How to create a transparent effect with gouache or watercolor painting?

Gouache painting is a kind of painting made by mixing powder pigment with water. Its colors can produce gorgeous, soft, bright and rich artistic effects on the screen. The nature and techniques of gouache are closely related to oil painting and watercolor painting. Like watercolor painting, water-soluble pigments are used. Opaque gouache pigment will produce different degrees of watercolor effect if more water is mixed, but it can't be compared with watercolor in water color activity and transparency. Containing powder means limiting the smooth activity of watercolor. Therefore, gouache painting generally does not use the method of multi-moisture color matching, but uses white and pink to adjust the brightness of color, and expresses its unique color effect through thick ink and heavy color. This is similar to the painting of oil painting. Because opaque gouache pigment and oil painting pigment are both pigments with hiding power, gouache is a kind of painting between watercolor painting and oil painting. It absorbed some methods and techniques of watercolor painting and oil painting, and formed its own technique system. In foreign countries, gouache painting has no independent painting species. Generally classified as watercolor painting, it is called opaque watercolor painting, or advertising poster painted with gouache pigment. Collectively referred to as gouache. In China, due to the restriction of social, economic and cultural conditions, the popularization of fine arts and the rapid development of practical fine arts have promoted the continuous popularization and improvement of gouache painting. It has a complete and systematic set of techniques that are different from other paintings, and it has become an independent painting with a mass base in the field of painting and is deeply loved by professional painters, thus showing its unique aesthetic value and artistic style. The origin and development of gouache painting is very early, which can be proved by the murals of ancient caves, tombs and temples painted with water-soluble pigments at home and abroad. For example, the murals of Dunhuang Grottoes in China during the Northern Wei Dynasty, the Buddhist art of Xinjiang Grottoes in the Western Jin Dynasty and the Southern and Northern Dynasties, the murals and meticulous paintings of Yongle Palace in the Six Dynasties, as well as ancient college paintings and folk paintings, are all painted with water-soluble powdery pigments. Most of the murals in ancient Roman underground tombs are rubber powder paintings made of glue or egg white mixed pigment powder. The original murals of Italian Renaissance artists were discovered by experts in the later restoration process, and some of them were also painted with rubber powder pigment. These paintings, which have long appeared at home and abroad, all have the basic artistic characteristics of gouache, which shows that the production and use of gouache pigments have a long history. This kind of ancient gouache painting is of great significance to the perfection and development of modern gouache painting, although the varieties of pigments used are limited and the tools and methods of painting are different from those of modern gouache painting. Modern gouache is actually a branch of the development of British watercolor painting in the18th century, and its emergence and development are closely related to the emergence and development of watercolor painting in continental Europe. According to the existing art materials, it can be concluded that 15 to 16 century German master Diu Lei (1471-kloc-0/528) used watercolors to paint landscapes, animals and plants when he was studying painting. The watercolors he uses are often mixed with opaque white and pink, or bright parts are painted with white and pink, which is the performance effect of gouache painting. Diu Lei's watercolor painting has just started. As a variety and method of painting, it was not until18th century that British watercolor painting gradually improved and became an independent painting in the painting world. In the early stage of the emergence and development of watercolor painting art, the value of watercolor painting was not fully recognized by people. People think that watercolor painting is not as high in aesthetic value and economic value as oil painting. They are used to looking at this new kind of painting with the traditional eyes of appreciating oil painting, unable to get rid of the influence of the superiority theory of oil painting, and regard watercolor painting as a kind of low-level painting. To this end, many watercolor painters learn from the painting techniques of oil painting to improve the expressive force of watercolor and strive to improve the artistic value and status of watercolor. In the process of drawing lessons from oil painting performance skills, only by using white, pink and opaque colors can we achieve the full, in-depth, concrete and heavy effect of oil painting performance. In this way, watercolor painting actually lost the smooth and transparent artistic characteristics of traditional watercolor painting and became a gouache painting similar to oil painting. By the second half of the18th century, it had become a branch of the watercolor painting family (see Figure 3 "Life in halim" for works appreciation). In the process of gouache painting, transparent watercolor is used as the first background color at first, and then opaque colors are used to draw the scene into a concrete three-dimensional space effect, which makes it have a strong sense of reality. The finished work lost the smooth and transparent artistic features of traditional watercolor painting and formed a modern gouache painting (color map 1).

