Gouache Painting

Introduction 

This was our third assignment for the painting unit. After looking at the pink soda painting on Mr.Laurences whiteboard for weeks, I was thrilled to discover I would also be able to try making my very own soda can. In this assignment we had to first pick an object to draw and paint, I choose a pear. Then we were asked to pick one of the primary colours (red,yellow,blue) or green as our foundational color to use when experimenting with the different tints, shades, and tone; so I choose the colour blue. In this assignment we are using a special type of paint called gouache, a paint with a text of acrylic paint and watercolors combined.

What is Tint,Shade, and Tone?

The first color technique we were meant to apply onto our object was tone shades. Tone means applying the color of grey paint, a mixture created between black and white. Over a 6 box scale, we experimented the tint shade by starting with the first box's tone being made out of mainly the color grey and a little bit of blue, through the 6 boxes each I continued adding more pink and less grey to the each of the boxes until the last box was made out of mainly pink and a little bit of grey. That was how we got our range of tint color scheme options.

The second color technique we used was painting shade tones. Shade means experimenting with the amount of black per (6) boxes/tones. We started with the first tone in the first box being made out of mainly black and a little bit of blue, then throughout the 6 boxes I proceeded to add more blue to the tones and less black. Eventually the 6th tone on the top box had a lot of blue and little black which looked similar to the original blue gauche color.

The third colour technique we used was the tint shades. In order to get tint shades we must continue adding white to our foundational colour (blue). From the starting tone being a very light blue with lots of white and a tint of blue to the original blue with a tint of white.

Here is another picture which exemplifies what tint, shade, and tone are and how they connect to the base colour blue.

Usage of Tint, Shade, and Tone in Painting

I started off deciding where to place my different tones, tints, and shade by looking at the object and finding the spots on the object which where the darkest and lightest. That is how I decided where to place my extreme shade and extreme tint as they are the most lightest and darkest colours in the color schemes. Then accordingly by looking at the different levels of light on the object I placed my different tone,shade, and tints. For example, I painted the bottom part of my pear a dark shade because there was a dark shadow beneath the pear which I was replicating. Another example of where I applied tint was on the object I could see the white lights on the pear, therefore I applied a gouache tint of a lot of white and a tint of blue to resemble the light on the pair.

Successes & Challenges

A challenge I faced during this assignment was when making the different color schemes for tint, shade, and tone I often (when experimenting with adding different amounts of paint to my colours) added too little or too much paint to my new colour which made it very similar to the other colour below. This meant in order to make an accurate swatch value scale I had to continue experimenting with how much paint I added to my new colours to keep the scale going. However a success I had was drawing my pear because I just followed the render, contour, and shade technique which we learnt during our second project in the drawing unit.