Switching from gouache to acrylic paint

Oh man. I was loving gouache all year. I got really familiar with the medium and made about seven sweet pictures with it. I was fully prepared to use gouache as my medium of choice. However, today I destroyed four of my pictures while attempting to varnish them!

I kept hearing that gouache was considered a practice medium. But couldn’t I just spray it with varnish and call it a day? I want to start painting larger imagery and I’m SO HAPPY I ran into this issue now before I attempted a large picture and destroyed that as well. I really want to make paintings that don’t have to be protected behind glass and look all pro and all that. So I learned about varnish and figured a spray varnish would be safer on gouache as perhaps a “paint on” type of varnish could destroy the gouache underneath. Well, the spray on type can destroy the picture as well. And even if you have a light hand when spraying, the colors can change drastically on you; my blue-based reds ended up looking fuschia on me so even a light spray will totally change your picture. Ahhh.

Luckily I have acrylic supplies! My Mom asked for me to paint her a picture to hang in her entryway so I have a complete acrylic setup as well… sturdier brushes, decent pigments, and assorted glazes and mediums (used to change the consistency of the paint). I did an acrylic “boot camp” in high school so I was able to fake my way through the painting for my Mom this summer. Perhaps someday I do oils? I thought painting in oil was really toxic but I’ve been hearing about natural solvents to use, perhaps someday. And I don’t want to lose momentum buying new supplies ($$!) and waiting for them to ship and not take advantage of all the acrylic paints I have lying around. I’m excited though to paint larger format and make imagery that doesn’t have to be framed behind glass.

I watched an acrylic painting class today and learned the proper way (or at least one way) of “the way” to paint acrylic as in retrospect the picture for my Mom looks stiff and cartoony. I might attempt to paint without first drawing the final image out. I can do that with pencil so why couldn’t I do that with paint? I can just paint over any mistakes and it will look more professional. Ahhh, wish me luck on this new journey… it seems to align moreso with the path other artists follow: learn to paint values with gouache and then proceed to acrylic or oils.

But, you can check out what these pictures looked like before the varnishing incident!