Color map seen from Aston lawn 1 Clifton

Francis Danby's modern gouache painting in China was developed after the founding of New China. Previously, it was only used for publicity and advertising (so gouache pigments sold in the market are usually called advertising colors). Gouache painting has two major functions: ornamental and practical, and its expressions are realistic and decorative. What's more noteworthy is that in the decorative painting of gouache painting, some techniques and formal factors of national traditional painting and folk painting are integrated, which makes the painting style present a striking, novel and unique oriental style (see appreciation map 13 "Dance"). This opens up a new future of gouache in decorative painting and a broad new field for gouache. The performance characteristics and application of gouache painting The most important feature of gouache painting is the powder content and opacity of pigment. Gouache pigment is easily soluble in water and is an opaque pigment with strong hiding power and adhesion. That is to say, the gouache paint layer can closely cover the base layer and the bottom layer. After drying, the gouache color is very strong, and the surface presents a unique aesthetic feeling like dull velvet. Because gouache contains a certain amount of white powder, there is obvious difference between dry and wet colors, that is, the color is dark when wet, white and pink appear on the surface after drying, the brightness is stronger than when wet, and the color vividness is weakened. This situation makes it more difficult to master the wet and dry changes of colors in gouache painting. Only when the painter gradually accumulates experience in practice can he achieve the expected effect. The tools, materials and operations used in gouache painting are relatively simple, and the size of the picture frame is different, and the extensive or fine painting style, specific or general description can be adapted. It has a wide range of applications and is very convenient. It is suitable for painters to go out to sketch, collect living materials and draw the first draft of color paintings. Because the water pink block can be painted very evenly, softly and clearly, it is very suitable for expressing simple, generalized, vivid and strong picture effects. Therefore, artists often choose it to draw paintings with various decorative styles. In addition, gouache is also suitable for drawing plane advertisements, posters, pattern design, architectural design renderings, stage art design drawings, etc. Four questions about gouache learning At present, gouache has become an indispensable part of color basic teaching in painting, practical art, stage art and other majors in China. In the enrollment of these professional colleges, gouache is mostly taken as an examination subject to measure the color expression ability of candidates. In order to achieve better gouache learning effect in a short time, it is necessary to raise awareness and clarify the correct learning methods and ways. 1. The relationship between color and sketch Sketch and color are two important basic courses in art teaching. When learning, learn sketch first, and then learn color; From easy to difficult, step by step; It can also be staggered in stages. The main task of learning sketch is to improve the ability of observing and understanding the body and master the skills of expressing the structure and three-dimensional space with lines and light and dark tones; The basic learning requirements of color, in addition to using color to complete the task of sketching, must also understand the hue, lightness, purity, cold and warm elements that constitute the color personality, and understand the color phenomenon according to its unique observation method. In the practice of sketching, through the blending and application of colors, we can improve our ability to feel the beauty of colors and master the contrast, harmony and unity of color rules and expression skills. Sketch is the basis of color painting. When you start to learn color, there are often two disadvantages: first, you only pay attention to the relationship between light and shade in sketch, and only play the elements of color brightness change when expressing objects; Secondly, constrained by the long-term inherent concept of color, when observing color, the complex color change phenomenon caused by the influence of light and environment is ignored. Therefore, in the primary stage of color sketch learning, we don't need to be too demanding about the correctness of sketch relationship, but should focus on the understanding of inherent color and environmental color. Environmental color is a central issue in color sketch. The relationship between sketch and color needs to be gradually unified and improved in the process of continuous practice.

In addition, the progress of sketching and color learning should be synchronized from easy to difficult, and it is impossible to get the ideal learning effect by touching complex and difficult color sketching topics from the beginning. Experienced color teachers should be good at grasping color practice topics suitable for students of different learning stages and levels.

