 Hello, and welcome to my YouTube channel. My name is Sandy Olnok. I'm an artist and I work in a lot of different mediums and Today, it's going to be gouache Just yesterday I posted a gouache painting as a short this really sweet little bird because it's been an international color day this week So why not make it international color week? Why not? And the bird is painted in my new Holbein gouache the painting I'm going to be doing today is going to be the sunflowers and that is in Windsor and Newton gouache And I'll tell you a little bit about each of the brands that I just got into the studio and then we'll get busy painting Let's get started The gouache that I now have in the studio are the Daniel Smith Which I will link you to some videos down in the doobly-doo About that, but you won't see those in this video himmy Holbein and Windsor and Newton This is the only himmy you're going to see on this channel because this stuff is terrible. I Unendorse it. I officially tell you do not get it. It's really cheap. It's made in China, and it's like Kids gouache if even that it's terrible the quality of everything in here is bad the palette stained immediately the brushes had bristles falling out of them and then trying to undo all of these I On a few of them could peel off the tops But a bunch of them I had to get an exacto knife and stab it I had paint everywhere It took me like an hour and a half to do this and then I found out that I didn't even get all the colors There's like two pinks in there, which is actually that's the color. They call purple the colors are all dull and weird They're just not even good colors When you actually paint with them and it paints like rubber. It's very weird like consistency So just don't get fooled by the price So let's move on to some good good gouache This is Windsor and Newton and I love their set because it has a warm and a cool in the red yellow and blue Perfect for mixing has a black and a white and then a yellow ochre and a green I only had one tiny problem with it Which is this one tube of primary red had a pinhole in the back of it and made a mess everywhere But all I had to do was email them I emailed from their website and I said hey I had this problem and they sent me out a new tube to replace it and asked for the The number that was printed on the crimp so they could do some QC and check to see if anybody else had that issue Or if it was just that one tube So good for them taking care of their customers always do that if you get faulty art supplies Contact the manufacturer So then I'm labeling each one of these with the name of the brand I'm keeping these separate because for now. I just want to Be able to paint with them individually and assess what I think of the whole brand rather than mixing them in a single palette So next up is the whole line and this set is the mini tubes They're the five milliliters which means I'm only gonna have about I guess it's three quarters half to three quarters of each well Filled with paint which is plenty to paint with if you're just getting started and you like a lot of colors this is a good set to get and Doesn't require as much mixing because instead of like the other one where you have to mix all your greens Here you've got three greens. You've got a couple of browns that sort of thing So if you don't like to mix colors, this is a nice set for that Haven't found it as fun to paint with Just quality wise I guess Which I found surprising because I do like Holbein's other materials that I've had from them. There are other art supplies But I'm gonna reserve judgment on that. I'll do a painting with it sometime in the near future and Give you a little more assessment of that because I haven't I haven't painted with it much and Sometimes it's user error. So let's not call that a Good assessment yet So each one of the swatch sheets that I've got in my little sketchbook here Are gonna be on my blog if you want to look at them and compare and there will also be some notes about each one So if you want to read more in typed out words, you can do that And then I'm also going to send this over on Pinterest. So other people on the Pinterest can see it So now that we have looked at the paints, let's use the Windsor & Newton and I'll talk a little bit about color mixing So if you are somebody who's afraid of color mixing, don't be You can sit and make all the color charts you want and that is perfectly fine if you're brand new to painting sometimes That's helpful, but I find just mixing on the fly Tells me a lot about what colors I have in my palette. So I'm gonna be doing some of that here I have not done a mixing chart for this set. I Just have some instinctual things that I know from having painted before So I've got my sketch done of my sunflowers and I'm gonna use this set of brushes It's a recommendation by James Gurney For a set of short handle brushes that he uses when he does plein air and I want to try doing some plein air gouache So that's why I thought I would give that a shot and I'm Not sure how I'm gonna like these short brushes because they just feel very different in my hand But they do paint quite nicely For gouache you need brushes that are not gonna hold a lot of water and these don't hold a lot of water If they hold a lot of water then every time you rinse your brush to change colors You're gonna end up dragging more water into your pigment And then you're gonna end up with something that's more like watercolor than like an opaque watercolor, which is what gouache is and That opacity is something that I'm struggling with Because I tend to just try to use everything like watercolor because I've done a lot more watercolor in my life Now let's do a little bit of mixing I'm gonna start with the yellow ochre and I'm gonna throw in some red And I'm gonna throw in some blue because I need a brown for the center of my sunflowers So I've got a lot of the yellow and I'm gonna put a lot of the blue in there because I want it to be a dark color and Mixing red yellow and blue gives you a brown Now you can use the yellow ochre as a base for this you can use either of the other two yellows Because any red yellow and blue Or most any red yellow and blue when mixed in particular quantities are gonna turn into a neutral color That's just what they do. They're all gonna neutralize each other And if you want something that's more of a red brown then use more red If you want something that's more gray then use more blue If you want it to be a warmer kind of baby poo color then use more yellow So play around with that Now I wanted a green that was not going to be just this out of the tube green So I'm mixing it with the warm sunshine yellow And that's giving me more of an olive kind of color if I had used the The bright yellow then I probably would have gotten