Gouache for Beginners: Exploring Painting and Illustration Techniques | Ann Shen | Skillshare
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Gouache for Beginners: Exploring Painting and Illustration Techniques

teacher avatar Ann Shen, Illustrator & Author

Watch this class and thousands more

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Taught by industry leaders & working professionals
Topics include illustration, design, photography, and more

Watch this class and thousands more

Get unlimited access to every class
Taught by industry leaders & working professionals
Topics include illustration, design, photography, and more

Lessons in This Class

    • 1.

      Introduction

      1:40

    • 2.

      Class Orientation

      0:51

    • 3.

      Materials Overview

      3:37

    • 4.

      Tea to Butter

      6:40

    • 5.

      Brush Strokes

      9:07

    • 6.

      Layering

      20:58

    • 7.

      Blending and Gradients

      14:50

    • 8.

      Dry Brushing Clouds

      9:21

    • 9.

      Final Notes

      1:10

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About This Class

Have you been looking for a beginner’s guide to painting with gouache? Ever wanted to learn how to paint with gouache but found the medium too challenging to learn on your own? Then this is the class for you! 

I’ll go over the basics of painting with gouache for absolute beginners, so that with practice, you can master the medium! We’ll use fun, meditative sketchbook exercises and painting drills – which are fun for artists of all levels – to make beautiful paintings and learn different techniques for painting with this fun opaque watercolor medium.

In this class, you’ll learn:

  • The tea to butter method of paint consistency
  • How to work with different brushes
  • Painting flat, smooth layers
  • Blending and painting gradients
  • Layering and textures by using color and paint techniques such as dry brush, wet-on-dry, and wet-on-wet
  • The best way to organize a painting for success
  • A step by step guide to painting a dreamy cloud skyscape

These techniques are all essential skills for creating a successful gouache landscape painting, and they can be adapted and applied to a variety of other subjects and styles as well. 

Here's a link to the list of art supplies I recommend.

Follow me on Instagram for more of my work and peeks behind-the-scenes.

Check out my portfolio and my blog where I cover more art tutorials and FAQs.

Subscribe to my newsletter!

Meet Your Teacher

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Ann Shen

Illustrator & Author

Top Teacher

Hi there! I'm Ann Shen and I'm an illustrator, author, and hand-letterer based in Los Angeles. I have a degree in Writing from UCSD and a BFA in Illustration from Art Center College of Design. I've worked in the art and design industry for over ten years, taking the leap to work full time for myself in 2014. My artwork has been on everything from doll packaging, digital stickers, book covers, editorial illustrations, calendars, theme parks and more for companies like Disney, Facebook, and HarperCollins.

 

I've written and illustrated three books: Bad Girls Throughout History, Legendary Ladies, and Nevertheless, She Wore It, all published by Chronicle Books. My work's been featured on Forbes, HelloGiggles, The Cut, and so much more.See full profile

