My box of gouache paints from Cheap Joe's arrived today. I played around a little with mixing colors. I don't like the purple, I guess I'll need to either buy a violet or different reds and blues... I really like the pink I get mixing red and white, and the green looks nice too. I need to get out a bigger piece of paper and really play with this paint.
Elaine, I'm so glad you're giving gouache a try!
ReplyDeleteYou're going to have trouble getting a good purple mix because of that Prussian blue. It has a green cast to it which, when mixed with any of the medium to warmer reds means it's going to gray things down because of the complements of green and red.
Of course M. Graham could fix all this if they would simply start making PB60 in their gouache line (they have it in their oil, watercolor and acrylic lines).
You can read about my campaign to get them to do this in my post
http://rozwoundup.typepad.com/roz_wound_up/2008/10/project-640-tub.html
Right now as it stands you could use their French Ultramarine Blue and have some improvement.
In the meantime you might also want to select their Quin Violet (PV19) which I actually use as a cool red on my palette.
I buy Schmincke's gouache as well as M. Graham, and Schmincke's gouache line has two PB60s in it. My favorite is the Dark Indigo. (I think the other is Delft Blue but it's not in front of me so I can't swear to it).
Happy painting.
Roz