Gouache & Cold Wax | Learn how to Paint With Expressive Movement

1. Welcome!: Welcome to this gouache and cold wax technique. It's a brand new approach that I have not been able to find anywhere else. And it was born out of a frustration really at not being able to use acrylic paints. So let me tell you how it all started. A couple of weeks back, I was just tidying up my art supplies and found a small pot of Dolan's cold wax. And I thought, I wonder what would happen if I mix that with gouache. All I could find on YouTube was how to seal a gouache painting, but I couldn't find anything about mixing the two mediums together. So I was really excited when it became clear very early on that this was going to work. And I have been practicing this method since then and totally into it. And so happy to be able to share this with you. So we're going to start out by using the cheapest paper that you have. And all we're doing here is just practicing the movements. So it doesn't need to be the paper that you're going to be doing your projects on. And I'm using children's easel paper. You might be quite happy to stay with your scrap paper or we could move over to watercolor or acrylic paper for our projects. I did spend a wee bit of time just practicing on the paper I was going to use for my project, the Hanam harmony. I decided to create two slightly different studies, but you could choose to do one or more. We're going to add delicious layers. This is the first on top of the green, which is just titanium white, and we're going to put all of that practice to good use. We're going to bring in our two colors ultramarine blue and wisteria, mixing it into a tint with white and finishing touches involving adding additional white to create translucency and also to mark make into the wax. I'm then going to take you through two different ways to seal your work. The first one is using a cotton wool pad and gently rubbing the wax over the surface. The second I felt was a little bit more successful, which was to continue using catalyst 01. If you're not aware, I just want to point out where you can upload your project. It's underneath the class next to the A section under projects and resources. And then on the right, you'll see submit project. The advantage of uploading a project is that it's a lovely way to showcase your work and also to share tips or to get feedback. If you show your work over on Instagram, do tag me as I'd love to see it and share it to my stories. So when you're ready, let's crack open our tub of cold wax. Prepare our paints. Ready to explore this brand new technique. I can't wait to share it with you. So excited. 2. Materials : So let's run through paper together. And I'm going to be using easel paper. This is children's easel paper, very, very cheap, and I often use it when I'm just practicing brushstrokes. It's good enough for that, especially with a thicker technique. The paper I chose for the project was Hannah Muller Harmony. Now, I like a very flat, silky surface, so I often use hot pressed, and Harmony has a sheen about it, which I really like. So I'm going to be using this, but you could also use cold press paper or acrylic paper or something like this, perhaps, which is Canson XL, watercolor paper, but it has a slight texture to it. And certainly would be great for this project. So I guess I'd say just use any paper that you have in stock because any paper will lend itself well to this technique. All you need, really, is a solid enough substrate for it to hold the layers that we're going to be doing. I used palette paper to mix my paints. If you don't have this in, you could use grease proof paper. It's just as good in some ways. It moves around a bit more. And again, this was very affordable off Amazon. It was the cheapest one they had, and it was great. When you finished, you can just rip it out really easily. Let's take a look at the paints that we're using, and I've chosen all gouache for this project. I am mixing a green from lamp black and handsy yellow light. It offers us a wide choice of gradients from a very, very bright, limy or green gold through to a very deep, dark green which I love. I love the control that those two colors give me. You could use your favorite lighter green and darker green. Now, you can't see under all the paint, but that's Wisteria on the left, and ultramarine blue on the right. Those are the two colors we're going to mix for the main color theme. We're also going to create tints with white. Now, this is Windsor and Newton white. I found it very thick and luxuriant. I really liked it. I think it's because they use dextrin. If you wanted an impasto look, then this Windsor and Newton range would be excellent for that. It needed a little bit more work with the wax. It was very, very thick. So I actually got on well, I think, with the Daniel Smith white. Slightly easier to mix with the wax, but both have their merits. Then I accidentally picked up this tube of paint here. Now, I thought it was squash because that's all I could see. And it turns out to be acryl gouache. So by accident, I had actually introduced a tiny amount of acrylic into this project despite my better efforts. So they all have their qualities, and I wouldn't pick one over the other at all. I would just choose one for different projects. I used this masking tape for