Level: Beginner

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Transcripts

1. Introduction: Have you been looking for a beginner's guide to gouache? Are you intrigued by the medium but found it challenging to learn on your own? Then you're in the right place. Welcome to Gouache Basics, Exploring Illustration and Painting Techniques. I'm Ann Shen and I'm an illustrator and author based in Los Angeles. I've been working in the industry for over 10 years, and I've worked with clients like Disney, Adobe, Facebook, Papyrus, and Jeni's Splendid Ice Creams. My paintings have been exhibited at Disney's WonderGround Gallery, Gallery Nucleus, Giant Robot and more. I've also written and illustrated four bestselling books, Bad Girls Throughout History, Legendary Ladies, Nevertheless, She Wore It, and Revolutionary Women. Many of those books I painted in gouache. I'm excited to share my love of painting with you. I believe we're all inherently creative beings and we need to express ourselves in some way. So I created this class to help you learn about painting with my favorite medium gouache. What is gouache? Gouache is an opaque watercolor medium used for painting. The benefits of gouache is that it has a unique matte, velvet-like finish. That makes it easy for reproducing via scanning or photographs. Because of this, it was really popular with mid-century concept artists and advertising illustrators, like some of my favorites, Mary Blair and Eyvind Earle. Learning how to use gouache is tricky but extremely rewarding once you get the hang of it. I created this class of five fun, easy meditative exercises that will build on each other to help you get a handle on your gouache techniques. Then we'll take those techniques and create a lovely skyscape painting at the end. My hope with this class is that you'll come away with the necessary skills and confidence to be mastering gouache in no time. Join me in the next class to get started. 2. Class Orientation: I wanted to create a Beginner's Guide to Gouache class to help you get better results in your paintings in a fun and rewarding way. Each exercise is designed to be a beautiful project on its own. So the projects for today's class will be five fun and easy exercises. We'll be doing tea to butter, brush stroke patterns, organic shapes, gradients, and skyscapes. We'll be doing the exercises in a sketchbook to explore these different techniques, and then build on each one to expand your skills and expertise with the medium. The final class project will be skyscape painting. Skies are a popular motif for art and a good place to practice the techniques you'll need for any paintings going forward. Even better, you can take your own reference easily for this just about side. In the next lesson, I'm going to cover all the materials you need for this class. Join me there. 3. Materials Overview: In this lesson, I'm going to cover all the materials that you'll need for this class. First step is paint. I will be using Winsor & Newton designer gouache in this class. I highly recommend getting a set of designer gouache so that you can get the best results from your painting, and you'll be happy with the results. A few of my favorite brands are Winsor & Newton, Holbein, and Turner. The colors I have in my kit today are designer gouache, permanent white, and then a cool and warm of each hue. I've Turquoise blue, and Ultramarine blue, Olive green and Brilliant green, Flame red and Permanent Alizarin Crimson, Spectrum violet, and Brilliant violet, Primary yellow, Brilliant yellow, and Burnt umber. Side note, there's also a type of paint that's similar to gouache called acrylagouache, that has a matte finish, but it has an acrylic plastic body like acrylic paints, and that works differently, and we're not going to cover that in this class. Alternatively, jelly gouache has also become really popular, and it's a fun student great set to play with, but the pigments are not as rich, and the quality of the paint is not as high, and so it'll be thicker, and get a little chunkier so it might be a little harder to get results that you're happy with. Just know that when you're playing with it, and don't get discouraged, because gouache is really fun. Next, you'll need brushes. I have a 6 round, a 4 round, a 2 round, and a double 0 or nail art brush, and then I have two flat 6 and a half brushes, and angled brush that's a quarter-inch. That's all you really need for today's class. But if you have more brushes you wanted to play with, feel free to add them to the mix. Next, palettes. There are all sorts of palettes you can use, you could just use whatever you have on hand. Anything from a ceramic plate, to your cheap plastic well ones you can get art stores, to an enamel palette or even vintage egg plates that I like to pick up at thrift shops. A non-porous palette is better, because it'll be easier to re-wet your paint, and mix on it. Next, you'll also need artist's tape, a spray bottle filled with water, a pencil with 2H or harder lead, because that makes it less smudgy when you're painting over it. I like to use my Tuffstick eraser, because it gets into little tiny spots easily, a ruler, paper towels and something to hold water. Then finally, we're going to talk about paper. For gouache, you want to use some type of watercolor paper, or illustration board, because those are designed to work with water mediums, which means, it'll absorb the water but leave the pigment on top. Watercolor paper comes in two different types, cold press or hot press. Cold press has more texture on it, and hot press is smooth. It's just a matter of preference, and my personal preference is hot press. For the purpose of today's class, we're going to do a bunch of sketchbook exercises. I'm going to use this Strathmore mixed media sketchbook. Now that we have all our materials, we're ready to get started. Join me in the next lesson to learn all about the paints. 