gouache.

A suitable gouache palette would contain:

  • Permanent or titanium white
  • Brilliant yellow, lemon yellow, or cadmium yellow
  • Yellow orchre
  • Cadmium red light
  • Alizarin crimson
  • Burnt sienna
  • Cobalt blue
  • Ultramarine blue
  • Burnt umber
  • Permanent green

Hudson, Karen
Karen Hudson

I paint colorful, loosely interpreted landscapes in gouache. For years I was an avid hiker and was able to visit the inspiring natural and manmade cathedrals I paint. Today, however, after decades of destructive cancer treatments, my body isn’t always able to physically carry both me, and my painting supplies. But Like Frieda Kahlo, who famously suffered chronic pain herself, I find solace in painting magical landscapes from my studio. The creative process offers me wings to figuratively fly to my subject when my body won’t always take me there.

Georgia O’Keeffe, one of my artistic inspirations, once said, “I had to create an equivalent for what I felt about what I was looking at—not copy it.” Robert Henri, another artist whom inspires my creations, offered a similar lesson when he told students to “paint the flying spirit of the bird rather than its feathers.” When I begin my creative process, I think about O’Keeffe’s and Henri’s lessons. Instead of documenting a site, I want to take the viewers breath away and challenge their expectation of the everyday, not give them what they are expecting. I’m trying to tell stories, not document sites. I found I can come closest to accomplishing my goal through color freedom. While many of the colors I choose are often found at the site, I exaggerate them to better express my experience. After experimenting with various mediums, I found gouache, an opaque watercolor that dries vibrant and matte, the best medium to tell my stories.