Watermedia Techniques:

Are you passionate about painting with watercolor, but want to learn new techniques that will expand your versatility in this medium? This instructional art video features internationally-known and watermedia specialist Stephen Quiller, and provides both new and intermediate artists with tips for incorporating gouache, or Italian waterpaint, into their watercolor paintings.

Gouache is different from traditional watercolor paint because the size of the pigment particles suspended in the water are much larger, and the ratio of pigment to water is much higher.

Throughout the course of this lesson, Quiller demonstrates how striking combinations of watercolor and gouache to heighten the color and texture of a mountain landscape. With his signature teaching style, Quiller explores the natural transition from transparent to opaque paints that this technique allows.

The video begins in the studio, where Quiller explores and demonstrates these depth and translucent quality of watercolor and gouache by using an array of application techniques. Then, he moves outside the studio to put these techniques to work while creating an on-site reference painting of a beaver pond.

After capturing this natural scene for inspiration, Quiller brings the canvas back inside the studio, and gets to work building a larger painting around it. Students of all levels will benefit from the demonstration of palette arrangement, color shifts that can occur while drying, lifting color, and how to use the white of the paper to create sparkle and luminosity.

Quiller rounds out the lesson with a discussion of flat and round brushwork, wet-on-wet painting, wet-on-dry/control wash, and dry-on-dry techniques that are essential when working with the delicate medium of watercolor and gouache.