Adventures in Gouache: Painting and Pattern Making Techniques

1. Introduction: This class is about painting in gouache and how to understand it's brilliant qualities. Join me as I take you through a series of exercises that will help you master the techniques of painting in flat layers. Paint onto paint. There's be lots of experiment with marks and pattern, and I'll show you how to build a body of reference to use when you're planning a painting. I'm Kate Kirk, textile designer, artist and illustrator, with a whole load of experience in the design world, bursting to get out and inspire someone like you. I live in the south coast of England with my husband, daughter and two dogs. I'm lucky enough to have a studio at home where I spend a lot of time painting, making patterns, drinking tea, and dreaming up new designs. I love pattern. In fact, I'm obsessed with it. Gouache is the perfect medium to create patterns with. What can I do for you? Well, I've painted with gouache for the best part of 30 years and I'd love to get your painting with it to. Some people use gouache light mode color, but I think it works best in a thicker flatter way and you can paint color on top of color. Class is aimed at all levels, although a bit of painting experience is helpful. If you've always wanted to try gouache, but worried it won't go well, this class is for you. If you've use gouache before but not been happy with the results, then this class is for you too. If you've painted with gouache for years and loved the stuff, and this class is still for you because there's always something new to learn. We will start with talking about what materials you need. Then we'll go through some paint techniques to really get to grips with what the paint can do. Next, the fun bit and some mark and pattern making using different brushes. This is where you can really release your inner patent fairy and doodle to your heart's content. Then we'll find some objects to inspire a painting, a good composition and I'll share with you how I make my color choices. Finally, I'll take you step-by-step through how I draw and paint a study of simple objects from my garden, and we'll use our pattern references to decorate them. This isn't about painting of realistic interpretation. It's about painting things in it, a decorative and an imaginative way, creating interesting illustrations, not life-like things. Oh no, definitely not life like. There are two aims to the class. One is to get you understanding how to paint with gouache successfully. Two, to get your painting objects from your surroundings in a more decorative and unusual way and not just copying what you see. Don't be dictated to by reality. Paint with your instincts and create like a designer. Find your own illustration style. Stick with me and let's have some adventures in gouache. Next, we're going to talk about the project. Let's get started. 2. The Project: The project I've set is to do a small garage painting of eight objects placed in a random composition, something a bit like this thing or as one like that. I know there aren't eight objects in this, there's only five and I don't know how many is in this one, but eight is a good number. Do eight or however many you want to do. Find some simple objects from your home or the garden, or out on a walk in the park or on the beach. I like to gather leaves and stones and feathers. Anything else I come across in my garden, but you could find things in your house like cutlery, buttons, keys, anything that takes you fancy really, even a biscuit or a dog. No, not dog, stick to small objects. We're not concerned with painting things in a lifelike and realistic way. The objects are just interesting shapes to interpret with marks and patterns. Did I mention on pattern? Don't worry, I'm going to lead you through a series of lessons that incorporates seven mini tasks. If you stick with me through the whole class and complete the tasks, you'll be primed and ready for the project. I'll show you how to master the gouache, have fun with pattern, choose your objects, decide on a color palette and mix up your paint. I really hope you'll have a go on a project as it will help you understand a little more the qualities of gouache and give you the confidence to use it more and more. Perhaps you could use your painting is a card design or an art print, or maybe you could use the elements to put in a repeat pattern for a fabric design. I'd love to see what you create, so please share your paintings on the class project gallery. I'm always keen to give feedback and help. I can't wait to see what you produce. Let's get started. Next, we look at the materials we need. See you in the next lesson. 