4. Tea to Butter: In this lesson, I'm going to teach you the tea to butter method of determining your paint consistency. Getting the consistency right is half the battle with gouache. My hope with this lesson is that it'll help you learn what you need to work with. The tea to butter method was first introduced by Joseph Zbukvic in his book, "Mastering Atmosphere & Mood in Watercolor". Now there are five consistencies that we're going to mix with gouache, and we're going to use paint straight from the tube right here. I'm going to use burnt umber. Then I'm going to label the consistencies in the sketchbook. We're going to have tea, coffee, milk, heavy cream, and butter. I'm going to take one of my number 6 and 1/2 flat brushes, and wet the brush. We're going to get these consistencies by adding water slowly to the paint straight from the tube. I'm going to just take a little bit of the paint and put it over here, and then add one more drop of water. You see it's pretty much like consistency of tea. Maybe one more drop. There we go. Then we're going to swatch it here. As you can see, it's light. Now I'm going to take this, I'm going to add a little bit more medium to it. It's thickening up. That is our coffee medium. Then we're going to add even more medium to this. By medium, I'm talking about the paint. I'm going to add a drop more. This is like the consistency of milk. You can see it's even darker. It's getting more opaque, the thicker the medium is. I'm going to clean all that off and then I'm going to go here, back to our paint straight from the tube, we're just going to add a touch of water to it to get to this heavy cream consistency. That is the nice flat consistency we like to paint with for gouache to get most of our flat opaque color so you won't see what's behind it coming through. But it's not so thick that you get a bunch of texture you don't want. Painting with gouache is all about learning precise control with it and handling the paint that way. I'm going to swatch the heavy cream again right here because you want to do it a couple times, now it's getting dry, so you understand the feel. You get the feel for it in your brush. Then finally, butter is usually just straight from the tube. I'm going to do some straight from the tube here. I'm going to take this paintbrush that I don't dip in water first now. And then I'm just going to... It's really opaque but it's thick. That's why you're getting that dry brush effect. That's what we use butter consistency for most of the time, doing a light dry brush on top for shading or blending. She's thick. I'd recommend practicing with this tea to butter consistency for a whole page. We're just doing the tea just to get a good feel and handle for these paint consistencies on your brush. The more you do it, the more you're going to get comfortable with it. Got that coffee consistency. See how there's more pigment in the coffee consistency. It literally looks like coffee in this color. I love that. Then for the milk one, we're going to go a little thicker. Then I get that heavy cream, I'm going to need a little bit more pigment again, so I'm going to add more paint to my palette. Add it into this well that had heavy cream last time. I'll press my paintbrush down to check the consistency of the paint too because sometimes there's not enough paint in there. The heavy cream. Yes, opaque AF. You're going to want to use the tea and coffee consistencies when you want to do a wash or something with a more watercolor effect with gouache, and that's why it's so great and versatile. You can use it like a watercolor or you can use it like an acrylic paint or an oil paint in terms of being able to go opaque or transparent. But most of the time when I'm painting with gouache, I want it to be opaque and so I'm using heavy cream as the ideal consistency for a painting where I'm painting more with an opaque paint from back to front, etc. Butter. I'd recommend that you do a whole page of exercises just like this to practice your consistency swatches. Once you feel comfortable with that, we're going to move on to the next lesson where we're going to get to know our brushes. Meet me there. 