the first time. It is artist's masking tape, and it's textured underneath, which means that it did pull up really well. I'll leave all the details and the brands in our about section. And then in the center, I used a washy tape, a thicker one, just so that I had room to frame my artwork if I wanted. And that was a very cheap set that I got from Amazon. Star of the show is our catalyst, and this is 01 Mini. It's a silicon spatula shape. I've had this for years but have never really put it to use until recently, and it is for me, the perfect tool for this job. You may have other makes of silicon tools. So have a play around with what you have already. And just to introduce you to this whole set of catalyst tools by Princeton, I have this image here. Now we're going to be using the 01 on the far left. There's also so many other shapes and wedges, but you can see the full range here 01-06. So if you happen to have one of those already, then I'm pretty sure that could be adapted to this project. Onto our wax. I used Dolan's wax media. I looked up different reviews on different waxes rather than just buying lots of wax. And the more expensive ones, actually, tend to be slightly thinner from what I've read. The Dolan's, which is a kind of a workhorse of a wax is perfect for this. I loved it, and I probably will continue to use Dolan's. It's nice and thick, but it's also very mixable, and I found the whole experience really nice. Can also get this in a smaller pot. Don't feel you have to lay out a lot of money for that. Our little incidentals here, I had some scissors to cut the children's easel paper. And I have some kitchen roll. I did actually try to use a wet cloth to clean my spatula between colors, but I think the best method is just to use a dry kitchen towel and take the paint off that way. And finally, I'm going to be showing you two ways to seal your work, and that is with these cottonwool pads, which will be dipping into the wax and gently rubbing over our projects. The other way is to actually continue to use the catalyst 01, and I actually did prefer that method. So let's move on with our class. I am beyond excited to share this method with you. 3. Practise Run | Strokes & Texture: So as I mentioned in materials, we're going to get out the scrappiest of scrap paper that we own. And this is a roll of children's easel paper, and I use it when I'm practicing brush strokes. So I'm not worried about how paint's behaving or color mixing, anything like that, the feel of the catalyst wedge and the actual movements that I want to bring to this study. So here's our little playground. So regress to your inner child as long as that feels okay for you. And let's just paint as if we'd never painted before, and we've just been given the gift of abandon. And I think that's very, very beautiful. And we do, given the pace of life, get led away from that sense of abandon. You may find that you get on with their children's easel paper and want to do your projects on that. So let's break out our wax and I actually just bringing some back from an earlier session and putting that at the top of the palette paper. And we can draw from that when we're mixing our colors. So I'm putting down my hands yellow light and plenty of it. I'll probably run out, even with that down, but we'll see how we get on and our lamp black. And then we're wanting to use a 50 50 between the wax and the gouache. So that's just the black and wax. And then if we bring most of that yellow over, give it a thorough mix. Although you may want to use it partially mixed because you can see there how beautiful it is that little streaks of yellow come through. Already run out of yellow. I just wanted a couple of different greens to play around with. Okay, so let's go. Let's do the rocking movement. And you can see there, I just scooped up some of the paint off the page and reapplied it. That's something that we could definitely do. So, isn't that gorgeous? I mean, that's just lovely on its own, I think. It's more than a practice run. It's an expression. So we've done the rocking movement. Let's do the horizontal move now. So that we familiarize ourselves with using a catalyst, you may have quite a lot of experience with it. I used to use it a lot in the past, but I haven't used it for years. And we could also now use just one edge of the catalyst spatula. And that will give us smaller petal like shapes. And I'll just mark the area that we're going to be using. This 01 minispatula has a lot of flexibility about it, so it's perfect for making shapes like this. So we can move between larger strokes and smaller ones. And also, you can use the opposite edge. So this area of the catalyst wedge and create petals going upwards. So you'll find when we're doing our studies, we'll be using both sides of the catalyst tool. I'm mixing a lighter green just so you can see it. And let's try some diagonal moves. So down using the right side of the catalyst and up using the other side, just as we did with the smaller leaf shapes. I'm just adding some white. This is Holbein. I found this the thinner out of the three, Daniel Smith, Windsor and Newton and Holbein. And that might be something you want. If you wanted to go for a thicker mix, I would recommend Windsor and Newton. So let's see what this looks like over the green. When we run out of paint