3. Materials: For this class, you will need a few things to get you started. Paint, a set of gouache paints would be perfect. There are lots of brands available, so just choose the one that's easily available and affordable. I like Winsor & Newton. They have a great range of colors, and they're very high-quality. If you'd rather buy individual tubes, a selection, including permanent white would be: red, I've got a Winsor red, yellow, this is lemon yellow, dark blue, I like the indigo, green, this one is sap green, brown, well this is a sepia, and black. Just buy the ones that appeal to you as ultimately you want to use the colors you love. I always have to use turquoise, but you might like a pink such as magenta or rose tyrien. Cartridge paper. Use the best quality heavyweight cartridge paper you can afford. I'm using a Winsor & Newton smooth surface cartridge pad. The paperweight is 100 pounds or 220 grams. I usually buy A3 as that accommodates the size of picture I like to do. It's best to get smooth for gouache as the paint will glide on better. Don't be tempted to use a lightweight paper as they will tend to buckle. Brushes. Choose a brand that you like. I don't have any particular brand legions. I use a mixture of synthetic and sable. To be honest, the best advice is to look after them. Keep them upright in a container, not in a bag, and definitely don't leave them in your water. For this class, I'm going to use a variety of sizes and styles of brush. A round size seven, which is good for mixing paint and painting larger areas. A round size four, which is my favorite size really, for smaller areas of paint. A couple of smaller brushes, size one and two for detail. An angled brush, or dagger brush, which is a quarter-of-an-inch size for making different marks and a couple of flat edge brushes, size four and three, again, for making different marks with the paint. That said, I wouldn't go out and buy loads of new brushes, just to copy what I'm doing. Use whatever you have available. You're also going to need an HB pencil, eraser, jar of water, some paper tissue, and whatever you want to use as a palate, either a-ready-made one or on a plate or Tupperware lid. I prefer to use cut down plastic cups is I can mix quite a lot of paint and then I keep them in a Tupperware box, so they don't dry out. You'll also need a flat, well-lit work surface and a bit of time. Join me next when I show you the techniques for painting with gouache. See you in the next lesson. 4. Paint Techniques: I'm going to start by showing you the difference between colors gouache, and how they behave differently due to the opacity of each different paint. If you look at the paint tubes closely, I've got two different ones here, I've got rose tyrion and some cobalt turquoise light. Now these two are very different in makeup. If you look at the back, you'll see this little square on a this one similar. We'll square, although this one, you'll see down is half black and half white. Now that tells you the transparency or the opacity of the paint. Basically, for long black means it's very opaque. Half-and-half is probably less opaque or slightly more transparent. If you found a paint that had just a white, a clear white inside to it, then that means it's very transparent. You can also look on the front as well at the permanent that gives you a good indication. That's really the sort of chemical stability of the paint. In a very opaque paint like this, permanent says WA. In a less opaque paint like this, pink, it's a permanent c. That gives you a very good indication of how they'll react. It's important to know that because this will make you understand how to use your paint more easily, and how it will react on paper. If I show you what I'm meaning, this is a bit of the pink rose to ran. All I'm doing is just adding a bit of water, and if I paint that on paper, you can see it's pretty transparent. You can see the paper coming through, it's quite streaky and not very easy to make it flat. If I show you what I mean compared to the turquoise, that's already you can see it's a much thicker, more permanent, solid consistency. If I paint that, you can see it's got a lot more bulkiness in it. Therefore you get a much flatter, smoother, less textured coverage. Now the way if you really want to use a more transparent paint, but you want it to be more like the turquoise. Then I tend to add a little bit of permanent white. Now it will lighten it up a bit, but that's not the end of the world necessarily. You're still achieving quite a bright strong pigment color. You can see already that's got a bit more opaqueness to it. I can add a bit more. Obviously, is really lightning it now. But there you go. The permanent white is very good for stabilizing a paint. But obviously you do lose some of the color strength. What I'd like to suggest you try doing is something like this. This is a bit a color chart I've made. Basically, I've gone through all my paints. I've got quite a few, but nowhere near the whole range. I've literally gone through them all, put them in color categories, and I've painted, Rose Tyrian is here. I've just painted that straight from the tube and I've written it's the name and the permanent which you see, and I've drawn a little symbol to show that it's a semi-opaque. I've gone through all of my paints