Gouache Vs Watercolour: What One Is Best For Artists?
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Exploring The Gouache Vs Watercolour Debate As A Beginner Artist
As a beginner artist, understanding the distinctions between different painting mediums is crucial. One such comparison and debate that comes up time and time again is gouache vs watercolour.
While both mediums involve pigments mixed with water, they have unique qualities that significantly impact the artistic process and final results. In this article, we’ll delve into their key differences, helping you grasp their characteristics and choose the right medium for your individual endeavours.
Whether you’re seeking vibrant opacity or delicate transparency, this exploration will shed light on the extensive and intriguing gouache vs watercolour contest.
Definitions of gouache and watercolour
First, let’s familiarise ourselves with some simple and straight-forward definitions for both gouache and watercolour.
What is Gouache?
Gouache is an opaque painting medium with high pigment concentration suspended in a water-based binder, offering vibrant colours and the ability to create solid, opaque layers.
What is Watercolour?
Watercolor is a transparent painting medium where pigments are mixed with water to create delicate, translucent washes of colour.
It’s important to establish a general understanding between these two materials and to not confuse them with one another, regardless of how similar they appear to be. To grasp their characteristics and uses; let’s investigate them a little more.
Characteristics of Gouache
Gouache is an opaque (not transparent) painting medium known for its unique characteristics. Composed of pigments mixed with a water-based binder, typically gum arabic; gouache allows artists to create solid layers of colour. Its high opacity and coverage make it ideal for achieving bold and vibrant results, as it can effectively conceal underlying layers.
The colours in gouache are known for their vibrancy and saturation, retaining their intensity even after drying. Despite activating the paints with water, gouache doesn’t produce a washy appearance. In fact, it offers artists the ability to create multiple layers and textures in their artwork. It can be applied thinly to achieve smooth surfaces or applied thickly to add depth and texture, providing versatility and enabling artists to achieve various visual effects.
Gouache packaging and form
When it comes to the form and packaging; gouache typically comes in tubes. The paint itself is a thicker and more opaque paint compared to its rival watercolour. It has a higher concentration of pigments and a larger ratio of binder, giving it a creamy consistency. Gouache can be diluted, similarly to watercolour, but it retains its inherent opacity even when thinned down.
Example of gouache tube paints: ARTEZA Gouache Paint on Amazon.
Characteristics of Watercolor
Watercolour paints possess distinct characteristics that make them a popular choice among artists, especially beginners. Composed of pigments mixed with a water-soluble binder, watercolours offer a very particular painting experience with recognisable results.
Their most defining characteristic is transparency, allowing light to pass through the layers – creating delicate washes of colour. Watercolour paints excel in producing soft and subtle transitions, which enable artists to achieve seamless blends and smooth gradients. Additionally, watercolours dry quickly, making them convenient for those who work quickly and like to build layers.
When using watercolours, the blending process is fairly effortless due to their water-soluble nature, allowing artists to easily achieve subtle tonal variations. This makes watercolours an excellent choice for capturing the delicate nuances and luminosity of subjects, such as landscapes, florals, and atmospheric scenes.
Watercolour packaging and form
Watercolour paints can come in either pans or tubes. The pan paints are solid cakes of dried pigment that are activated with water when used. Tubes on the other hand contain a moist, paste-like substance that can be squeezed out and diluted with water, like gouache. Despite the packaging, both pan and tube watercolours are water-soluble.
Example of a watercolour pan: Major Brushes Artist Watercolour Paint Tin 36 Blocks Red Metal Lid on Amazon.
Key Differences between Gouache and Watercolour
Opacity vs transparency
The key difference between gouache and watercolour lies in their levels of opacity and transparency. Gouache is known for its high opacity, whereas watercolour paint produces transparent results.
Because of this transparency, watercolour paintings often exhibit a sense of luminosity and a subtle interplay of layered colours. This means that artists can create ethereal effects by building visible underlying marks compared to the more blocky and matte finish that gouache attributes. These contrasting characteristics provide artists with different possibilities for expression and visual effects.
