People often have a love/hate relationship with gouache and it unfairly gets categorised as a difficult medium to paint with. In fact, it’s no more difficult than any other medium once you understand its quirks and learn how to work with them instead of against them. In this article, we’ll cover some of the best practices when using gouache, including tips for blending, layering, and adding detail. Hopefully, this newfound information will help shine a different light on this so-called temperamental medium!
Basic rules
Let’s begin with some basics. Unless you’re going to be using it as a wash, your gouache paint should be prepared at about the consistency of nail polish. Any thinner and it acts more like a watercolour, and any thicker might cause the paint to crack and flake off the page once it dries. Unlike acrylic paint, dried gouache is not very flexible and does not respond well to being rolled, which means that