5. Brush Strokes: In this lesson, I'm going to go over the different types of brushes I typically use when painting and how to use them. We'll also go over paint consistency and mixing colors. I'm going to teach you a meditative brush exercise that you can do easily in your sketchbook to get comfortable with your brushes and with the paint. Using our four brushes, we're going to explore all the different widths and sides that we can use on the brush to get all sorts of effects. We'll practice making thin, thick and varied line widths with our brushes. Well also practice with different angles and pressures to get a variety of different effects. We're going to start with the round 4 brush. I'm going to squeeze out some flame red for this. Then I'm also going to squeeze out some permanent white so that we can mix a pink. When you're mixing colors, you want to add the brighter color to the white. Because that will tint it really fast as you saw here. Versus if you add white to the red, you're going to add a lot more white because it'll just be swallowed up by that red. I've mixed the paint with my brush and I can tell it's a little thick, so I'm trying to get that heavy cream consistency. I add a drop of water by dipping my brush into the water. Then what we're going to do is just take our paint, and we're going to make even, short strokes to get comfortable with how much paint you want to have loaded on your brush to get that flat, thin layer onto your paper so that it's a smooth and seamless as possible. Doing this over and over, you're trying to get the same stroke and so you can see how different it is. You want to try getting a same even stroke for the entire row, and this is helping you practice your brush control. Again, it's a fun, meditative practice to me, you are truly present, feeling the brush and then paint in your hand. Now I'm going to mix a lighter pink. Just for fun, we're going to mix it up. Another note to notice about gouache is that it dries darker typically for most colors. As you can see here, it's already drying darker than it was when it was wet here. Just something important to note when you're painting with gouache. Now I've mixed a lighter batch of pink. I'm going to go back in and now I'm going to practice the thinnest strokes just using the tip of the brush. I'm going to do that same thing where I'm trying to make a uniform row across the sketchbook. See how with more practice even my third row is a little bit more uniform than my first row? That's the point of this exercise. Now, just for fun, I'm going to introduce a new color into this mix. I'm going to do a little purple. I'm using the spectrum violet. You can use whatever color you want. This is just for fun, so play with your favorite colors. I'm going to take some of this light pink I mixed, add more of the white to it and just to drop that purple because it's a very strong hue. I want to add it literally drop by drop. I'm going to add another drop into it. See how quickly that color changes. Add one more drop. We got like a light lovely lavender. One more drop. I want more saturation in the color. Now for this one, I'm going to see how thick I can get, how wide that brushstroke can be when I just flattened it out completely. Don't be afraid to move the sketch book so that it's more comfortable for your hand to pull down. I'll often move my canvas around when I'm painting so that it's the most natural for my arm to move instead of... It's more natural and easier and smoother if you pulled down than when you're painting away from you. You can see the paint is getting too dry now. I'll just add a drop of water. Now we're at maybe a milk or coffee consistency because I just don't have enough paint. That's also another cautionary tale, to mix enough paint. Now, what you're going to do is go through all your different brushes and practice the same thing. Now I'm taking my six-and-a-half flat brush, making sure it's cleaned off completely. With a flat brush, you get the nice wide flat angle there. But you can also turn it on its side and use it as a very thin line. We're going to just go back to this pink, that spattered all over the sketchbook, which is totally okay because that's what sketchbook is for, it's a nice, fun workplace. I'm going to do this. I could tell the paint consistency is a little watery, so it's not as smooth and flat and seamless as I'd like. That's, again, why we're practicing this because now I know, I'm going to want to add a little bit more white in here. I want more pink to make some more paint. Although, I'd always advise that you make some more paint than less paint because as you'll see now, it's really hard to perfectly color match exactly what you mixed up. Because the color does change a bit when it dries. That's why it's a fun sketchbook exercise to do with your leftover paint. Now I'm going to add more weight into this light pink and I drop more water. Try and get that heavy cream consistency as close as I can get. Then do thin lines. To get the thin line, you'll notice that I'm holding the paintbrush straight up and down instead of slanted like I normally would. But you could also try slanted that gives you a different brush stroke. This is all about exploring the different types of brush strokes here you can get. I'm going to go back to flat because I think that would just make a pretty pattern at the bottom, and also so I can practice with this paint consistency. You can see towards the end, it was started to get very dry brushy because it was not that heavy cream consistency. Now you can practice this with your double zero brush or fill brush, your angled brushes and see all types of brush strokes that you can get from it and also practice your paint mixing and pick consistency. We're practicing these brushstrokes because we want to get as flat and seamless as possible with our paint. One of the main issues I see with gouache beginners is using paint that's too thick and it starts to build up and get gunky. Having control over what you're painting is the main goal here. Once you're comfortable with this exercise, we're going to move on to the next one where we're painting larger shapes intentionally. Meet me there. 