A Summer of Gouache

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*Never AI, always human. Any errors are my own.*

It's been quite a full summer!  Here is a selection of gouache plein air sketches from the season: https://mchesleyjohnson.substack.com/p/gouache-what-a-summer-its-been

The Continuing Adventures of Gouache

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Gouache or not to gouache? https://mchesleyjohnson.substack.com/p/the-continuing-adventures-of-gouache

A Summer of Gouache

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Free post for everyone on my Substack - a selection of my gouache paintings from this season. Go here: https://mchesleyjohnson.substack.com/p/a-summer-of-gouache

Experience: Portable Painter Watercolor Palette and Tubed Gouache

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I've been experimenting with a new watercolor palette and tubed gouache.  You can read about it here.

Some Gouache Sketches from the Winter

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Winter's over...or is it?  Details on my Substack blog here! https://mchesleyjohnson.substack.com/p/some-gouache-sketches-from-the-winter

Back on Campobello Island—And a Two-Person Show!

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Incoming Tide / 12x24 Oil
Will this be in my show?

Back on Campobello Island...and loving it!  I'd forgotten what a beautiful place this is.  Besides gathering up work for my show in Lubec in a few weeks (more about that in a moment), I've been trying to get out to sketch regularly.  I have a large oil painting in mind that I want to do, so some of these sketches are made with a purpose.  I'll post a few of them below.  They're all gouache and 5x8.

As for the show, I'll be joined by Trina Stephenson for Seasons in the Sun: Twenty Years of Landscapes, which will be at the Mulholland Market (Lubec Landmarks) in Lubec, Maine. The show runs from July 21 through August 9, 2022, at 50 N Water Street, Lubec, with an opening reception from 3-5 pm ET on Saturday, July 23.

Originally, this was going to be a solo show.  But US Customs threw a wrench into the works when I went to speak with them about importing my work from Canada into the US.  Turns out, if the value of the paintings entering the US is above a certain amount ($2500), you have to hire an import broker.  I spoke to two brokers, and learned that, frankly, it was going to be a paperwork headache and very costly.  So, I will unfortunately have to limit the number of paintings in the show.  (But you can still come over to Campobello Island to visit my studio, and I will donate part of the studio sales to Lubec Landmarks, a non-profit that is trying to save a historically important smokehouse on the waterfront.)

I will get on my soap box for a moment and note that this requirement favors the big corporations and not the little guy.  I have run into this kind of bureaucratic snafu before when running small, low-impact workshops on federal lands.  (You can read about that here.)  It's a shame, but it turns out it is all about easy money.

Trina will offer her beautiful kaleidoscopic imagery that portrays a variety of natural scenery.  Here's a sample, and you can see more at her website, www.trinastephenson.com

"Bog and Rhodora"

Even though my show is much reduced, I still need helping picking out the paintings.  I'm asking for my loyal followers on Instagram to help.  Every day, I've been posting one or two images of possibilities and asking for feedback.  If you'd like to help, head over to Instagram and follow the hashtag #mcjlubecshow (or go here.)  I appreciate the help!

Now, here are a few gouache sketches.  The big painting I will use some of these for will be in the show. 

The End of the Pandemic Sketchbooks?

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Lately, I've returned to my fascination with the abstractions
that fill the canyon walls.  The sandstone is prone to cracking
and spalling, creating these lovely patterns.

If you've been keeping up with my blog, you'll remember that, during the pandemic, I hiked frequently into the canyon behind my studio to do some sketching in gouache.  Mostly, it was a way to keep calm, but it was also a way to study the subtle beauty of the canyon in depth.  The other day, I reached the end of Pandemic Sketchbook No.3.  Will the series continue?  Well, that all depends on whether we've reached the end of the pandemic.  We'll see how it goes.

With the post, I present the final four sketches in No.3.  They are all 5x8 gouache.

Even if the pandemic is over (which I might argue against), I won't stop sketching in gouache.  I think the practice is one of the best ways to get outside to paint with the least amount of hassle.   Sure, I'll tackle the more ambitious efforts of painting en plein air in oil and pastel.  But when I want an easy day—and to keep calm—I'll pull out the gouache kit.

By the way, the Plein Air Convention & Expo starts next week, May 17-21. 2022.  I hope to see some of you in Santa Fe.

