Teeth Final

"Teeth" gouache on paper, 28"x14"

FINISHED! here are a few lessons i learned while working on this:

1. gouache is always active (even if you mix it with acrylic medium)
2. you get it to shut up by sealing it with krylon UV-resistance clear acrylic coating (gloss finish)-- this also unifies the reflectivity of the surface
3. i should work from reference more often
4. no matter how much i want to work from a given palette, there's only so much i can do without yellow ochre
5. i may never grow out of teal
6. gesso is a poor man's titanium white gouache
7. practicing poor painting posture is bad for your knees (but great for alliteration!)

Teeth Drafts!

Finally making some progress on this. Bad photo for the last one, but it's just a preview before I decide what I'm doing to finish this off.

so my soul is rotting

yes, living as an isolated new grad from RISD is quite an awful experience. i started painting my own work for the first time in about 9 months and i realized how strange it is to work without other artists (particularly chad) breathing over my shoulder about my bad compositions. this is my first post here following a piece that will help me find a substitute for oils.

behold, my macbook camera photo of the concept sketch, followed by my pencil layout and four digital color keys. keep in mind that i colored those on a track pad-- so they are in no way a realistic reflection of my ability to color inside the lines.





i started painting the actual piece earlier tonight and found two things about gouache: it has a lot of push (like oils), though for a very short amount of time, and it is very forgiving. so far, it's making me feel like i wasted a whole lot of time trying to make acrylic my new bitch. acrylic is far more wily than i had realized before i started smacking gouache around.