Outdoor Gouache- Materials and Exercises

WinchesterArt.ca
My Materials

*missing here is I use old t-shirts as cleaning rags

Colour Palettes
For plein air sketching limited palettes are advantageous. Fewer colours means quicker mixing, plus your pretty well guaranteed colour harmony.

Please, spend some time studying value with just black and white.

Once you're comfortable with value, this is a great palette to study colour temperature. The two colours together make near black so the value range is great.
In this example, there is some vermilion pencil showing through from the initial sketch.
3

I love this palette. It's so simple, yet very versatile. You'll learn to mix cool and warm greens, and browns. BTW- There's a fair amount of red in earthy
greens.

My expanded palette, when I need a broader range. Beware of the pthalo blue; it’s extremely saturated.
Exercises
3 Value Study
This is the ultimate exercise, taught to me by former Pixar art directors. I've also noticed high level fine artists using this to plan paintings.

Determine what your goal for the painting is. What's the story and why are you painting it? Then mix any three values that will best suit your goal. Paint the
scene without any gradations/blending; all hard edges. You will be forced to group values, merging objects into larger patterns. Each time you are unsure
about which value to use, try and determine which will best convey your goal/story. Test your success by showing your study to someone and asking, “What
do you get from this?”. If their response describes your goal, you're successfully communicating.

Full Value Study

I recommend doing this after, keeping in mind the decisions you made and lessons you learned from the 3 value study. Now you can blend and work edges.

Do these studies from life, from master work, from photo, and from imagination. Do all 4 often, and thoughtfully, and watch your skills soar.

ref.
 3 value

full value
Value Control Swatches Study
Paint some small value swatches by mixing black and white: dark, mid dark, mid light, light. Then, using all your colours, mix random colours and paint colour
strips matching the value swatches. Scan your study and convert to greyscale to test your success. There should be little to no value difference.

Matching the values swatches with color: warms, cools and neutrals. Same image, converted to greyscale.

Imagined Rocks Temperature of Light Study

Paint two rocks from imagination. One in diffused warm light: as your values get lighter they get warmer. One in cool diffused light: as your values get lighter
they get cooler. Try adding some moss in and out of shadow while maintaining the colour temperature relationship you've established.

warm diffused light cool diffused light

3 Tube Temperature Study
Before you start, ask yourself: Where is the darkest cool? The lightest cool? The darkest warm? The lightest warm? The darkest neutral? The lightest
neutral?
Try and accomplish what you determine with just these 3 tubes of paint: Ultramarine Blue, Burnt Sienna, and Titanium White.
Again this can be done from life, from master work, from photo and from imagination.

ref range of this palette

Happy painting!