2. Several characteristics of technical learning Art is a highly technical subject, and art learning focuses on training and mastering technology. To master the methods and skills of gouache painting, we must follow the learning rules of the subject in order to achieve effective results. Of course, technical education must also include important aesthetic education. The main characteristics of technical learning are: sequence. From easy to difficult, from simple to complex is the progress principle that can not be ignored in subject teaching. At present, in China's professional art colleges, sketch teaching has formed a complete and reasonable sketch teaching system, from geometric sketch to portrait, from indoor static objects to outdoor sketch, which is of decisive significance for laying a solid modeling foundation. However, in the teaching of color sketch, the order is not very strict, which is incompatible with the progress of sketch. In this way, at the beginning of learning color, it is impossible to take complex and difficult-to-express objects as sketch topics. If you draw still life, without props, utensils, interlining, etc., it is difficult to organize a set of suitable and perfect still life. Therefore, the teaching of sketch color should be improved from the main aspects to improve the learning efficiency. Generally speaking, color sketch begins with indoor still life, and then enters landscape sketch. Landscape sketch should also pay attention to the progress of difficulty, starting with simple scenery composition and then drawing more complicated scenery. The task of sketching color characters should be carried out in the final stage of color learning, and whether to arrange the task of characters should consider the needs of the profession. Stiffness The basic training of technical subjects should be very strict, which is the universal principle of teaching, and art teaching is no exception. The essential meaning of strictness is to oppose arbitrariness. In art colleges, the strictness of basic teaching is reflected in the implementation of syllabus, teachers' teaching plan and strict technical guidance according to the requirements of syllabus. Basic training is essentially a kind of restriction, which limits the arbitrariness and strictness of drawing lessons from teaching requirements. Only through strict training can we have more freedom and strong expressive force in future artistic expression, otherwise the artistic expressive force in the future is limited. This is a dialectical relationship. Repeatability. The study and training of any technology must be repeated and tempered to achieve the goal. Only after the accumulation of quantity can a qualitative leap occur. Ignoring the quantity of quality requirements is an undesirable practice that lacks strict requirements. Only through repeated training can technical progress be made. Insist. Basic learning is generally easy to make people feel boring, but the continuous development and progress of painting skills can not cross this important stage. It is directly related to the success or failure of learning. The so-called "persistence is victory" shows that the will and perseverance of learning are closely related to success and victory. Taking sketch as an example, it is easy to draw three or five sketches outdoors for 20 minutes every day; If you sketch every day for six months, three years, five years or even a lifetime, it will be a great thing. Many famous painters and sketch masters grew up in this way. Therefore, "perseverance" is the guarantee of success, and so is color learning. 3. Several forms of color painting exercises, in addition to understanding the color principle and drawing color legends, mainly achieve the purpose of learning through sketching exercises. If we combine some color sketching exercises with sketching exercises, copy some famous works, or make some color paintings based on memory and imagination, we can promote color learning more comprehensively and quickly. Sketch. Sketch is a way of painting according to the concrete object in front of you. Sketch is different from indoor sketch and outdoor sketch. Indoor sketch is mainly still life and portrait; Outdoor scenery is dominant. According to the teaching order, do indoor sketch exercises first, and then do outdoor sketch exercises. Because indoor sketching objects can be arranged according to students' different levels and teaching requirements, and the theme is clear, the content is simple and the light is stable, which is convenient for learning basic techniques and preparing for outdoor sketching exercises under complex conditions. The frame size and duration of indoor sketch work should be determined according to specific objects and learning requirements. The quarto sketch exercise with less complicated theme usually takes 6 to 10 hours; Simple homework, 8 or 6 sheets, can be completed in 3 to 4 hours; A still life with complicated contents can be completed with folio paper, which takes about 20 hours. This kind of homework is called long-term homework, which requires rigorous composition, uniform color change, and can use various techniques to describe objects concretely and vividly, and the picture has an overall effect. There is also a kind of sketch homework, which takes a short time and simply represents the object, or only focuses on some characteristics of the object, which is called short-term homework. The process of sketching is the process of observing, feeling, understanding, studying and repeatedly exploring the object of expression. Therefore, if you finish an assignment, you may achieve some success, or you may have some shortcomings or even fail. This is normal, because the improvement of painting ability is often learned from failure. So pay attention to the summary after finishing the exercise. Sketch is an important subject in the basic training of painting. Without this foundation, it is difficult to do other forms of homework exercises, such as sketching, copying, memorizing and imagining painting. Of course, other forms of practice will also promote the improvement of sketching ability. Color sketch. This kind of exercise can improve students' perception of color. That is, an intuitive response to color. This point has not been recognized and valued by many beginners. In fact, this is the same as emphasizing the sketch of life in sketch learning to cultivate the ability to record the body dynamics of objects instantly. At the beginning of the transition from sketch modeling to color modeling, I was always used to looking at the relationship between light and shade of objects, and drawing objects as inherent color sketches with monotonous colors. In order to change this wrong habit of understanding color, it is effective to take color sketch as an operation form. Because it focuses on cultivating and improving students' ability to instantly record the color feelings of objective objects. The time of color sketch should be short, a few minutes to ten minutes; The frame should be small, about 16, and the number should be large. The key point is to distinguish the hue of objects in different time, light, climate, season and environment, and is not limited to the specific description of the body (color pictures 2, 3 and 4).

Color picture 2 Still life Author unknown

Color map 3

Copy of color map 4. This is the main way to learn painting. People think that learning Chinese painting should start from copying, and learning western painting such as oil painting and watercolor painting should start from sketching. In fact, no matter what painting you learn, the whole learning process contains the content of copying. The purpose of copying is to study and understand the style of masters or excellent works of art, learn their expression methods and artistic skills, draw nutrition from them, and improve their aesthetic ability of works of art. If it is combined with sketch, we can choose suitable copying works according to the content and progress of sketch. Understand and analyze the works before copying, don't have a little knowledge. Too much plagiarism or plagiarism of poor quality works may even have the opposite effect, which should be highly valued. In addition, you can also use watercolor or gouache tools to copy oil paintings. In particular, the opacity of gouache pigment is more similar to oil painting. The artistic treatment, color and expression in oil painting can be used for reference by gouache painting. There will be a certain distance in color between the printed matter and the original, so it needs to be carefully selected. So it is best to copy the original excellent gouache. Gouache memory painting. When we use aesthetic consciousness to observe the environment around our lives or appreciate the beautiful scenery of nature, we will be infected by the artistic conception, atmosphere and artistic conception of the scenery, and even leave an unforgettable impression. If you write down this impression in color from memory, it is a color memory painting. This has similar requirements and significance to color sketch, but the difference is that sketch is done on the spot and dictation is done afterwards; Sketch focuses on training keen observation, while dictation focuses on cultivating memory of color phenomena; Sketch emphasizes sensibility and dictation tends to be rational. Memory painting can also play the role of creating imagination. With the further development of memory painting, it will gradually transition to imaginative painting and creation. For example, some painters' outdoor sketches may not be finished or drawn neatly, and they often need to rely on memory and imagination for artistic processing indoors. You can also sketch the composition draft with imaginary colors, and sometimes you can get better performance.