How to Paint With Gouache - Tips For The New User

If you've ever wondered how to paint with gouache, this brief guide gives you an idea of what you've been missing. First off, you should know how to pronounce it. In the United States, it's pronounced gwash, to rhyme with wash. In the United Kingdom, it's goo ash. What's surprising about it is that it isn't more widely known about and used.

Once you've tried it, it's hard to rein in your enthusiasm. The fact is, it's very forgiving. If you make a mistake, all you need to do is wash it out with a wet sponge and do it again and no-one's any the wiser. If you make a mistake with transparent watercolor, you either live with it, make a mess fixing it, or throw it away (recommended). What makes gouache so "fixable" is that it's opaque. One or two coats will cover up whatever is underneath.

Since it's so easy to use, that makes it suitable for beginners, including youngsters, who usually see it in the form of solid blocks of poster paint. That's not to say it's not a high quality medium. It's often sold as "Designer's Gouache", being ideal for design and illustration professionals. Straight from the tube, mixed with water to a creamy consistency, it gives a nice, even, matt finish. Artists have also used it, through the ages, sometimes just for white highlights on watercolor paintings, when it's known as "body color".

A good way to start with this paint is either to get hold of an introductory set of about ten colors, or choose your own range (your palette) and buy the tubes individually. You'll also need brushes and paper as a minimum. Don't go for anything less than top quality materials from the start. If your brushes don't perform well, you could give up because you couldn't get things right, not realizing that it's not your fault. Good brushes really are a joy to use.

As to technique, getting started is very easy. Simply squeeze some paint from a tube onto a palette (you can buy these very cheaply), and mix it with water in one of the little mixing sections, until it's about the thickness of cream. Next, draw a few geometric shapes on your paper and color them in. Once you get the feel for it, try mixing two colors in various proportions and fill in some random abstract shapes this time. You're on your way to becoming an artist.

By now, you'll know whether you want to develop your painting skills further. If you do, then think about setting up a studio where you can leave your work in progress, safe from the cats or the kids. This is the exciting part, because you'll want to learn more about what you can do with gouache. Whether you want to paint landscapes, portraits, animals, or anything else, there'll be a place for gouache, which, by its nature, gives an overall delicate paleness. This can make for charming works of art, quite unlike any other media.

Gouache is well suited to indoor or outdoor painting. On the one hand, you can go off on sketching days, where you draw and photograph reference items for your studio work. On the other hand, you can simply load up the car and take your studio with you into the city or the countryside and paint to your heart's content.

Now you have an idea of how to paint with gouache, if it sounds appealing, then don't put off starting. Get some materials and get cracking. Remember what's been said here about its ease of use, its professional quality and its versatility. If you've never painted in your life, then this is the ideal way to get started.

If you'd like to know more about painting with gouache, go to http://www.witwoo.com my Art and Personal Development Ideas website.

How to Paint Flowers - The Best Way to Begin is Botanical Art

If you are a flower painter who is often frustrated and disappointed by your finished painting, then you need to go back to basics and learn how to draw. Maybe you already have good painting skills, but if you don't know the basic principles of accurate observation and how to build up form through tonal value, you are wasting valuable time - and probably talent too.

How to Paint Flowers - The Best Way to Begin is Botanical Art

Learn how to paint flowers successfully by doing what I did. Learn how to draw. Botanical art is the best way I know of teaching you how to become an able and accurate drawer.

I love botanical art. I run botanical courses and workshops, and sell my flower prints around the world, but before I became a painter of flowers, I first learned how to draw them.

The skill of accurate drawing is vital to botanical art, a magical and increasingly popular art form that I love to teach. Botanical art has its origins in scientific illustration, whose aim is to impart knowledge. Before the advent of photography, the botanical illustrator was the lens of the camera, recording the natural world in all its astonishing beauty and complexity.

The basic principles of creating a believable 3D image on a 2D surface are exactly the same for both painting and drawing. For me the only difference is what you hold in your hand - a paint brush or a pencil.

Drawing and painting are like walking and running: one skill follows naturally from the other. After all, you learnt to walk before you could run, didn't you? First learn how to draw, and then move on to painting. And when you have mastered the skills of painting, then move on again, if you want to, to a more approximate, more impressionistic, more abstract style.

I think all painters should be able to draw competently and accurately - if they have to. Whether they choose to is a different matter. Of course, this is a purely personal opinion, but in its defence, I'd like you to name me one great painter who couldn't draw.

A full-time artist and tutor of botanical illustration, I run courses in botanical drawing and painting, as well as tutoring workshops both in the UK and abroad. Click here to learn more

My paintings are in many private collections, and I have had two solo exhibitions. My flower prints sell worldwide and I also write on botanical art for magazines.

My passion is observational drawing from the natural world. If you would like to join me on one of my courses or workshops, click this link now to find out dates and details http://www.mariannemcphie.co.uk

Marianne McPhie

What You Can Do to Learn How to Paint

There was a time in some European countries when it was a must to learn how to paint. This wasn't just a sign of an elevated social position but also an indication of good breeding and education. Even to this day, these may still be good reasons to take up the brush.