Road Trip: Colorado, Again

Lake Fork of the Gunnison
5x8 gouache

A couple of weeks ago, as summer was starting to heat up, the Southwest burst into flame.  Arizona in particular endured a couple of big wildfires east of Phoenix.  Although I live 150 miles from the nearest fire, the smoke enveloped our little valley in a thick, blue haze.  We were warned to limit our outdoor activities.  Because of the heat—it was hitting the mid-90s—we wanted to do our hiking in the morning, but unfortunately, that was the time of day when the smoke was at its worst.  Our daily hike became a short jaunt out to the dog pen so Raku could take care of business.

A typical smoke map from before we left.
The studio marked by the blue dot.

So, we decided to head to higher, cooler ground.  Our destination:  Lake City, Colorado, at 8660 feet.

Lake City's a beautiful town with many
historic homes and a small downtown. But
get there off-season, as it is ATV-crazy in the summer.

Lake City is in the San Juan Range in the southwestern part of the state.  As you may recall, just a few weeks ago we spent some time on the west side of the range, near Dolores and Cortez.  This time, we settled on the east side.  As with Dolores and Cortez, Lake City is a perfect base camp for hiking and plein air painting.  Nearby are the scenic towns of Pagosa Springs, Creede and Gunnison, plus many miles of roads and trails through forest.

Although the smoke didn't follow us to Lake City, the heat did.  Even at nearly 9000 feet, afternoons pushed the mercury up into the mid- to high 80s.  We hiked in the morning, painted at lunch time, and then hit the shade for the early afternoon.  It wasn't until near sundown that things cooled off again for an evening walk.  We did find a wonderful trail in a canyon that fell into shade early and edged along a cool creek.  We walked that trail every evening.

Because it was a short trip, I only came back with a handful of gouache sketches.  But being somewhere cool and smoke-free was the point of it all.

Below are all 5x8 gouache:

Finally! A Gouache Demonstration

As most of you know, I've been sketching in gouache over the last year.  Since this medium is new to many of you, I've had requests to present a demonstration in gouache.  Well, wait no longer!  I've filmed two videos for you.

The demonstration is in two parts.  In the first part, I talk about my Pandemic Sketchbooks—the what, when, where and why.  In the second, I give you the how. 

Both of the videos are on my YouTube channel.   You can see the first one here (https://youtu.be/lh2wwJDayvg):

and the second one, here (https://youtu.be/0oUEokVHgqI):

Pandemic Sketchbooks, Vol. 2

5x8 Casein Sketch from Pandemic Sketchbooks, Vol.2

If you've been following me on Instagram, you'll have been witness to my almost-daily hikes into the little canyon behind my studio.  I started these hikes not long after New Mexico “locked down,” back when the pandemic began in the spring.  I began a series of sketchbooks, which I'm calling the Pandemic Sketchbooks, with the intent not just of making studies of the canyon but also of clearing my mind.  The act of sketching, plus the hike in and out, gives me an hour or so in which I am happily removed from the world, a world that seems so full of politics and anger and fear and disappointment.  The canyon wrens and cliff swallows don't care about any of that, and when in their company, neither do I.

This week, I finished Volume 2.  If you're not one of my Instagram followers, I thought I'd share a few of my favorites from that volume.  Many of these were made in gouache, and I've written about that medium before.  But most recently, I'm been working in casein.  Stephen Quiller turned me on to that.  It's very similar to gouache, but unlike gouache, it can't easily be rewetted once dried, so it's not available in pans but only in tubes.  I tend to waste more than I like, but over time, I'll fine-tune the amount I need to squeeze out for a sketch.  One thing I've discovered is it's best to put out only the colors you need for the start, which for me includes ivory black, raw sienna and Venetian red.  I don't even think about putting out the other colors—Naples yellow, rose red, ultramarine blue, Shiva green and titanium white—until much later.

By the way, my 50% Sale is still going on until the end of December.  Anything on my web site store is eligible, and I include free shipping to the lower 48 states.  For full details:  http://www.mchesleyjohnson.com/holidaysale/

5x8 gouache

5x8 gouache

5x8 gouache

5x8 casein

5x8 casein

5x8 gouache

5x8 casein

New Book: Casein Painting with Stephen Quiller

Will casein become the next new “thing”?

As many of you know, I recently fell in love with painting in gouache.  Until then, I'd never been fond of water media.  Watercolor, especially, was my nemesis; for someone who has always painted in more opaque media like pastel and oil, watercolor required me to shift into reverse and drive backwards.  Gouache, on the other hand, let me put the pedal to the metal and accelerate for the wide open spaces.