on the edge, you can then use the tool flat against the page. And what that will do, we'll pick up the paint that's a little higher up, and then you can use the edge to fan it out and shape it. So what if we use all of the catalyst tool? Just the whole edge and then just pulling it down, bending the catalyst halfway. And we couldn't go up as well. Got quite a variety going on now. Let's do those diagonal movements again. So I actually have some animal harmony paper here, which I'd put aside as scrap paper. So, whichever paper you're using, let's have a go on that surface now just so that you can transition between the very cheap easel paper and your chosen watercolor or a credit paper. Doing those left to right movements again. It also gives you an indication of how much paint you prefer on your catalyst. Doing those diagonal movements now. Very swift. You can see I'm kind of pulling up the catalyst. So it touches a page, and then it's a very swift movement up. Let's go down and diagonally. So we've done the lateral movements. We've done the diagonal movements. What I am finding is I keep running out of paint because I'm so used to painting in watercolor that I'm not used to mixing this much paint. So there we go, replenishing my palette there, that mix of black, hands yellow light, and equal measures of cold wax. So multidirectional here, very swift movements. It means that you get these lovely gestural swoops. You also get a little bit of texture, and you can actually run the edge of your catalyst through to create some marks if you wanted. Just keep practicing those multidirectional sweeps. And then whilst it's still wet, you may choose to do some mark making, and I'm literally just using the edge of the catalyst and pressing it into the paint. I quite like it because it's a very soft feel with the wax. When you're doing the shop, mark making. I like the contrast. Just keep going and fill your page until you feel you've got the hang of the tool and how it works. 4. Class Project | Part One: I'm using some thinner masking tape around the edges. I've not used this one before. It does kind of stretch out of position easily, but I'll have to see how it gets on. Then I'm going for a larger tape in the middle just to give me a little bit more room if I want to frame them both. So let's pick up our zero on catalyst and start with lamp black and handsy yellow light. I'm going to put a lot more of the yellow down than the black because we're going to mix a lovely range of greens with these two colors. We have our wax. This is the Dolan's wax. Do try to keep it clean 'cause it's a new pot. I'm going to put quite a bit of wax up there, and then we can take what we need. So let's start by mixing a little bit of the lamp black into the hands yellow light. At this point, you can use any green. You don't have to use this particular mix. And I'm mixing a darker green up there. I don't want it to go too dark and dull. But the handsome yellow light prevents that, really. It's such a lovely, bright, joyful color. And then let's add the wax. And you can see that beautiful alchemy happening between the wax and the gouache. Who knew that they even mixed together? I certainly didn't I couldn't find any information on it, but you know me by now, and I love experimenting and bringing ideas back to you. It'll be so interesting to see how you feel about this technique. A little bit more yellow up there, maybe. And a nice bright green down here. It's akin to green gold, but what I like about it is it gives us so much choice between the yellow and the black so many gradients. And I'm just going to turn the original area of yellow into kind of a mid green there. So let's start and we're going to use those very bold movements that we practiced all directions, and I would advise just working very quickly. Channel your favorite artist and go for it. There's nothing to lose. You know, we can start again on a different page. Absolutely nothing to lose here. And we're going to do those rocking movements, a little bit of lateral movement up and down. And just keep going until you feel happy that you have enough green on your studies. So going in with a brighter green, I love that texture. Probably lose that as we go along, but it's nice to enjoy these things, even if they get covered up. I'm just paying attention to my corners there because I don't want to have them feeling left out. Can you see how the wax changes the consistency of the gouache so much, and we can create these beautifully soft textural strokes? I'm going to add a little bit of white. And that's Daniel Smith titanium white, and adding the same amount of wax to that. So it's a 50 50 split. And then what we're doing here is just adding this lovely soft white. And because the green underneath is still wet, we can get that lovely kind of flowy blending of the colors. 