Curmudge's Sutff

critters

2025-12-28T17:19:16Z

My 14^th gouache is a Bohemian waxwing — I was quite taken by the incredibly vivid reds and yellows in the wings and tail, they were fun. 8 x 10, watercolour paper mounted on cardboard: a surface I found in Dollar Tree and have since stocked up on. I find it a very handy work surface for gouache.

My 63^rd acrylic is a seasonal Golden Lab. Got organic greens by mixing yellow and black: a trick I picked up a while back and still get a kick out of. 10 x 10, canvas.

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Dalmatian

2025-04-12T20:25:16Z

I am calling this my eleventh gouache painting, even though technically that isn't correct: this was done on a 4-by-6 canvas board and all my other gouaches were on paper, and the paint calls itself acrylic paint rather than gouache. Bear with me while I explain:

This was my first time trying Deco Earth brand “reclaimed acrylic” paint — claims to be more opaque and more matte finish than regular acrylic. The opaque is maybe a bit true, but the matte finish is way true. It's a lot like working with acrylic gouache IMHO — hence my labelling it such. Handles nice and I look forward to working with it again. (Even though the range of pigments available to work with leaves a little to be desired, I think.)

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latest paintings

2024-12-31T20:58:11Z

My 51^st acrylic is a nocturne of the Christmas fair at Hebden Bridge, which we visited in 2018. I got into how the night suggests rather than displays things, and really got into the depths of the lights on the tree. There's no razzle dazzle in this work, but I feel like maybe there's some honesty about a night I remember fondly.

My tenth gouache is a horned owl in the snow. This was my first time using an angle brush — I only recently picked up a few of those, in both bristle and soft synthetic — and I really enjoyed how it handled. I can see myself using them a lot in future. And, once again, the limited palette I have felt my way into for animal paintings came in handy here.

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chipmunk

2024-10-06T14:13:38Z

My ninth gouache is a chipmunk, done on watercolour paper 8 x 10. Once again, the painting was a gift for a friend [who loves chipmunks] so I had to wait til they received it before sharing it here.

I wanted the foliage to be cool as a contrast to the warmth of the chipmunk's coat, but I'm not sure I pulled that off all that well. Keep trying.

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latest paintings

2023-12-25T13:15:36Z

My latest paintings were both Christmas presents so I had to wait til their recipients got them before making them public, so here we go now:

My eighth gouache is supposedly a chipmunk. I still struggle with getting my paint to a good working consistency — straight from the tube it's too thick to spread easily, but it feels like when I add any water it instantly goes as thin as watercolour. There's a sweet spot in between that I keep missing.

My 43^rd acrylic is my house, as seen from across the street. You can't see much of the actual house frontage and porch from here, so it looks like mostly garage, but there is enough house back there to live in. Any other angle would be mostly tree, so if I wanted to get the whole building in, this was the best I could do.

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nice surprise

2023-03-12T20:43:59Z

Someone recently bought two of my paintings. I'm quite pleased, of course, but also honestly shocked.

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still learning

2022-07-24T17:32:41Z

Originally I wasn't gonna share this painting here:

Allow me to explain why I changed my mind.

I usually share my pencil doodles on my social media, often to let people see that I don't always have a finished idea in mind, or work to make something good for people to see. It's in the spirit of “this is what it looks like when I hack around”. But my paintings? Usually I only show those when I feel like I've come up with something that people might enjoy looking at.

This wasn't one of those. This was more of a gouache doodle [and an excuse to test-drive the new Pébéo gouache set I recently got]. I posted it as such, primarily to let people see that I often have no idea what I'm doing.

( Here's what was going through my mind while I did this. )

In my experience, paintings that move away from traditional realism aren't often met with much approval. But — to my surprise — I got a few vocal likes on this one, mostly saying that they really liked the colours. One lady said that if she had this, she would frame it and hang it up! So I got her address and gave it to her.

My point is that I have no idea what people are going to like, or not like. I'm tempted to give up trying to guess.

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sky

2022-06-12T21:45:01Z

Behold a modest 4x6 sketch I made, in order to test-drive my new set of Artist's Loft gouache I picked up dirt-cheap [on clearance] at Michaels. Not sure what to make of these guys. Artist's Loft products are generally low-budget and you get what you pay for, but once in a while they'll make something that is decent enough — I've been using their watercolour paper regularly for a while now and have no complaints.

This initial try-out is not enough to convince me that this gouache measures up to the others I've tried. It squeezes out surprisingly fast, giving you the impression that it's runny. But it also manages to somehow be sticky/gummy/gluey so that it doesn't spread easily. It seems to want more water added than other gouaches do, but when you add a bunch, then it gets thin and weak and more watercolour-ey. Still got a bit of a learning curve ahead of me when it comes to handling this sutff. I think I will probably go back to other brands for my “good” projects, but something this cheap is a great excuse for playing around, experimenting, etc.