and done that. I think that's a great idea really to get you used to how your paints work. Because it will make a difference when you come to mixing them, how transparent or opaque they are. For you first mini task, I'd like you to make a color chart using real different paints, labeling them so you have a really good reference when you come to mixing colors. Now I'm going to show you how to paint one color on top of another without activating the color underneath. I'm going to paint this peach color on top of the blue, and the consistency of paint you're looking for really is like a double cream. But here I've watered paint down a lot on my brush. It's two or three, as you can see, when I paint it on, it's activating the blue underneath and making it really streaky. If I mix my brush in there again and find paint that's more like a double cream, but less more tree. You can see I keep loading my brush. Make sure you've got plenty of paint on your the brush. Then you get the effect you want without activating the blue underneath. I'm just going to show you with smaller brush. Same thing applies. Keep loading the brush, that must dry out, now I'm going to water it down. There you go, you can see it's starting to move the paint underneath. I'm going to show you what happened when brushes is too dry. If I get rid of some of the moisture on that, its not that thick this paint, but you're going to get the idea. If I paint on there, that's probably too wet when I started, but you can see as it gets drier, obviously, it's leaving gaps and the texture is coming through the background. Again, that's not quite what we want. You just need to get enough paint on the brush, keep it loaded all the time. Then you're not going to get the streaky gaps. The other thing that's quite important is the right brush size for the area that you're trying to paint. I've got two brushes here obviously, quite a big one, and this is quite a fine one. If I paint area with a big brush, you can see it goes on smoothly. The less brushstrokes you're making, obviously the less chance you have of activating the paint. If I use a smaller brush, clearly it makes sense that you're going to use a lot more brush strokes to cover that area, you'd have to just keep loading your brush, and ultimately you probably going to reactivate the paint underneath more easily on this horrible brush. It's mounting, but you're going to reactivate the paint underneath, and are going to be more likely to get streaks. The base will be coming through. The second mini task is to try experimenting with paint consistency, and layering colors on top of each other. Play around a new sketch book, or on scrap paper. We're going to have a look at a few different brushes, and how you can get different marks using different types of brushes. Got a selection here. I'm going to start off by using a big flat edged brush, so a little bit of paint. You can see that it makes really nice big blowup box, and you have to use one stroke which is quite nice, so you can work quite quickly to cover quite a big area. Now I'm going to use a smaller flat edge brush, similar to small marks. Again, quite a nice one to use to cover quite a big area. This one is called angled brush, and it's quite nice because you can do thick and thin. It makes lovely shapes. Got a nice one to use, and you can still just stab it and make spotters as well. But that's quite fun to play around with. Then there's some normal round brushes that are good for doing lines. As you can see, just play around with lots of different brushes and see what you can do. Now, I'm going to show you my sketch book, which I quite often paint. I practice exercises in, and then I perhaps write down what I've done, or brush I've used. It's a good resource really to look back on when you're looking for inspiration, and for some art-making. The third mini task is to gather your brushes and see what different marks you can make with them. Keep a record in you sketch book of the brush you use next experiment you make, and build up a good brush reference. These are the three tasks to do for paint tech. Have a go with them, and post them in the project gallery so I can see how you got to grips with my techniques. Feel free to ask any questions. I'm always happy to help. Next we look at mark making and pattern. See you in the next lesson. 