6. Layering: In this class, we'll take the last two techniques that we learned and apply it to painting organic flat shapes, inspired by Henri Matisse's paper cutouts. In designing this exercise, we're also going to learn about layering and composition for planning a painting for success. If you're not familiar with Henri Matisse, I'd highly encourage you to learn more about this amazing artist who was a leader in the Fauvism movement. He's known as one of the greatest colors of the 20th century. I was inspired by his colored paper cutouts that he initially used to help him quickly conceptualize his paintings, and then later in life became his medium of choice. He called it drawing with scissors. We're going to start by drawing organic leaf-like shapes and a full spread in the sketchbook. I'm trying to draw as light as possible to give myself a visual guide. I'm trying to keep the space between everything pretty even. Negative space is the area around an object or shape. By designing a layout that focuses on keeping the positive and negative shapes in equal volume, feeling like it could contain the same amount of space even though it's organic, can help you see the relationship between objects and the space they occupy. Now I'm going to take some colors straight out of the tube. This is the turquoise blue. I'm going to take my number 4 round brush. I'm adding some water to it to get that heavy cream we love. I'm just going to start painting in some shapes. It's a little thick still. I can tell once I put the brush down, and from my exercises I did in the last lessons. Now to smooth ridges in the paint, you could go over them until they're blended out. I'm adding more water to the paint because I can feel it getting a little thicker as it slowly dries. I also start in the top left corner because I'm right-handed, and as I'm moving across the page, I don't want to put my hand on something I already painted, and so I'm trying to start from the farthest of where I would rest my hand. But again, you can always rotate your sketchbook or your painting canvas to whatever you need. We're going to paint this whole spread as one exercise. Remember, you're trying to get the paint as smooth and seamless as possible. I'm going to add some white to the palette. Just for fun, I'm going to create some lighter turquoise blue so that I could do a gradation across the entire canvas. Well, I love this color, so pretty. You can see once again that the paint is drying darker than when it's wet. When you're working on a painting and you want to see what color it's going to dry as, I would just do a little swatch on a side scratch piece of paper. Once this is dry, you're going to go back with your eraser and erase all the little extra pencil marks. The second part of this lesson is that we're going to do overlapping shapes so that we can practice how we organize painting a painting. With gouache, we typically want to paint back to front and large to small. While painting large areas we want to just paint what's going to be that color and leave the rest. We're going to draw some overlapping organic shapes like this. Then we're going to go in with one color. You'll see what I mean. I'm going to go in with this turquoise blue again, and with gouache painting, you want to just paint the flat, large areas that are going to be that color. You'll see this part will be underneath this visually. But we're not actually going to paint the turquoise blue under there because there's a really high chance of reactivating the paint underneath. It'll just start picking up the color underneath, which is not what you want, and the paint will get clunky. We're going in with that flat, opaque, medium, a heavy cream consistency. But just to the edge of what I want. Of what is going to be this turquoise blue color. I'm going to paint all the large sections that are this color. Now, I'm going to go in with a new color. Let's do a flame red. I'm taking a different number 4 round brush. Adding some water to this flame red to get it to that heavy cream consistency. You can also use your spritz bottle to do that. You can also use it to keep your paints wet without adding too much water to it. I accidentally touch that wet paint but it's no big deal. That's why practicing in your new sketchbook is a good idea. So you remember to be conscientious of things like that when you're painting the real deals. So I'm painting just, again, the largest area that needs to be in this flame red. Then for the color in-between, I'm actually going to use this brilliant violet. Again straight from the tube. I'm actually going to take this number 4 round brush. It's very thick as you can see. I added a big drop of water and add another one. Now we got the heavy cream consistency. Now some colors are more transparent than other colors straight from the tube, and you can see this brilliant violet is actually a little more transparent. You can see the turquoise blue coming through. That's just the nature of the pigment. It just might mean you need an extra layer or you can add a little white to it. Actually, I'm going to add a little white to it so that it has a little bit more opaqueness to its body. Now we need to wait for that whole thing to dry before you paint over otherwise, it's going to pick up the paint underneath. I'm going to move on to this one. I'm painting a second coat now that it's dry. You can see how it's not picking up the paint underneath anymore. Now there we go. We have some fun organic shapes where we practice painting next to each other and organizing our paint composition by planning ahead. I'd highly encourage you to do this exercise and the first one over and over again to get comfortable with painting shapes and your brush control. This in itself makes lovely abstract paintings. Now that you've mastered flat color, we're going to move on to blending and gradients in the next lesson. See you there. 