The best part of taking Color Theory my first semester at UNCW was the experience of trying gouache paints for the first time. For years at this point I had enjoyed working with both acrylics and watercolors, and I had a feeling that if I could master gouache, which combines some of the two media’s best traits, I might come to appreciate gouache even more. However, for the purposes of our class, we only worked with gouache briefly with strict requirements. Making my NC Native gouache paintings there was a great learning experience for me, and our color scheme restrictions required me to be creative about how I painted each of my frogs. However, I wanted to move beyond those 4”x4” paintings and experiment further with gouache on my own. So after taking Digital Photograph that Spring and taking a beautiful photo of a Southern Toad in my neighborhood, I thought I would use that toad that summer as the subject of my first personal gouache painting.

While I have seen pieces where people use gouache in a variety of methods, I decided to begin painting my Southern Toad the same way I had been taught in class, by mixing colors in large quantities and painting with them in flat, solid shapes. After sketching out my toad and the grass it rested on, I proceeded to mix and use one color at a time from light to dark, progressively filling my paper with each new color layer. At first, this process went simply, with the gouache so opaque that only a single coat was needed to cover the watercolor paper. However, difficulties piled up as the layers continued. While it sped things up to only need one coat anywhere, because gouache is water-based I also could not paint different colors on top of each other easily without muddying them. This meant the more shapes I added, the more time it took to carefully and cleanly paint along their every edge. Moreover, the more gaps I filled in, the harder it became to find the gaps of paper I still had left to cover. Add to that that I was figuring out my color scheme on the fly without any previous planning and this painting rapidly turned into a complicated paint-by-numbers puzzle.

Fortunately, once I worked through the grass and was able to begin on the toad’s bumpy textures, I began enjoying the process much more. Helpful as well to me was the fact that I had mixed most of my colors at that point, so it was much easier for me to figure out which of my mixtures would work best where. Finally, after freely working some blobs to give the impression of a blurry background, I was able to finish the piece by detailing the beautiful textures of the Southern Toad’s eyes. I did still have a few regrets with this piece. I should have checked the Southern Toad’s proportions more before jumping into paint, and added some more details to the grass closest to the toad, which should have also been in focus. Most of all, I probably should have planned my color scheme out thoroughly ahead of time, and made certain I mixed enough of them to last me the painting. However, it is learning these things that made this painting a useful experiment. Given how little experience I had with gouache up until this point, I am happy to have created a piece that, while not my best, has a unique style and interest to it I would like to incorporate more into future pieces. And while this piece taught me that the gouache process we used in Color Theory class may not be what I want to continue using for gouache paintings, it has me all the more excited to try new things with the medium and explore its potential further.