5. Pattern Making: Now we're going to look at pattern ideas. I'm painting some squares of colors. I'm just using a paint that I've got mixed left over from another painting. It doesn't really matter what colors, just as long as there's a variety and there's light and dark shades. I'm doing this on a square cartridge paper, so it's easier for you to see what I'm doing. But you could do this in a sketchbook, that way you can keep it as a reference for future painting projects when you need a bit of inspiration for pattern making. Here comes the fun bit and time to experiment and play around with pattern, using the techniques I've shown you. Choose some brushes and just see what happens. I'm just using an a fine round brush at moment to get some interesting lines. Next, I'm going to use it more of a dotting type way. That's the dark red that I've got on top of a pink and I'm going to just do some big geometrics now. Quite like I'm doing this, I'll probably paint over them again later in another color. But I often use that shape in my patterns, it's quite nice. Now I'm going to use a slightly bigger round brush and I'm just going to use it as blobs and then the pink on top of the blue. Which is quite nice, do some more solid painting there and use it just as a long stroke, which is quite nice. This is the smallest flat brush that I'm using here. Just some quick brushstrokes. Again, I'm going to paint it over the top of these. It's just a background that I'm working on. Back to that finer round brush to get some nice, grassy strokes going on and I'm going to use it in clumps of dots now. I quite often use these patterns. Quite nice to work over the top of this, so use this just as a background, really. Back to the red and some crosshatching, which is quite useful pattern to use. and I use quite a lot of that. I'm going to do some swirls over the top of the lines that I made before. Some circles to new circles. Now I've got my biggest flat edge, brush, green on top of the dark red. It's quite nice on top of red as well. Doesn't work so well on the blue seems to be a bit lost. Similar tone, but it's playing around really fitting in through those geometrics. Now I'm going to try using the dagger brush or the slanted brush, obviously you can get some quite nice marks with that. You can see, just using the end of it. Now I'm going to try using it how it works best really, so thin and thick marks. Now I'm just using one of the background colors, the dark red to paint back in to the marks that I've made. Bit of cross actually it's just a way of getting a bit more pattern and detail into your painting. This is a great way to unwind and relax. There's no pressure to do anything correct, or particularly neatly, just doodle. You could also try painting on color paper. This is on a piece of black card from a craft shop. It cuts out having to paint the background color. Try different colored papers and see what works. Once you've had enough of making marks and patterns, make sure you keep them in a safe place so you have them on hand to refer back to. Either stick them up on the wall or put them in a file, or if you've done them in the sketchbook, that's the perfect place. For Mini Task number 4, have a go yourself: experiment with pattern, mark making, and go mad with color. Let's recap. Have fun with color. Use lots of different brushes, paint back into pattern using the base color and try painting on colored paper. Next, we'll look at finding inspiration, so see you in the next lesson. 6. Inspiration: Now we're going to have a look at finding some objects to use as inspiration. It could be things that you find around your home, in your garden, on a walk. I'm going to have a look around my garden. So let's go. It's a lovely sunny day in the garden and the beginning of summer. So lots of things growing, even my efforts at growing vegetables seem to be working. I like the look of these [inaudible]. Over here, lots of interesting shapes, areas to fill with pattern. I'm going to have a look amongst this gravel as well. You can see what interesting stones I can find. We got the dogs with us. Go on into the garden, quite like the shapes of these bugs on this conifer. I found feather. I got lots of feathers in the garden. They are really nice to paint actually. Just going down the bottom of the garden. Now I'm going to have a look at these leaves and the berries on the shrub. Quite interesting. I might use a pea pod, as well use something from the vegetable garden. There are quite a few shells in the garden. We are right by the sea, and my daughter and I often bring them back. They end up in the flowerbeds. Now, I've gathered my objects together. I'm going to take a few photos of the leaves in case they start to deteriorate. Then we are all ready to put a composition together what I find in garden. That's what we'll be doing in the next section. See you there. 7. Color and Composition: I'm back in my studio now and I've got a selection is things are found in the garden. I'm just going to have a look through them and decide what I'm going to use, and then I'm going to think about the colors I'm going to mix. I've arranged my objects. I've chosen nice looking leaf front, a pea pod, and a couple of shells and a selection of stones. [inaudible] like this one, the blue patterning in it, and that's quite interesting. I love the feather and model stashing leaf. The way I place the objects in a composition is purely instinctive really, but I try to mix up the shapes and patch work them together. I try not to have all the same colored objects clumped together too. I'm going to talk a bit about how I choose the colors for a painting. I'm