Casein paint is similar to gouache in that it is water-based, opaque and dries to a matte finish.  However, whereas the binder for gouache is usually gum arabic, for casein paint it is casein, which is made from milk.  What this means for the artist is that, over time, casein becomes insoluble and cannot be re-wetted.  Gouache, on the other hand, remains soluble and can be lifted—or damaged—by water.  Casein becomes much more durable as it ages.

Here's what Stephen Quiller says about casein:

The original formula used by Ramon Shiva included 20% of casein from skim milk, lime, pigments, a little oil and chemicals.  This mix is what gives casein such a beautiful, velvety visual quality.  A pine oil is added to the mix, which gives it an incredibly clean smell.  It has a soft visual quality that is unlike any other medium.  I love to use casein to help create an airiness and earthiness in a landscape; the dryness and the aged quality of architecture and boats; and the raw earthy feel of adobe.  It is truly magnificent and unsurpassed when used in this way.

Quiller, who is known worldwide for his books and videos on water media and also as the inventor of the “Quiller Wheel,” a very useful color aid for painters, has published a new book:  Casein Painting with Stephen Quiller: Casein Secrets Revealed in the Ultimate Definitive Guide.  The author, who will be one of the artists featured in a book I am working on, shared his new one with me.

Quiller, who has been painting in casein for over 50 years, offers his vast knowledge of the medium and includes demonstrations, suggested exercises and many useful tips.  Lifting the volume into the realm of fine art coffee table books are scores of beautiful images, many of them his casein paintings from the last half-century.  (I have included some here.)  The paintings, which show the breadth of casein's capabilities, delighted and inspired me to get my own set of casein and give it a try.

The book presents casein in a logical, easy-to-understand fashion, starting off with the basics of the medium plus detailed sections on its color possibilities.  Continuing with materials and equipment for both plein air and studio painting, the book then launches into creating different moods with the medium and seques into a wonderful section on using it for painting snow; and finally, it addresses the flexibility of casein with other media, and how it can be used to great effect with acrylic, watercolor, charcoal or pastel.  A gallery of richly-colored paintings completes the book.

Casein Painting with Stephen Quiller is available on his website at https://www.quillergallery.com/shop/casein-painting-with-stephen-quiller.html and is $29.95/softcover or $34.95/hardcover.

Here are a few of Stephen Quiller's stunning casein paintings.

"Elongated Shadows"
24x34 casein / Stephen Quiller

"High Mountain Patterns, Late July"
17x11 casein / Stephen Quiller

"Canyon Up Miner's Creek"
36x36 casein / Stephen Quiller

"Early August, Wolf Creek Pass"
36x36 casein / Stephen Quiller

Ghost Ranch Revisted—and an Upcoming Retreat

Ghost Ranch Morning
9x12 Oil - Available

Ghost Ranch and Abiqiui, New Mexico—Georgia O'Keeffe's old haunts.  These are my old haunts, too, as I've visited and painted in the area many times over the last 20 years.  This time, I spent three days there, painting in gouache and oil, and in reading Lesley Poling-Kempes' history of the property, Ghost Ranch.  

The cottage O'Keeffe stayed in when
first at Ghost Ranch. I doubt the handicap
assist rails were there in her day.

Base camp was our 1999 PleasureWay van, parked in a side canyon formed by a bent arm of red and grey hills.  We were nestled right in the crook of the arm.  From our post, we could see the blue anvil-head of the Pedernal.  O'Keeffe once said, “It’s my private mountain. It belongs to me. God told me if I painted it enough, I could have it.”  The mountain overlooks the entirety of the historic Piedra Lumbre Land Grant, a region of colorful hills, deep arroyos, and bright cliffs—“Piedra Lumbre” means “shining rock.”  Ghost Ranch occupies 21,000 acres of this stunning and very paintable landscape.

Once a dude ranch, and before that, the legendary home of the Archuleta brothers, who were notorious cattle rustlers, it now belongs to the Presbyterian Church.  The campus now offers many workshops and retreats, not just in spiritual matters, but also in the arts.  But for painters, Ghost Ranch is best known for its connection to O'Keeffe.  She started spending summers there as a guest in the 1930s.  After her husband, Alfred Stieglitz, died, she bought a piece of the ranch and moved there permanently.  Between her Ghost Ranch home and another house she owned in nearby Abiquiu, she spent the rest of her life—over forty years—painting the hills of the Piedra Lumbre.

