I love this stuff. It suits me. It’s much easier to manage than water colour which always seems to run away from me and get out of control. Gouache is thicker, but you can still blend and layer it. You can do washes but it dries quickly so you don’t have to hang around for ages waiting for it to dry (although I did buy a hairdryer specially for drying paint!). It’s forgiving in that it’s very opaque and so you can cover up your mistakes. 

Here’s some stuff I did last night and today. First, an egg shell koi pond. Not my finest work but painting inside something that is so light, hard to keep steady, and an odd shape takes a bit of getting used to.

Next, an experiment with gouache on black paper. You can’t do this with watercolour.

Then, for the season that’s in it, some mistletoe on paper …

A meadow with wild flowers on a tea bag …  (click > enlarge)

Finally, more mistletoe, this time on a tea bag. With gouache, you can paint straight onto the tea bag without treating it first. Awesome. 
(Click > enlarge)

Not a bad day’s work. The gouache actually gives me confidence. When I’m painting with it, I feel as if I know what I’m doing. That’s a change!

(WordPress, the blog publishing program that I use for this and my other blogs, has changed its interface. I think I’m going to like the changes but I’m not quite sure what I’m doing yet. That’s how I live my life a lot of the time anyway, so that’s OK.)