5. Class Project | Part Two: Now it's time for a little more color. I'm using ultramarine. And this is Wisteria. It's one of my favorite colors at the moment. Running out to Daniel Smith, white gouache. I have some Winsor Newton. I'm just going to wipe the catalyst, get most of the green off. What I've done there is just sprayed that a little bit of water, the cloth. It kind of works, but the wax is quite stubborn. So you might just want to use kitchen roll. So that's the whole bin white, and I'm mixing that with the wisteria and the equal amount of wax. Give that a good blend. M quick wipe. And then let's mix up the ultramarine. The wax has such a beautiful effect and adding some of the white. And this time, Winsor and Newton. I'm finding it just slightly more resist in the winter in Newton, it's very, very rich and thick. But I quite like that as well. I have a lot of paint on both sides of the catalyst, and I'm aware of that, and I don't want to use the catalyst clap to the page because that will put a lot of color down on the page all at once. So I'm holding it upright and just laying down these very loose strokes. What you'll find is the paint on the edges will disappear, and we still have the paint further up. And we can access that by using our catalyst very close to the page horizontally and just applying some of that paint further up, which we can then soften. And I put too much paint down there. So I'm just picking some of that up and redistributing it. Keep that loose flow. I was aware there that I'd started to tighten up a little bit. And now I just want to put some little hints of blue using the catalyst very, very softly, not putting much pressure down on the page at all. Okay, cleaning up. And I'm going to add some of the blue mix to the wisteria. This mix is a slight variant on wisteria. It's a lovely tint, and it will also blend so beautifully with the ultramarine. So a little bit of white, and I think we're ready to go. So I'm now practicing those lateral movements, the diagonal ones, and the straight up and down ones. Using both sides or switching between the two and putting some gentler strokes down. I'm trying to remember the edges of the page as well. It's a good time to be filling up those little white spaces if you're not happy with them. So now doing the movement that we practiced, which is more like the small petal or leaf movement. I just wanted some smaller strokes. And you could go over the blue underneath. Another cleanup. Got it all over my fingers. Now, we're picking up just wax. And I'm using this very, very gently. So rather than scooping up the paint, which I demoed earlier, when we want to lift paint, what we're doing here is a very gentle skimming over this paint because it's still wet, but we don't want to move the color too much. So what this does is creates a very soft feel. I don't know if any of you use Google Photos to edit. But there's a denois feature on the far right under, I can't remember now, but I will show you. It adds this lovely soft kind of hazy feel, and this is what the wax can do for us as well. It's so versatile. I feel I've only just got to know it, and there's so much more to know, because we can use it for very thick impasto kind of techniques. And we could also use it very translucently, and we can use it as a sealant and to bring the colors out more. When we draw the wax over a color underneath, it enriches it. I love this, so you can just go over and just soften edges or pull it completely over some of the strokes. Mixing a little bit more of the yellow. Got some wax. And I just wanted to add some brighter green in between these lovely blue and wisteria strokes. Trying to remain loose, which is a little more challenging now because we have a lot on the page, and we're wanting to keep balance as well. So take your time and just drop in this lovely green gold into certain areas around the edges or maybe some white spots that are still there. And over some of the color underneath. And don't they look different from each other. It's so funny one page. And yet, these two studies have very different characters. So normally you would leave the masking tape until the next day. But I'm going to attempt to take it off, and I'll have to go slowly here because what I found with animal harmony is that it's a very soft paper, and I usually always rip it. So I'm just taking my time here. I love how you can see the raised edges of all of that paint. This seems to be coming off quite well. It has a slight textured underside, which I think means that it doesn't stick to the page fully. I think that's the design behind it. You could keep your masking tape and use it for journaling or scrapbooking. Okay, just one more to go. As are, we finished. There might be just a couple of things I want to add, so I will take you over to our next lesson. 6. Finishing Touches: So let's do a little bit of mark making with the end of the catalyst. And I'm just pressing into the wax. This is, I would say, partially dry. If you wanted to make more of a mark, you could go in whilst it's still very wet. But the edge of the catalyst pushes through the wax quite easily. And I'm doing these because I felt it was a good contrast with the lovely, soft wax feel. I don't want to do too many, so maybe just one more. I wanted to add a little bit of white, and this is the whole buy. And I'm going to add an equal amount of wax. I'm trying three makes Daniel Smith, Windsor and Newton, and Holbein. I would say that the Windsor and Newton is very thick and it has dextrin in it, which I think is what creates, as far as I can understand, the opaque and thick nature of it. The Daniel Smith, I would say, is middling in terms of viscosity. And the holbin I found the thinnest, but also very opaque. So they all have their own merit. It's more about