clean-up time for gouache

 

My gouache palette had become a sticky mess, some colors were chalky, and one of the brushes I keep just for gouache did not fit inside. So I cleaned it up over the weekend, purging the colors that were chalky and those that were too close to another. Those I ended up with are all from M. Graham or Schmincke -- these have no opacifiers and if thinned with water (on good watercolor paper, not this handmade paper), they can be almost transparent like watercolor.

After removing the pans (and cleaning up their mucky undersides) I cleaned the plastic palette box with some soft scrub and Q-tips, making sure to rinse it well before attaching the pans with rubber cement.

These are the colors I began with, several left-over bits from Winsor & Newton that were heavy and chalky. The buff titanium is actually a watercolor but it comes in handy.

Some of the colors, while excellent pigments, were too close to each other to waste space in the palette. I can interchange them if I wish to later.

I learned a lot of information about these paints from Roz Stendahl's blog. She really KNOWS gouache and uses it beautifully.

Here, I tested greens before eliminating one yellow and deciding on which of two blues to keep.

BTW, I wrapped the handles of the three brushes I keep inside this palette with red electrical tape. That warns me that these brushes are for gouache only, not watercolor. I try to get them clean but gouache has bigger pigments that could mess with watercolor.