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Delvón

2022-05-07T19:46:46Z

My sixth gouache is a portrait of Delvón Lamarr of the Delvón Lamarr Organ Trio. What struck me about the reference photo for this, was the way that the stage lights created a triad of secondary colours in the face — as opposed to the more standard triad of primaries. That aspect interested me [along with the dramatic back-lighting], so I tried to nudge the colours in the rest of the painting toward the secondaries, to help unify the piece. And I think that worked somewhat.

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painting geek musings

2022-04-05T20:34:24Z

Whether I'm painting in watercolour, acrylic, or gouache, I seem to go through ultramarine faster than any other colour.

With acrylic, burnt umber and white are also way up there — and in fact I have done paintings using only those three, and hope to try more of that.

Same top colours with gouache, but there, white is far and away what I use most of.

Meanwhile, with all of them, I have tubes of other colours I haven't even opened yet. Go figure.

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Gizelle

2022-04-04T20:37:25Z

My fifth gouache is a tribute to musical and visual artist Gizelle Smith. The hair was particularly challenging — I don't think I nailed it spectacularly, but I also don't know that I am capable of doing it much better than this now, either.

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Fisherman on the Laita

2022-03-31T19:10:51Z

My fourth gouache is a study of the 1890 painting Fisherman on the Laita by Paul Sérusier. I was immediately taken by this work the first time I saw it — something about his unusual colour choices and his simplification into graphic shapes. I decided to work from a smaller-than-necessary reproduction of the work, so that fine details would drop out and the shapes would grow flatter and simpler — emphasizing the aspects that attracted me. It felt like a good learning experience for me.

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Alanna

2022-03-27T19:47:07Z

My third gouache is another singer tribute — this time, to Alanna Quinn-Broadus, vocalist for the band Alanna Royale. I decided on a different approach for this one, because the lighting on my reference pic was very bright. This washed out much of the photo. so that there was very little in the way of forms being modelled by colour and shade. Instead, it was largely flat shapes defined by contour, with a few linear details. But I particularly liked the contours in that pic, which is why I chose it as my reference anyway. So I kept the painting small, forcing me to streamline those details, and emphasized the flat graphic-arts nature of gouache: converting the background to a flat black shape and stylizing the hair, in a manner which I admit makes it rather similar to my cartooning work.

Once again, I didn't manage to nail a photographic likeness, but I think as a graphic work in and of itself, it holds up not too bad.

UPDATE: I also posted this to my Instagram... and received a comment on it from Alanna herself:

OH. MY. GOD. i am BEYOND impressed and honored you would pick up a brush with my face in mind. i truly love this. may i share?

How swell is that?

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Boat at Lake Trasimeno

2022-03-21T20:47:02Z

My second gouache is a study of an acrylic by Patti Mollica, Boat at Lake Trasimeno. When I first saw it, I was immediately drawn to how they abstracted the water into these big, bold, sweeping brushstrokes, and I was moved to try that out for myself.

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beware my psychic power!

2022-03-12T14:06:15Z

While I was out tooling around yesterday, I had what I can only call a premonition -- almost like a little voice in me, saying, “If you go to HomeSense today, you will find gouache”. For those of you who don't know, HomeSense is a discount store that seems to deal in off brands, end of runs, and other odd things. Basically, what they stock is whatever they could find that day. You never know when a new item will show up, or another one will disappear. So you can't go there counting on finding anything.

But I decided to heed my inner voice, went there, and lo and behold but what did I find one lone example of?

Mont Marte is a halfway decent brand, so extra score.

Moreover than that [as one of my art profs used to say], I also found this:

Just the day before, I was reading about mixed bristle brushes. Watercolour brushes [and consequently gouache brushes, which are the same] are usually either natural (animal hairs) or synthetic (nylon fibers). Each has its own subtle strengths and weaknesses, and different people prefer different kinds. But I was reading about mixed brushes, where it said they offer a blend of the advantages of both. I thought that sounded interesting, and I was curious enough to want to try them out and see what I thought. But I didn't recall seeing them anywhere.

Until now. Yet another bonus score!

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tribute to Sasha

2022-03-09T21:09:07Z

I posted earlier about gone-too-young singer Sasha Goodman. I decided to paint a tribute to her as my first foray in gouache. I don't think I captured an accurate likeness [I rarely can] but I feel it's a decent painting in its own right. And I don't think this will be my last gouache -- I enjoyed working with this medium quite a bit.

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