As an artist, you really only need 8 colours for a full range of colour. If you’re happy to mix on the go, and I’m always full of admiration for those artists I see painting on location with the tiniest of palettes, then 8 would be enough (some might argue, excessive). Unfortunately, my use of colour leans towards abundance and so my very ‘limited’ palette has 39 colours.

This video shows all of my 39 colour choices for my holiday artwork this January. For a full list of the colours and/or to read more about how to select the 8 must-have colours mentioned above, go to chasingthejoyartwork.com

www.chasingthejoyartwork.com/blog/libra-brain-choosing-a-holiday-colour-palette

To gouache, or not to gouache? That is the question.

My personal style is watercolour and I particularly love the juxtaposition of bright luminous colours with deep dark blue hues. However, I often find it difficult to make the watercolour bright enough, or, dark enough for my taste. So I thought I'd give gouache a go. Though I love the delicate transparency of watercolour glazes, sometimes you just want to make a bright splash, and for that, you need gouache!

I’ve put together a simple painting project video here to show you both my process and the Himi gouache, a great set to begin with.

To start, I always spray my paints to “wake them up”, then use a wet brush to pick up the colour. I’ve also made myself a colour swatch card on 300gsm paper, because a dry colour block can look very different from the colour they’ll be in your artwork; and also because I wanted to see how gouache would react with salt and splashes of water.

If you love bold bright colours like I do, then gouache is definitely something to consider!

Happy joy chasing.

Monique x

To read the full blog post visit chasingthejoyartwork.com

In this project I used:

0.3 2B mechanical pencil

Himi gouache 24 colour palette

300gsm watercolour paper

Prismacolor pencils

Music:

Back To Normal by Judson Crane