sorry to disappoint anyone wanting a scientific and logical breakdown of how I do this. But I don't use color wheels or charts or anything remotely scientific. In fact, I vaguely remember some lessons that are college about this, but I don't really think I ever went to them. I tend to use my instincts and I adapt the colors I see into a palette liked the look of. So I take my inspiration for the color from the actual object and then do my own version. So if you want to scientific approach, there are plenty of great classes or Skillshare that will give you this. I, however, I'm going to show you what I do. So I've got my objects in front of me, and I've mixed up some colors that I am going to use. I've painted them out in swatches here. Now you'll see I have chosen two greens. Slightly different two green items in my picture. But I've gone for quite a leafy, strong, bright green and more of a dusty, paler tone to go with it. Then I've looked at things like my shell, it's got some nice orange tones in it. So I've mixed an orange that I quite like that was with pink orange like and a bit of permanent white. I've also gone for a sandy color which is in the shell as well. That is probably a mixture of yellow ocher, permanent white, perhaps a little bit of sepia to dirty it down. But it's quite a good tone. It's a pilot tone, and that's all I know those 2 will worked together as well those two. Next I've looked at the other shell I've got. It has got some lovely pinky tones in it. So I've done an interpretation of the pink and I've also looked at the darker tones in my pine cone. So I need a dark tone amongst my palette. I've gone for dark brown and I don't want to use black. That's quite dead color and it doesn't really always work in a nice natural palette. I've also decided to go for a couple of grays. We see this quite a few grazing in feather. It's going to be a useful color in lot of the items like the Stone is got some beautiful colorings in it. I know the blue we graze that I'm using will work quite well. Again, I've done two tones so I know their work on top of each other. I've got to talk about how I mix colors now, I won't go through all of the colors I'm going to use, but I'll just do a few so you get the idea. I very rarely use palace straight out of the tube. I tend to always mix it in a pot. I prefer to control the color to how I want it and it ends up being a more interesting color. We're going to start with a couple of greens. I've got my reference here of the two different leaves that I'm using in the picture. But my paint, plastic cups, mixing, brush, water, tissue, and cartridge paper. So let's get started. Now when I look at these greens, they're quite vibrant greens, especially the one in this Cistercian leaf. So I'm going to start off with some sap green. I tend to just to squeeze straight in to my cup. But if you feel more comfortable squeezing it out onto a plate first and then doing it that way, then you're welcome to do that. Now is quite a vibrant green and I feel like it's probably, if I left it like that it would just overtake the whole painting. So I am going to add, first of all, I'm going to add a bit of white. Now this is just the way I get paint into my pot. You don't have to squeeze it straight from the tube like that. If you do, make sure we clean the brush in between. So that's obviously paled it down and combed it down quite a bit. I feel like it's quite a vibrant color. Maybe I want a little bit a sepia in there. This is a color I use a lot of really good Brown and I like to use it just for dirty things up a bit. So hopefully you can see the consistency that paint needs to be. It's like double cream or heavy cream. I quite like that green. So I'm going to paint it out and have a look at it when it's dry. So it's very different when gouache dries, it tends to dry bit paler. So it's always best to check your paint when it's dried. For the paler green, I'm going to just use, this is olive green. So I'm going to put a bit of that in my plastic cup and then add some white and see what that looks like. Might need to add a bit of sepia to this. See how I feel about the colors. Though I think they worked together. I think that's probably a bit too dark moment and might put a bit more white in there. I want them to contrast a bit more so that they really fit better. Lighter, those dry, and go back to a darker green. So dry they it out now if you're really impatient like me you can use a hairdryer often to that, If you cant be able to wait for the paint dry. So that green Do I like that. Although it is a little more yellow in the original. But I think I like the vibrancy of that's, I mean, keep that green. Now. Can do is cut out. See how it looks on top, where you think that will work together. I think it needs to be a bit lighter. So I'm going to add more white. So I've done another green, a paler green. It`s slightly say it, but I think that works a lot better on top of the darker green. So I'm quite happy with those