GOUACHE – the most forgiving medium

In my four decades or so as a professional artist, fine and commercial, my most successful medium, from a financial perspective was gouache.

For those who may not know, gouache (also called body-colour) is a form of watercolour paint, but with a denser, “gummier” pigment and more body and opacity. All of which makes it a highly versatile medium. Add more water, and it’s virtually watercolour, use less water, or none, it can be applied almost like acrylic or even oil-paint.

These days, gouache is mostly the go-to medium for commercial artists, especially poster designers requiring large areas of flat, uniform colour on stretched papers.

I was unusual as a late 20th century artist, in that for the first part of my career I used gouache extensively for making “serious” fine art images, which turned out to be advantageous in two ways. Firstly; I found that my “serious” gouache paintings were highly commercial in themselves – in that they sold well, and secondly; when I made the transition to commercial art and illustration, I had developed all the requisite familiarity with this most commercial of paints.

Several past posts have already been devoted to the pictures I made during the latter, commercial part of my career. So, presented here for the first time is a selection of “fine-art” gouaches, painted mainly after I left art school until the late 1980’s. All but the most “watercoloury” one of these were sold, which reflects the relative success I had regarding the gouache versus watercolour.