The Ranch, with Chimney Rock illuminated
by the morning sun.

While reading Poling-Kempes' history, the characters that lived in this place were ever-present for me as I painted.  I couldn't help but think of them crossing the landscape on foot or on horseback through the sagebrush, or of guests arriving via the Ranch's Lincoln touring car, a behemoth that could hold seven passengers plus luggage and still somehow lumber over the one-lane dirt road, down through arroyos and over rock-strewn hills, that wound for forty miles from the train depot in Española.  And, of course, I imagined Georgia O'Keeffe, painting away at the foot of some particularly colorful hill that was cut by the rare rains into graceful curves.

Our trip wasn't all painting.  We hiked, too.

As some of you know, we had to cancel our Taos, New Mexico, painting retreat for this fall.  But we are planning for next year—and as a bonus, we are going to schedule in some time for painting at Ghost Ranch.   We'll spend a week in Taos, and then follow that with time at Ghost Ranch.  The Taos retreat will start Sunday evening, September 26, 2021, and will run through Friday, October 1.  Ghost Ranch, which won't officially be part of the retreat, will be that weekend.  Let me know if you're interested, and I'll send you details as we get them.  I hope you'll join us!

Here are some of the 5x8 gouache sketches from the trip:

View from the campground

This was the preliminary sketch I did for
"Ghost Ranch Morning".  I sketched this
the day before I did the oil version.

What's All This About Gouache?

Canyon Wall, 5x8 gouache 
One of my latest sketches from my "Pandemic Sketchbooks, Vol.2"

Gouache—what the French called the medium starting in the 18th century—is trending right now in the US.  Everyone seems to be experimenting with it.

In the graphic below, from Google Trends, you can see a big uptick in searching for the word “gouache” in May of this year.  Although the curve has dipped a bit since then, it's still higher than before.  It's also interesting to look at the map that shows which states search most often for the term.  The west coast and New England seem particularly interested in finding out more about this opaque water medium.

Number of Searches for "Gouache" since 2018

States with the Most Searches for "Gouache"

I first learned about gouache a long time ago while reading up on the history of illustration.  I learned much more about it by following the artist James Gurney in his blog.  Then I started playing with it myself a couple of years ago, when I wanted something more travel-ready than oil or pastels.  My good friend Douglas Runyan steered me to my current kit.  Now, as I check my Instagram feed and browse through the art instruction magazines, paintings in gouache or articles about gouache pop up regularly.

Gouache is basically opaque watercolor.  What gives it its distinctive opacity is the size of the pigment particles, which are larger than that used for watercolor.  Also, sometimes chalk is added to increase the opacity.

But why use gouache instead of watercolor?  Isn't watercolor just as travel-ready?  Well, the benefit of gouache lies in its opacity.  It lets the painter scumble one color over another for a beautiful “broken color” effect.  Also, it's easy to correct mistakes.  Nor does one have to worry about “saving the lights” when painting areas with bright highlights.

Gouache also dries to a matte finish, which is perfect for photography, since you don't have to worry about reflections.  This is why it was—and continues to be—used for illustration and commercial work.  

A Concept Sketch for an Advertisement in Gouache

But there's one problem with gouache, and that is that the darks dry a little light, losing some of their depth.  I often have to revisit the field sketch once I'm back in the studio and hit those darks again.

The Egyptians used gouache.  They combined ground pigment with honey or gum tragacanth—two binders also used in watercolor—to make a paste for decorating walls.  During the Middle Ages, it was used in manuscript illumination.  In the 20th century, before the advent of digital art, it was used in commercial art because it was “quick'n'dirty”—much faster than painting in oil if you just wanted to do a concept sketch.  Plus, as I mentioned, it photographed well.  The only problem with “designer's gouache” or “body color” as it was called then, was that not all of the colors were lightfast.  That has changed today, and most gouache manufacturers use lightfast pigments.

I'm continuing my practice of using it for my daily sketches.  I have a bag, ready to go, with everything I need in it, including a sheet of eggcrate foam to cushion my backside when sitting on a rock.  For me, painting in gouache is stress-free—just the prescription for today's times.

You can see more of my gouache sketches on my Instagram feed.

My Gouache Kit
(You can read more about it here)