Color & Techniques

These are all the tutorials that focus on colors and techniques. This is a great place to browse if you're having difficulties with a specific aspect of working with gouache. You'll also find these tutorials within the themes where they were originally shared.

Painting a Rock Wall

A quick painting exercise to help you explore the steps involved to create a dynamic rock wall.

Brush Trials

This is a quick and easy exercise to help you figure out which of your brushes will work best for painting plant shapes!

Warm Vs Cool Color Mixing

This is a replay of a live class that covers how choosing warm or cool colors will affect the results we get, and how to make sure we're starting with the correct colors.

Dry Brushing & Damp Blending

I use these essential techniques in nearly every painting, so it's worth familiarizing yourself with them!

Winsor & Newton Mixing Set

This is a great little set of paints that I turn to often. In this video I'll show you how to make a color chart with your paints and you'll see some of the mixing possibilities of this set.

Lively Browns

Lets look at how to mix a basic brown and how we can make them more dynamic when we use them in landscapes.

Browns with CMYK

Mixing browns with cyan, magenta and yellow instead of the regular primaries is a little different. Here I'll go over the things you need to know.

Leafy Shapes

Adding interesting plant shapes is a huge part of painting landscapes. In this video we'll go through a page of different shapes using a single round brush.

Mixing Greens

There's a lot of possibilities when it comes to green, so lets take a look at how the colors we choose can affect the greens we create.

Waterfall Practice Exercise

Waterfalls are easy to add with a little white gouache and a dry-brushing technique, but it's worth testing out some different styles on scrap paper first. In this video we'll try out different waterfall shapes.

Easy Waterfall Plants

This is a fun exercise for creating a waterfall that is full of details, but really only consists of groups of simple shapes!

Blending Exercises

Try out some different approaches to blending colors together.

Creating the Perfect Torn Edge

You can add so much character to a painting with a torn edge. This is my favorite way to create a curl-free torn page.

Painting a Muted Color Wheel

Not all color wheels need to be made from primary colors. Here we'll use alternative colors to create a muted color wheel- perfect for moody autumn landscapes.

Flat Brushes

Explore the marks your brushes can make to expand the textures in your landscapes.

Round Brushes

Explore the marks your round brushes can make to expand the textures in your landscapes.

Watercolor Brushes

Get an idea of how using watercolor brushes can affect our results with gouache.

Specialty Brushes

Got other weird and wonderful brushes? Let's try out those too!

Brush Care

Thankfully gouache is not too tough on our brushes, but lets take a look at the best way to keep them in tip-top shape.

Protecting Gouache

If you're looking for some added protection for your gouache paintings, these are some options for you.

Consistency

Want to get nerdy about consistency? Lets take a look at how to recognize the perfect thickness of paint and what we should be using it for.

Mountain Textures

Try out this fun and easy way of creating snow-capped mountains with a basic dry brushing technique.

Warm vs Cool Primary Colors

Let's take a look at warm and cool primary colors and how this affects the colors that we can create.

Matching Colors

Working from photographs, let's have a go at creating the colors that we see.

Fall Colors

Let's explore all the beautiful colors we can use for autumn scenes!

Autumn Path Study

Sometimes we might want to quickly test out an idea before we commit to a bigger painting. Here I'll show you how I approach this.

Forest Slices

There's so many different flavors of green! In this video I'll show you how I like to explore new combinations.

Underwater Color & Techniques

Try out some of the techniques for painting underwater scenes in this collection of mini-paintings.

Basic Rocks - Part 1

How to use a simple value scale and basic brushes to create rocky shapes.

Basic Rocks - Part 2

Learn how to embellish basic rocks with other colors, plants and moss.

Sunset Swatches

Have a go at mixing some sunset colors using the paints that you currently have. You'll be amazed at the variety!

Landscape Slices

Loosen up with some abstract landscapes, focusing on color and simple layers to capture a scene.

Finding Inspiration

In this lesson I'll walk you through how I use real-life to inspire the basic layouts for abstract landscapes.

Forest Magic - Color Palette

Explore a range of colors with me as we choose a palette for the Forest Magic projects.

Painting Fog

Learn how to capture softness and subtle color shifts to create a foggy effect.

Painting Bokeh

Brighten up any plain background with a pretty bokeh effect to add a sprinkle of magic.

Painting Light Beams

Capture light and illumination with this easy and effective gouache technique!

Adding Sparkling Details

Capture bright planty details in dark areas using simple shapes and vibrant colors.

Watercolor Basics

Brush up on the basics of using water to create hard and soft edges with watercolor.

Shaping Stone

Try out the techniques you'll need to paint stones of all shapes and add your own mysterious symbols.

Painting Gemstones

Explore the techniques used to paint polished gemstones.

Painting Crystals

Try out the techniques used to paint shining crystal shards.

Breaking Down a Reference Photo

Let's take a look at my approach to breaking down a reference photo to make painting easier.