two. So they can cut one size. As you can say, I've mixed a fair amount. I'm only obviously done enough that this painting, sometimes I mix a lot more than that because I get quite into color palette and just want to keep on using it. So you could think about how much you mix. If you want to mix more, that's fine too. Next color, what should we go for now? I quite like the idea of the pink in the shell. It's a beautiful pink color. So going to start off with some permanent White and I've got some magenta, I think might quite well squeeze a bit and this is going a bit. Magenta is one of those colors. It's translucent as you can see. It's got a, remember I was talking about the squares on the back of the tubes. So this is quite translucent. This one not so opaque, so tends to get quite thick as well. Water that down see how it looks at a bit of white straight away because we're definitely going to need white in there. The other thing that I often end up doing is when I've got up the color palette. I mean it's a dirty down a pain changes slightly. Often use a little bit of one of the other colors that I've mixed and add it in to the color mixing. So when I managed to get this pink to work for a little bit, the green and then why'd I do it? It's just, it seems to make the palette and little more coherent. That pink is okay, but it's quite pinky pink. I think I want a bit more of an orangey pink. I could use the Windsor red or could flame red. Might try the Windsor red. I'm not going to get tight lights [inaudible] I'm just going to do a bit like that by turning it a bit more coral think it needs to be a bit strong actually, too much white in there add a bit more red. Bit pounds may think I'm going to add more red. Yeah. So quite like that, that's my pink done. I've got a bit of white in here already. Going to to use some lemon yellow. I'm going to add one of my, which is sepia, which goes into a lot of colors because it's very good for just dirty things down or come at a more interesting. So I was going to use it is kind of the sandy color that's in this shell. Might be a bit more brown actually. Orange actually tried a bit of that. Flame it might be a bit too strong. I'm going to be able to paint that and talk about the colors. So it shows up, I'm going to add some permanent white to that and make it a lot paler. Think unlike go in for a good pin the green. Saying, just to keep it coherent with the other colors. That's looking better. I like that. That`s better. I think that will work on top of the pink and the pink on top of the sand. So that's quite a good combination. I think it will work on top with the darker green as well. To recap, simplify the colors from your objects and users inspiration, make sure you use a good mix of tone so you can color. Try not to use colors straight from the paint. Mix your own shades. So that gives you an idea of how I mix my colors. I hope it's a bit clearer and you're ready to have a Gert mixing the color palette for your own project. Next, I draw and paint out my picture. See you in the next lesson. 8. Drawing and Painting: I've got my objects laid out ready, and I've mixed up my paint. I've got a selection of brushes that I'm going to use and I should sharpen my pencil and I got my razor to hand. Now am going to lightly draw out the objects, but not in any great detail. I'm concentrating on getting the overall shape right of the different objects. I'm not worried about detail as I'm not really interested in a life-like representation, but I will push in a few things that will guide my patent and mark making. Once I'm happy with my drawing. As you can see, it's quite a basic drawing. I'm going to start painting, I'll use my favorite all-purpose brush, which is around number four. I'm going to start with the lighter tone. So I'm going to use the sand color first and paint it in all the different places of the objects that I want a bit of sand. So into the cone and this are the stones. Now I'm doing the shell, as you can see, it's got this richly set of lines around it. So am going to use them as a guide. Same with the other shell. It's got some of the lines in it, so I want to use those. Now I'm using the pale green, just going to paint in the people. I want to think I'll paint the whole thing in that pale green and in a mistletoe leaf, I'm going to do the same. I'm going to paint that all in. So I'll put patent over the top of that and you can see the stem. I'm going to use the pale gray now. So I'm going to do the stone and work into the second shell again. Now I'm using the pale gray to paint the feather out. I'm going to paint it all in. The pale gray now. I'm going to use a slightly larger flat edged brush and I'm going to use it to make marks in the shell quite like painting over the top of the sand. I might look actually now a smaller flat edge brush just to do the top of the shell and paint in bits that stone as well. A few more marks. Now, I'm going to use the pale pink. You might notice that I've changed the