something more like a spring green And you'll only learn that by testing your colors and you can do this with any colors doesn't have to be this set But when you mix colors together you'll get used to over time Which colors to use when you want to get a particular hue? You don't even need to know if it's cool or warm because sometimes you can't look at a color and if You're not somebody who's really studied in it You can't tell visually if it's cool or warm because you don't know what that means And a lot of people panic and they feel like they're incapable of mixing because they don't know Which one is the cool because aren't you supposed to mix cool with cool? Well, you can mix cools with worms and worms with cools you can mix any which way But it's just gonna give you a different result And it's the result that you need to know not whether or not you're mixing a cool and a warm For me, I just love seeing the cool and the warm in the palette because I know that's going to give me Very different greens When I mix each of my yellows with it and even the yellow ochre is going to give me something different Mix with that same green So I have a lot of options in a palette like this That I wouldn't have in some others And if you have multiple greens like in the Holbein palette You have even more options because you can mix any of those greens With any of those yellows that are in that set So you can have all kinds of fun with color mixing And some people just really want to have a color mixing chart But if you want to have that and then have to refer to it all the time, that's fine I find that it's easier to just get used to painting Just sit down and paint something in context because otherwise you're going to be constantly staring at a chart Trying to figure out. Okay. Well, did I use one dollop or two dollops of that color when I mixed it with that color? Especially if you're trying to mix a brown Because you saw when I I pulled from the palette. I didn't measure anything. I wasn't trying to Figure out, you know, how much of each color I was putting in other than I wanted More of the red and the blue in there than the yellow So that I would get a dark color And that's the only thing I knew I just started mixing the colors and if I had run short of My goal and I had come up with something was too red then I could just go grab some more blue and Slowly getting used to that over time is what's going to help you to learn how to do color mixing for your paintings So with each one of these steps, I'm kind of looking at the shadows In the photograph trying to figure out what color I wanted them to be I wanted to dull down this yellowish reddish colors orangey color And I did that by using the complement of one of the colors There's some red in there. So I just mixed in a little dollop of green With that yellow orange color and it dulled the color down So depending on what you've got in your palette, you can use something weird on your palette To throw in and see if that will dull color down Because I didn't want all the yellow to be the super bright. I wanted some of it to be more in shadow Now let's have a word about white paint white gouache If you're somebody who is manufacturing paints and you would like to sell me a set Please include two white tubes That would be really nice Because I go through a lot of white paint Now back in the day like decades and decades maybe longer than that ago I seem to recall reading that they used to manufacture gouache paint with white content in the pigment mixture And I think they do that with that hemi gouache that was all like weird pastel funky colors That's one reason why it's really hard to paint with because you have all this white to deal with In regular gouache artist gouache, you're not going to have that in general So you need to mix your own light colors And that means you're going to need extra white And speaking of white If you're interested in learning how to do a little bit with gouache and just to Dip a toe in it without getting really invested and having to buy a lot of supplies I have an opportunity for you if you're a card maker I have a new class called tiaras and tutus over at art venture And i'm going to teach you how to take your stamped images Of little critters of one kind or another whatever stamps you have you can use the ones I demo and color Or you can just use your own whatever you've got And we're going to add some white elements to them We'll use some thinner pigment to make a tutu We'll use thicker pigment to make a tiara And i'll show you some tips and tricks for how to use gouache on top of images that have been colored with things like alcohol markers and pencils And then you won't have to deal with lifting color up What I mean by that is something i'm struggling with in this painting Is this baby's breath because there's some of the baby's breath that was blue But the blue is picking up a little bit of the black underneath of it And then when I paint the white on top of the blue the white picks up some of the blue For me the hardest part of painting in gouache is that whole water management thing Because when you're trying to paint something really opaquely you can't have any water in it And yet you also have to have A little bit of moisture in it in order for the paint to move There's a fine balance there And when you're painting on top of alcohol marker or pencil You don't have to deal with all that lifting So it's a way to practice The water management thing without having the hard parts to deal with And it also gives you an opportunity to have some Little white highlights little white treasures that you can add onto your stamped images to customize them for whoever it is You're sending them to So the class is only 10 bucks. It's free to get into art venture And then the class is 10 bucks If you're on an apple device, you may need to go in through the web to make the purchase Because apple hasn't yet approved the class at the time that i'm doing the recording of This voiceover, but that will eventually change. I hope So if you have any questions about that or how to get into it or anything then Let me know when you get in there Because i'd love to teach you a little Little bit about gouache a few techniques that you can use along with your stamps And white gouache is going to always be helpful when you're doing any kind of crafting anyway. So We will find it a very good product to have on hand So that's it for me. There's my little sunflower painting in my sketchbook I'm so happy you joined me today Links to everything I mentioned supplies as well as art venture are in the doobly doo And I hope to see you there very soon. Otherwise, I'll meet you back here next week on youtube with another video in the meantime Go create something every day See you later