Aspiring modern artists can have less elevated reasons for wanting to render scenes the way art masters do. Some just want to become good painters because they want to appear sophisticated. This can be a good way to impress other people especially potential dates. There are however, still some other individuals who want to discover art because they want to express themselves constructively especially if they are unable to do so through other acceptable means. Also when you learn painting, you give yourself a great opportunity to simply unwind and relax from the stresses of the daily grind.

There is one obvious way to discover how to wield the brush. You can learn from a master. In days gone by, this meant becoming an apprentice of an expert painter. Today, you don't have to do the same thing. You can instead enroll in art classes which can just about produce the same results. Of course, this would mean having to spend a fair amount of cash.

If you can't afford to go to school, the next best option is to learn by yourself. If you have an eye for detail and perhaps you are also a little blessed with natural talent, you can copy masterpieces first. Once you are confident that you can learn how to paint on your own, you can start producing your own works.

There are some individuals who might not be able to manage by copying. This doesn't mean self education isn't possible. If you find it hard to work entirely on your own, you can invest in a couple of informative DVDs or e-books. Depending on the instructional material that you pick, you can quickly get a grasp of basic concepts through illustrations, explanations and demonstrations.

If you don't have any prior experience or knowledge with colors and brushes, it makes a lot of sense to look for help. Regardless of whether you get a real teacher or learn painting with a book, it is important that you discover certain basic ideas first. Among the important points that great resources will teach you is choosing exact water or oil colors, understating color relationships, adding light and shadow, painting with tools other than brushes and proper brush handling.

When deciding who or where to go to for help, you need to evaluate yourself first. Find out if you are a self starter or if you can't manage without step by step instruction. Once you find out which kind of person you are, you can pick the most appropriate learning materials for best results.

It's not impossible to learn how to paint well even if you don't think you have natural talent. With the right instructions, you can become an expert painter. You just need to find out which learning methods are ideal for you.

Want To Make Your Own Art Projects?
Learn How At http://www.diyartprojects.com.

After Effects and Illustrator - Let's Paint

After Effects paint tools are similar to Photoshop and Illustrator but in some very real ways they are quite peculiar to After Effects. For one thing, as you paint and create objects, you are at the same time creating a potential animation because simply creating objects with your paint tools offers the option of presenting your images in time.

One of the first things to note as you paint in After Effects is that while you do so much of your work in your composition window, adding and manipulating objects on your timeline, you 'Paint' on a layer and must be in the layer panel to begin painting. Like Photoshop and other graphics applications, you will probably begin by choosing a brush, a brush style and diameter. Choose a color and then, paint a little bit! Paint a scribble or spell 'Hello World', something easy and silly just to see how easy painting in your layer is.

The first way to begin animating your paint is with the start and end stroke options. Like all After Effects animations, click the stopwatch setting to create a keyframe, move down the timeline, change the 'start' or 'end' percentage value and this will create another keyframe.

It is that simple but... what are you doing? You are telling After Effects what portion of your shape has been drawn at that point, or more accurately where your start or end progress is in relationship to the beginning. This wasn't obvious for me and like most AE effects, when it's not perfectly clear, I play with the settings a bit, letting it sink in exactly how they are being applied. In the first experiments of grasping exactly how these settings behave, pick one object, a simple paint stroke or word spelled, and pick one setting to experiment with.

Draw an 's' curve with your brush. To see the most natural intuitive illustration of animating paint, under brush, stroke options you may set your 'start' and 'end' percentages. Set your timeline to the beginning of your composition. Note the default setting for start is 0% and end is 100%. It is by default, 'completely drawn' with ending set to 100%. Click your stopwatch to create a keyframe and change your end setting to 0%. Your paint object will disappear. It's end completion is now 0%. Now move down the timeline a few seconds and set it to 100% creating a second keyframe. This will completely draw your new paint object. Now execute your composition (enter 'home' to return to beginning, '0' on numeric keypad to play). You will see your paint object drawn on your composition panel appearing over the timeline you set.

Now here is a nice 'next step'. Let's animate your start setting instead. It's not really 'where' you start but more like what stage of progression, how far along you are on the 'start' to the 'end' of your drawing. This may be a bit confusing but set your stroke option 'end' to 100%, it is completely drawn. Now, at the beginning of your timeline, set your start to 0%. Move down the timeline a few seconds and set your start to 100%. As you scrub your timeline your will see your paint object drawn backwards! At the beginning of your timeline, your 'start' progress is at the end, the last pixels you created for this object. As you move in time, you move further into the 'start' progression, yet moving from where it was at 100% to 0%. When you reach your second keyframe, you will see your complete object but it will be animated in reverse. Pretty cool, if not a little bit confusing. Any behavior like this, any control that is something less than intuitive gets the same treatment from me. Play! Play with the behavior, experiment a bit, watch how it unfolds changing parameters to get intimate with how they control your animation behavior.

We will play with some of the other fun settings in paint, like 'write on', in our next paint tutorial.

Full Moons, Dogcreek, think globally, act locally.

Author Tom Womack is a Web Designer, nature lover, and environmentalist.
Living by Dog Creek in Kingston Springs, TN, much of his work is devoted to images borrowed from nature using Adobe After Effects, Premiere Pro and other applications from the Adobe Design Suite, and much inspiration from Henry Thoreau.

http://www.webforu2.com/

http://webforu2.com/WebLog