choosing the right one for whichever project you're doing. So I've just got very small amounts on my catalyst. And we're doing that stroke that we practice where we're just using one edge of the catalyst. It's nice actually to place some of these over the blue areas or the darker green in particular. Just taking my time and applying it very gently. You can see I've not got a lot of paint. And what I'm trying to do is create some translucency. And because there's a fair amount of wax on the paper, we do get this very soft effect. Love that area. Very soft and dreamy, and we can see the translucency working. So we're adding a lot of texture here. Just little feathery movements. So we get these smaller petal shapes. Oh, I love that. Just how it shows up the mark underneath. So what we're trying to achieve, although we've gone down in size, is to maintain that lovely, soft, flowy movement. This is all about movement. And I'm really enjoying how that's actually similar to dry brushing. So if you were dry brushing, you would be pulling over a more pigmented but very dry brush over texture or paint underneath. And we're recreating that with this squash and wax here. You'll see there that me pulling over the minute amount of paint very carefully over the surface is picking up all of that texture underneath. That's definitely something I would want to do again. And And it's answered a question really for me because that was one of my little tributaries off my main line of inquiry, how to recreate translucency. And I think I've figured that out. I'm going to pick up some wax, wax, no paint. And I'm going to gently pull out these white areas. Mm. So as I pull the wax over the white, it has a lovely effect on the colors underneath. Such a lovely medium to work with. So I'm going over some of the blue. Oh, not keen on that bit, now, going to work that out a little. You can see how transparent it is, though. But I'm not too worried about doing that for every stroke because after 24 hours, go to leave this overnight, I'm going to show you how to seal the whole thing with cold wax. So I'm just casting my eye over these studies. And I think I'll stop there. Really happy with these. 7. Sealing Our Project: So I'm going to show you two ways that we can seal our projects. We need to be really sure that our paintings have cured, so they certainly need to be left overnight. I'm using Dorlan wax. This is their larger 16 fluid ounces pot, but it's possible to buy it in four fluid ounces. So the first thing that we're going to try is applying the wax with cotton wool pads. And because we have mixed gash in with the wax, although it's sat there for a good two days, actually, it can still pick up a little bit of paint. So we're going in very, very gently, but it's a lot more biddable than I thought it was going to be. I thought it would move the paint around quite a lot, and I would have real problems. It's actually really enjoyable to do. Quite mesmerizing. And I love how it transforms the colors and makes them slightly darker but richer. So that's the cotton wool pad, and let's have a look at that. It looks okay. And now let's try with our catalyst 01 spatula. And I am using it very, very gently and fairly horizontally because I don't want to add too much pressure to the paper. And, again, really enjoyable because I can see the colors coming to life even more. This is such an effective way to seal your work. You could literally put a glass of water over this, and it would not damage your work, apart from the fact that we've not put wax on the paper around it, but it will be completely waterproof. Once it's been left for 48 hours or so, it will set very firmly. Not as hard as oil paints, but certainly will protect your work really well. So here I can see some marks where I've pulled the cotton wool pads over. The right one is slightly smoother. So I think in future, I probably will use my 01 catalyst. And I'm just showing you here because I think it might show up more. Over this practice page, can you see how it transforms the green? It's glorious. I love it so much. So rich. What I'll do is I'll just do this little area here, and then you can see the difference on the left hand side of the page. Can you see that? Isn't that beautiful? I mean, artists use cold wax, obviously, to seal their work. We've done both here. We've mixed it with our paint, and we're using it as a sealant. And now you can wait for it to cure and frame them. 8. Thank You!: We've covered a few techniques in this class, texture, mixing, layers. But the one main thing that I really wanted to do in this class was to offer this new approach to you so that you could go on and develop your own style with this technique. I'm just showing you here a few other little mess abouts that I did. So warm ups and some roses that I painted the other day. So I can see that I definitely will continue using this cold wax and gouache mix and really adopt it into my own painting style. I think it would be fun to do some more classes like this. And I hope I've inspired you to continue on experimenting. Thanks again so much for joining me. I enjoyed your company. I always imagine us painting side by side. So it's really lovely when I hear back from you that you feel the same way. Take care. I'll see you over in discussions or on Instagram. Bye for now.