( 그림 공부 ) Gouache란 medium에 대하여

어제 알게되어 내 블로그에도 소개한 Lena Rivo란 Portugal의 여류화가가 주로 사용한다는 gouache 란 

그림 미디움에 대해서 관심이 있어 여기 저기 인터넷도 찾아 보았는데 오늘 아침 그녀가 보낸 메일을 읽어 보니

왜 유화에서 과슈로 방향을 바꾸었는지 설명도 되어있고 그 소재의 장점을 설명하고 있다.

일년중 300일 정도가 화창한 포르투칼에서 그녀가 그림에서 관심을 갖은 것은 빛과 칼라였는데 유화로는 그것이 

잘 표현이 되지 못하는 아쉬움을 항상 느끼고 있었다고. 

그녀가 멘토로 삼고 있는 스페인의 유명한 화가 Joaquin Sorolla 의 그림을 보면 유화로 멋지게 빛과 색깔을 표현하고

있지만 그것도 한계가 있어 뭔가 새로운 시도를 해보기 위해 파스텔로 그려보기도 했다고.

그러다가 우연히 Gouache란 소재를 접하면서 새로운 세상을 알게 되었다고 이야기 하고 있다.

 

우리나라는 지중해 국가들이나 미국의 서부 해안지역처럼 화창한 빛을 즐길 수 있는 날들이 그리 많지는 않지만

야외에서 그림을 그리면서 화창한 빛을 표현하고 싶은 욕심이 있는데 사실 솜씨도 딸리고 해서 제대로 표현하지 못해

그냥 밋밋한(dull 한 ) 그림을 그려왔는데 이 화가의 글을 읽고  새삼 Gouache란 소재에 대해서 관심이 간다.

사실 유화 물감도 제대로 다루지 못하고 수채화도 이제 막 연습 중이고 파스텔도 언젠가는 해봐야지 하고 파스텔과

파스텔 종이까지 마련해 놓고 있는데 새삼 Gouache 란 소재에 관심을 갖는게 좀 그렇지만 그냥 지적 호기심에 그리고

지금은 아니더라도 언젠가 혹시 모르니.

또 칼라와 구도를 참고하기 위해 이 화가가 gouache 로 그린 그림도 함께 ( 특별히 바다 그림들 )

 

 

Hi TS.CHO,

I am often asked why I love gouache more than any other painting medium.

I want to tell you a little bit today about why I started to paint with gouache and what is so special about this medium that makes me want to paint with it again and again.

Before discovering gouache, I had been painting with oils for years. For as long as I can remember, my main goal in painting was to paint light and color. That was not only because I have always been inspired by the incredible work of the Spanish Master of light, Joaquin Sorolla, but also because I lived in Portugal, which had about 300 days a year of sunshine.

Bright sunlight made the colors appear stronger and capturing the surrounding beauty had always been challenging because the colors on my canvas didn’t seem bright enough to make it possible to express what I saw. No matter how clean I tried to keep my colors, I still felt I needed more vibrancy in my paintings.

For this reason, I started experimenting with soft pastels. Their bright and matte colors felt much stronger in a finished painting than my oil colors and that was promising. I spent a few months trying to understand if soft pastels were the right medium for me.

I loved the colors; they were incredibly luminous in my paintings, but eventually, I realized that I missed the freedom of a fluid medium that allowed me to block in the large shapes and make my paintings look loose and atmospheric. So, I stored the pastels away and got back to my oils, which immediately felt so familiar and easy to work with.

I spent a few more years painting with oils and developing my painting technique, trying to find the perfect visual language to portray reality with paints and make the light look convincing in my paintings.

By the end of 2015, I was confident in using color and achieving the desired interpretation of light and reality in my oil paintings. I was pleased at the time with my work, but as it turned out, that was only the beginning of my journey.

One day, I was strolling in an art supply store and saw a section with gouache paints. I remembered that gouache was the first paint I had tried. I was about 7 when my mom took me to a painting class for kids and gave me a brand new set of gouache, a pad of watercolor paper and brushes.

When I saw the hand-painted swatches of gouache attached to the stand in the store, I realized that there was something different about these gouache paints than the ones I had used in the painting class as a child. The colors on the swatches were incredibly vibrant and their texture was so amazing, it looked like velvet! My first thought was - These paints look like soft pastels…only…they are fluid!!!

I didn't buy any of those colors that day. Instead, when I got home, I started searching for information about gouache. I found out that the designer’s gouache paints I had seen in the store were water-soluble highly pigmented paints that dried flat with a matte finish and that their velvety look was the result of an extremely high pigment load.

So basically, what I saw on the swatches was pure pigment sitting on the thick paper. Gum arabic, the binder of gouache, allowed the pigments to stay securely attached to the surface of the paper. It produced no glare, therefore the colors were matte and vibrant. I also learned that professional gouache shared the same high-quality pigments with oil paints and that it could be used as a medium for fine art.

That was enough for me. I had a sleepless night and the next day I went to the art store and purchased a full palette of gouache colors. I bought a small storage palette for the new paints and started experimenting with them.

With very little information about gouache on the internet, I needed to figure out how to use my new colors. I tried a couple of techniques I had seen other artists use, but they seemed too time consuming for me. I have always liked to paint fast, therefore, after a couple of failed experiments, I decided to use the technique that I had developed during the years of painting with oils. It turned out that my technique worked so great with gouache that I didn’t even notice a huge difference between the handling of the two mediums.

 

With gouache, I used the same full palette of colors and the same painting approach that I had used with oils, but my paintings changed. They were filled with color and I could see strong light coming out of them. This was what I had been trying to achieve for so many years. The matte surface of gouache allowed me to see the colors and their variations more clearly in my paintings, while I still could use my favorite painting technique.

I finally became able to use the colors on my palette in their full strength and capture the essence of what surrounded me. Now, I like to say that painting with gouache is like picking colors directly from the rainbow - you don’t see the medium; all you see is color.

Gouache embodies the most powerful characteristics of other mediums:

• It has the opaque qualities of oils, but it can easily be cleaned up and stored away.
• It allows you to paint in layers like acrylics, but it doesn't dry permanently, so you can make changes in your painting at any time.
• It dries to a matte, flat finish with the brilliance and opacity of soft pastels, but its layers stay securely attached to the surface of the paper which allows you to store your paintings in a pile or in an album without worrying about damaging the surface of your artwork.
• You can just as easily travel and set up gouache as with watercolors, without such a strong need to plan and reserve whites.

Gouache is an outstanding painting medium. It allows you to paint in layers and see the colors without glare on the surface of the painting. With gouache, you can make edges soft to create depth and mood in your paintings and it also gives you the possibility to paint in a full tonal range, making the darks really dark and the lights truly bright in your paintings.

Gouache has a lot of advantages, but what I value the most about this medium is the pleasure I experience while using it. The mystical appearance of the matte, velvety surface of gouache as well as the brilliance and opacity of its colors make me want to keep painting with gouache over and over again.

I think trying a new medium is beneficial for any artist. It pushes you out of your comfort zone and helps you grow artistically. Life is never boring when you are open to experiments!

After all, for what other reason do we create art than to make life more exciting and enjoyable?

 

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