Colour intensity and saturation
Another notable difference between gouache and watercolour lies with their individual colour intensity and saturation. Gouache is known for its vibrant and saturated colours, with the high pigmentation allowing for bold and intense hues. The opaque nature of gouache further enhances the colour intensity, as there is no transparency to dilute or soften the pigments.
On the other hand, watercolour exhibits a unique quality of translucency as we’ve already discussed, resulting in softer and more subtle colour transitions. While watercolours can still achieve vibrant colours, they tend to have a lighter and more delicate quality due to their transparency. Instead of being intense like gouache – watercolour paintings often have a luminous and lighter quality.
Layering and corrections
When it comes to layering and corrections, there are clear differences that arise in the gouache vs watercolour debate.
Due to its opaque nature, gouache allows for easy layering and corrections where artists can simply cover old marks with new ones. This makes it possible to modify your painting without worrying about the old colour coming through, similarly to thicker paints like oil and acrylic. The layers that artists are able to build with gouache are also a lot more textured than those made with watercolour.
Because of this, correcting watercolour mistakes can be more challenging. Due to its transparency, each layer of watercolour is visible and it’s difficult to make significant changes to previously applied colours. Artists must carefully plan their layers and consider the order in which they apply the washes to achieve the desired effects. If corrections are necessary, then a number of time consuming processes must be used, which can ultimately affect the paper surface.
Application techniques and brushwork
Due to the differences between gouache and watercolour; artists need to learn how to apply them correctly for the best results and effects.
With gouache, the application process can be quite versatile. Its opaque nature enables artists to apply thick, textured brushstrokes – creating visible brushwork and pronounced texture on the surface. The paint also lends itself well to detailed and precise brushwork, allowing artists to create intricate and refined details in their work.
Watercolour, on the other hand, requires a more delicate and fluid approach to application. It’s often applied in separate washes of diluted pigment, meaning the process can be a lot more thought-out and planned. Artists can use specific techniques like wet-on-wet, wet-on-dry, and glazing to create smooth and flowing brushwork that is so synonymous with watercolour artwork.
Choosing the Right Medium for Your Artwork
Choosing between gouache and watercolour as an artist ultimately depends on your desired effects, experimentation, and personal preference.
If you are seeking vibrant and opaque colours with the ability to create solid layers, gouache is a suitable choice. Gouache is ideal for precise details, bold artwork, and textured brushwork. Whereas, if you’re looking for something that produces translucent washes, soft colour transitions, and a luminous quality in your artwork – watercolour is a great option. Watercolour allows for delicate blending, ethereal effects, and a sense of transparency.
Experimenting with both mediums can help you understand their unique characteristics and discover which one resonates with your artistic style and vision. Personal preference plays a significant role as well, as you may find a stronger affinity and connection to one medium over the other. At the end of the day, you’ll need to get a feel for both mediums before making a decision on what one you prefer.
Is gouache easier than watercolour?
For beginners, watercolour is often considered a better medium to start with compared to gouache. This is mainly down to watercolour being more forgiving and easier to work with.
Watercolour allows for transparency, which means you can see through the layers of paint. The colour intensity doesn’t come out as strong and it also dries quickly, allowing a beginner to build up layers and make changes without waiting for long drying times.
Watercolours fluid nature and ability to create soft washes make it easier to achieve subtle and smooth transitions between colours. As well as this – watercolour paints and materials are widely available and relatively affordable, making it accessible for beginners to get started without having to spend big.
Conclusion
The discourse around gouache vs watercolour will always be an interesting one. The two mediums are often mistaken for one another, given their close similarities. It’s not until we investigate a little deeper, that you begin to pinpoint their individual characteristics, and in turn – explore the wide variety of effects that each paint can produce. Whatever medium you decide to use is a personal and artistic preference – with neither being better than the other. Ensure that you’ve experimented with both before making judgement and perhaps even combine the two for something really creative and unique.
DO YOU PREFER GOUACHE OR WATERCOLOUR? LET US KNOW IN THE COMMENTS BELOW.
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