7. Blending and Gradients: In this lesson, we're going to learn all about blending colors together smoothly to create transitions and gradients. Here I'll start with two colors and blend them together seamlessly in a gradient. We'll start by drawing four rectangles in your sketchbook. Take your ruler. I'm doing it about, giving it a one inch border around each one, approximately. Now that we've drawn our rectangles, we're going to tape it off with artist's tape or washi tape, whatever you have on hand. Now, artist's tape is a low tack tape so that it peels cleanly off of your paper, but I always like to tap it on my shirt a couple of times to make it a little less tacky. But then when I'm taping up against the line, I always want to score with my fingernail to make sure it's super clean and straight. We tape off the edges to create clean, straight borders. Now that we're done taping it off, we're going to take two of the same type of brushes. These are both flat brushes. Number 6s, make sure they're clean and I'm going to take this ultramarine blue, just a touch of it because it's a pretty dark color. That turquoise blue and white. I'm going to mix up a light blue color here with some turquoise in it. Actually, I'm going to add more white. There we go. Add a drop of water in there so that it's heavy cream. I'm going to take this ultramarine blue. I'm actually going to add some of this cobalt turquoise blue Or actually turquoise blue to it. One of the keys to painting smooth gradients is having two brushes, each loaded with its own color. We're painting, this is called wet on wet. Actually it's a little more. This is still the consistency of heavy cream. We're painting wet on wet, and that's what allows for a very smooth seamless gradient. You just go back-and-forth into that color. Now you want to be careful not to come back down to the lightest color because this has already picked up some of that dark blue. I wiped it off. Got new light blue on there, and now I want to bring the dark blue back in a little bit more. I'll blend that back in. You want to work quickly because you want it to be wet when you're working on it. Making sure all the corners are painted in. Now I got more of the dark blue when I went into the top, but as it's blending here now more seamlessly, I have a whole different color on my brush. I always want to make sure to keep it clean by dabbing it off on my paper towel. Now we're going to practice that three more times. You can use different colors if you like. I'm just going to use the same ones. Now I'm going to try making more of the dark blue. Actually I need more paint, I can tell. So experiment with achieving different gradient styles. Right now I'm going to have less light blue and more dark blue until you get really smooth gradients. Really satisfying exercise. I'm going to add a different color into this gradient party, which means I'll add a third brush. Since I'm painting just a flat sky, I'm still going to use a flat brush. So you pick your brush based on what the best brush for the project or the shape that you're using is. Big flat areas can be filled in with either a flat or a filbert. I'm loading each brush up with the color that I want. You want that heavy cream consistency, you could see that was a little too dry which won't create a seamless a gradient as you'd like. We're going to add a little more of the Alizarin and we're going to do a pink gradient. Yeah, we're going to do a pink gradient. [NOISE] Then we're going to do yellow. I want to do pink to yellow gradient. I added some more white into this yellow because the yellow is also a little more transparent of a paint pigment, and so I like to add more white to make it more opaque. White is the base of all these colors and they just add the pigment of the hue into it and so I'm just thickening up the base when I add more white to it. It does lighten the color. So if you don't want that, you want to make sure to then make it thicker just by adding less water to it. You just keep smoothing back and forth in that beautiful gradient. Say you want to bring it down more. Just make sure to wipe off your brush, take paint straight from the palette, and just blend it down. This is a really fun soothing exercise as well. You can practice this some more and make four more gradients. Now the key to this is painting wet-on-wet paint because once it's dry it'll be pretty difficult to get a smooth of a transition. Even if you're painting smaller areas and you want that smooth blend transition gradient, you want to use wet-on-wet paint. You can also add some blending with some dry brushing and I'm going to show you that in the next lesson. 