Inspired by Minnie Small on Youtube I've been doing some small landscape paintings based on images from Google maps street view.
Have you ever just looked around on Google maps? Dropped the little man on a random spot in a random country and had a walk around. It's fascinating!
The paintings are done with gouache and are quite quick to do. I can get one or two done in an evening which is great for keeping my hand in the painting game without committing too much time.
The sketchbook I'm using is a little A5 one from Seawhite. The paper isn't the best for wet materials, but it was only about 60p so I don't mind.
I had a good look around this lake in China. I'd love to know what that colourful teepee type structure is as I saw a few of them around the lake. I also loved that image of the boy posing for a photo so I had to draw that. I switched things up by using colour pens rather than paint.
I like the mix of images and materials, all relating to one area, so I'm keen to do more pages like this.
Last summer, during our holiday to Austria, we visited Schönbrunn Palace. The palace grounds are so large they even house a zoo, which is apparently the oldest zoo in the world!
(They also have a bakery which offers apple strudel demonstrations!)
We spent a long time in the zoo, starting with the aquarium. I loved all the different colours and shapes of the fish and knew I wanted to make some art based on what I'd seen once I got home.
I created this painting in about an hour. I wasn't too concerned with getting all the details exactly right, I just wanted to play around with different materials and show all the colours.
For the background I used watercolours to make it look, well, watery!
I painted the fish using gouache paint as I find the colours are more vibrant than watercolours and it's easier to control. I added some gold acrylic paint which shimmers in the light like the real fishes scales.
I added details and brought out the shadows and highlights using colour pencils.
I love how this turned out and I'm really happy with the slightly messier style and mix of textures.
I'm getting really into gouache paint at the moment. I think it's really great for small illustrations, so I wanted to do more of those.
I started with a fun little self portrait of me in, what I like to call, my weekend unform; an oversized t-shirt and a pair of leggings. If I don't plan on leaving the house, this is probably what I'll be wearing.
I then thought it would be nice to document my over sized t-shirt collection. I think it all started with the Sunnydale High shirt which I got at a sci-fi convention when I was 15. They didn't have one small enough but I really wanted it so I just went with the bigger one.
Most of the other ones were gifts. One of my sisters gave me the CSI: Stotfold one which was custom made from Ebay (it's my hometown), my other sister gave me the 'I'm kind of a big deal on my blog' shirt, and my parents gave me the Eminem t-shirt after I pointed it out in the men's section of Peacocks.
I came up with these images when I was working on some designs for new colour in magnets, which I'll be sharing soon. I loved this set of four dogs in headresses and wanted to do more with them.
They look so grumpy about having to wear flower crowns!
I decided to print out the designs on a larger scale on to water colour paper to make some small paintings. I decided to use gouache paint as a way to keep practising with it. I thought its ability to produce flat, even colour would work well for the style I was going for with these paintings.
When painting it was easier to go over the printed lines and draw them in again afterwards with a black felt tip pen.
I'm so happy with how these turned out. Gouache paint was perfect for these. I'll probably print out more copies of these designs so I can keep practising.
I'm planning to make these four paintings in to prints but for now the original paintings are available to buy on my Etsy shop.
I've been following a few artists recently who use gouache paints. They're sort of a cross between watercolours and acrylic paints. I remembered that I actually have a set of gouache paints but I've never used them. They were on the equipment list for my art and design foundation course so I bought some, but never tried them out. That was about 9 years ago and luckily the paints are still in good condition.
I chose a photo from my America holiday to paint from. It shows the Multnomah falls near Portland, Oregon.
The paints took a little time to get used to how to use them but I'm happy with my first attempt. Here's a video of the painting, with some footage from the day we went to see the waterfalls.
Have you ever tried painting with gouache? What's your favourite medium to work with?