pink slightly, made it a bit pale. I decided that the stronger pink was too much on the same level as the orange I want to use. Using the pink in the shell because it's quite a lot of pink in that shell and putting a few dots in.Quite like that sort of detail in the shell and see. If you refer back to the original shell, it doesn't really have dots like that, but I don't really care. I'm also going to use it as a line work in the other shell, like painting of the top of things. You can see there's lots of ridges and lines. So I'm just doing my own interpretation of it. Now I'm going to put some detail into the feather. We see there are, lots and lots of lines in the feather but I'm just doing a few to give you the idea and a few lines into the mistletoe leaf as well. A few dots into one of the stones. I liked that kind of spirally pattern that's in that stone. So I'm going to incorporate that on to the green or dark green now. Just done the leaves and I'm going to do a nice line down the B part. I'm going to use my slanted dagger brush now to get some, see what interesting marks I can make with that or might be. Go back over it up and then use it in the mistletoe leaf. It makes quite a nice shape if you just use it to splurge paint on and then the smaller flat edge brush still in the mistletoe. Now I've got the orange and I'm going to work into their pine cone and into the shell quite like using that flat edge brush again and because it makes quite nice rich marks on the shell and the stone. I've got a few pale green dots in the green leaves and now am going ever the pea pod to give it a bit more interest. So I quite often go back to the original base color and paint over the top of any of the darker colors I've used. This is dark gray now that I'm using for the stem and I'm using it as a outline around the shell, although I know that might be heavy, sure I might have to come back to that anyway. Using flat brush again in the shell to get some interesting marks. To show up the set of riches and spiral of the shape of the shell. Now I'm going with this dark brown to get that dark parts of the pine cone.The set of processed parts of it. That color is quite good. That's my darkest color that I'm using there. Just to get some depth and some of the objects and I'm going to use it over the top again at that shell. If you cross hatches and dots in the stones and on the feather and here in there, cute little details going in just to make things a bit more interesting really. So I'm going back to some of the paler colors now. I didn't really like that outline around the shell so am going over it with just a pink dot to break it up. Same in the pine cone. Now I'm going to use the pale pink as a outline. It's quite nice to use a pale outline sometimes when with a dark outline. Few more little details. I think we're just about finished. Let's recap. Draw out your picture, but don't waste time on detail. Start with the lightest colors. Use a variety of brushes, layer your marks to get interesting patterns, and use the darkest colors last to get depth and definition. Join me in the final lesson, where we take a look at what we've covered and talk about what to do with our new painting skills. See you in the next lesson. 9. Final Thoughts: I hope you've enjoyed following me through my adventures in gouache, and feel inspired to have a go yourself. If you've done all the many tasks that I've set, then you should have lots of reference material to look back at and use when you're planning your next painting. I've shown you how to make a color shade of your paint so you can see at a glance the library of colors you have at hand and the different qualities they have. We've looked at how to mix paint so you can use it in layers, and how to use the right brush for the right job. We played around with marks and patterns, and have the start of a great library to use for future reference. We've looked at how I make color choices and use nature to inspire rather than dictate my palate. I hope you'll do my project and paint a picture of a selection of objects in gouache. If you have any questions about using gouache, please go ahead and ask me in the discussion section below. I'd love it if you share it with me your many tasks and projects. Just post them in the project gallery, and I'll always try and give feedback and advice as soon as I see them. Over the years, my gouache paintings have been turned into all sorts of things; from greeting cards to tea towels, cake tins, to dress fabric. You too could turn your little works of art into something like this. The possibilities are endless. There are lots of classes on Skillshare that can help you get your paintings onto products. Lots of print-on-demand websites that can produce your work on everything from wallpaper to phone covers. Thank you for watching. If you'd like to follow me on Instagram or Pinterest, then my details are in the class information below. So get creating. Have fun. Don't be scared of gouache. Happy painting.