8. Dry Brushing Clouds: In this lesson, I'm going to go over one of my favorite techniques for painting with gouache, dry brushing. Dry brushing involves dabbing some paint on a brush, swiping it off, and then using that dry brush effect to create a textured effect. Usually I'd use it for highlights, shadows, or anything that could use that texture. This technique can be used to add highlights, shadows, and any type of detail to a painting. Experiment with different brushes and levels of dryness to get different types of desired effects. Now we're going to start with paint pretty much straight out of the tube and that butter consistency. We're going to take a clean brush. We're going to dive into it. Then we're going to dab off on our paper towel there. Then we're going to do the same thing that we did with our brushstroke techniques. We're going to practice our dry brush strokes with this round brush. The neat thing about dry brush also is that you can build up on it. I always like to go light and then go over it a couple of times. We're going to try it with a couple of different brush shapes here, just so you can understand the different effects. I'm going to do this curly pattern. You would use this to create some shadows maybe, or maybe some highlights if it's a lighter color. Just to finish it off, one more row for practice. Now a dry brush is something you would generally use as something you can paint over something that's already painted. It won't lift up the paint from underneath because it's not that wet. I'm going to use this dry brush technique to do our final exercise, which is clouds. I'm going to take my white paint, put it over here. I didn't add any water to it, it's pretty much straight out of the tube and it is that butter consistency that I want to be working with. However, it's a lot of paint. What I'm going to do is wipe some off on my paper towel. Then I'm just going to lightly block in my clouds. Defining the bottom of the cloud a little bit more by going over the dry brush a couple of times. Then not even adding more paint to my paintbrush to do the dry brushing on the top of the clouds where it starts to be lighter and diffuse into the sky. I'm going to do a little more paint, swipe some off on my paper towel, and do the same thing here. Just lightly dragging across the surface and then building it up so you have a little bit more control over how transparent you want the clouds to be. I'm going to come back and build up some more areas where I want the clouds to be puffier or thicker. There's one cloud exercise. I'm going to do it across all of these just to really practice my dry brush control. Then we're just going to paint our happy little clouds. When you're outside next time, observe what the clouds look like to you because there are so many different types of clouds. I'm doing one that's like a little bit thicker and trailing and thinner. This is one of the easiest types of paintings you can get reference for, because you could just step outside and take a picture of your sky. I'm going to add a little bit more white paint. When you're painting with dry brushing too, I'd also recommend you have like a scratch piece of paper or a sketchbook nearby where you can test out and swatch the dry brush to see how thick the paint is. Dry brush is pretty forgiving in terms of the effect you have when you test it out is pretty much you'll be able to get a couple of strokes that are similar out of it, with what paint is loaded on the brush. My favorite thing about dry brush is that you can really build it up as much as you want, which gives you a little bit more leeway in control. But then you also have this beautiful texture that happens. There's just like unpredictable and one of the beautiful natures of painting. Happy surprises. Now, say you want to make this a little bit more tinted with a little bit of yellow on the bottom of these clouds. We'll mix a really light yellow and just come in dry brushing and see how that just blends in really easily, visually. Isn't that neat? And there you have it, four beautiful cloud scape paintings. Now once you wait till it's dry, you can peel off the tape. I like to peel directly in the opposite direction so it comes off really clean. Or pull straight up at a 90-degree angle. Again, so it's really clean and it's less likely to tear the paper. This part is oddly satisfying too. There you have it, four beautiful gouache skyscapes. Meet me in the last video to wrap things up. 9. Final Notes: Congratulations! You made it to the end. I hope you're proud of yourself because I'm very proud of you for making it through this entire journey with me. Thank you all for joining me in this class to learn about the versatile and beautiful medium of gouache. You can take the techniques you learned in this class and apply it further in more of my classes about painting with gouache. I hope this class has provided you with the skills necessary to explore your artistic expressions and create beautiful, stunning pieces of work. In this class, you'll learn about the Tea to Butter Method of consistency, brush control, painting flat, seamless, abstract shapes, painting beautiful seamless gradients, dry brushing, and a step-by-step on how to create a beautiful cloud skyscraper. And hopefully, how to pronounce "gouache". Please share your paintings with us in the project gallery. I love to see your process every step of the way. Remember to keep practicing, seeking feedback, and exploring the world around you. Congratulations on completing this class and I hope to see you soon. Goodbye! Mary Ann, what do you think of my paintings? [CHICKEN NOISES] You like them? [MORE CHICKEN NOISES]