Falling in Love with gouache

Actually Gouache was one of my first mediums on my art journey. I bought a set of Reeves Gouache paints, tried them once or twice and put them away. I tried them again, also a long time ago, did not like them and - put them away.

In April 2024 I rediscovered them and mixed them with my watercolor inks (I do not know if anyone else ever tried that?). It worked. I am having a blast painting with Gouache. I don't know how long this joy will last, but at the moment I am deeply enjoying this medium. 

And yes, my focus has changed a bit - from creating AI images (which I still do) to actually sitting down and painting with a brush.
 

Experimenting with watercolor inks and gouache

I love to do strange things with art mediums. In case you are following my blog you will know that just now I am deep into watercolor inks. I had neglected them somewhat and now I love painting with them. Another art medium I have been neglecting is Gouache. Yesterday I asked myself "Why not combine Gouache and watercolor inks?" So I went for my very old set of gouache paints from Reeves bought ages ago, took a tube of brilliant red and put a tiny blob of it on my palette. Then I went for the Ecoline warm grey watercolor ink bottle and dropped a tiny drop on the palette as well. It seemed to work. 

Mixing colors from different mediums was one thing - using a waterbrush to paint with gouache was another thing, I did a google search and most of the information I got there was against doing that. Well, I had to try myself. And it worked for me as well! Of course I very carefully cleaned the waterbrush afterwards.

And here is the painting:

Create a Coloring Page with ColorBliss

You can create a coloring page with almost every AI Art generator - in one of my last blog posts I described the process and the necessary steps in detail.

Some days ago I discovered a website which makes creating coloring pages very easy: It's name is colorbliss.art. There is a free plan which allows you to create 3 coloring pages for free. Once you've done that you can get another three credits if you share the website on social media.

This is one of the coloring pages I created. You can download the file by clicking on the image. It comes as a png file. I then open Open office Writer and paste the image into the document and then export it as pdf.

Important information: ColorBliss just changed the pricing. You have nine free coloring pages, then you have to pay!

What you can do with left over paint

I use a small yoghurt container for mixing my watercolor inks. Sometimes the ink will be used up when the painting is finished. But sometimes there is still paint left. 

I painted this tree with leftover paint, a mixture of vermillion and night blue. It is not more than a quick sketch, but in doing this I practised brushstrokes with my waterbrush. In addition to this I practised my handling of adding water to the paint (I added tiny drops with a dropper).

But I did not stop here. I thought "Why not use this quick sketch as a starter image?

At first I tried Playground AI, giving the starter image a strength of 40. As you can see Playground did use the color but changed the tree somewhat. 

Playground gives you a very user friendly way of handling the starter image. You can change the strength of it gradually. 

So I tried a higher strenght, and got the image below. Here the strength is 50, and you can see that is is more similar to the painting, but still has another feel to it.

What did I learn?

1. With watercolor inks no left over paint is lost. You can still do a rough sketch with it.

2. With AI you can change this rough sketch into something worth keeping.

Challenge: Create a painting with only two hues

 At the moment I am deeply enjoying my watercolor inks from either Pebeo (called Colorex) or Royal Talens (Ecoline). These watercolor inks are very vivid. They are not lightfast, which is no problem for me because I do not intend to sell the originals. I wanted to take up the challenge of only using two hues: "Night" from Colorex/Pebeo and "Fir Green" from Ecoline/Royal Talens. Both of these inks come in little bottles, usually both with droppers.

I used an small empty yoghurt container as a palette, used both of the hues coming out of the bottle, added with water and mixed with one another. You can see the result below. 

Creating a coloring page with AI Art Generators

I want to practice more with my liquid watercolors. Some time ago I watched a video about how you can get more practice with watercolours using coloring pages, and so I thought "why not create my own coloring pages"? OK, there are quite a few steps:

1. Create a simple coloring page without any colored pencils. In the past, whenever I tried to do that the AI added pencils or colored pencils. But I do not want them on the image. In addition to that it has to be simple, because I have to use watercolor paper, so I have to trace the image on the printed paper. 
2. Open a file with Open office writer and paste the image. Then save it as a pdf.
3. Have the pdf printed 
4. Trace onto watercolor paper.
5. Have fun with my liquid watercolors

Here's the result of step #1: I used Nightcafe Studio and the following prompt:

Kids coloring page, very simple, pixar cartoon field of roses, cute cat, plain, simple

It will take a while till I will have done the next steps. In any case I will show you the results of my coloring practice with my liquid watercolor!

Green Goblin - AI versions

In one of my last blogposts I published one of my latest paintings - a green goblin. Of course I wanted to see what the AI could do with it. So I opended Nightcafe Studio and uploaded my painting in order to use it as a starter image.

There are two ways to influence the outcome:

1. the prompt

2. the weight you place on the image

I used Nightcafe Studio. The first result I got is very different from the original painting. It shows a green goblin with some funny headgear and two blades growing out of his body. Not a bad design, but too far away from the origjnal piece.

So I reduced the weight of the prompt, and I got an illustration which resembles the original far more.

What did I learn?
1. Sometimes it makes sense to just let the AI decide what it comes up with. Taking the horns of the goblin and changing them into some sharp blades is quite interesting!

2. If you want an image which looks more like the original you have to try a few times. Just play and have fun!

Combining watermedia with acrylics

When I say "watermedia" I mean watercolor brush pens and pens whose ink can be dissolved with water. I own tombow brush pens, ecoline brush pens and stabilo 66 pens. I love the vivid colors. 

So I grabbed a piece of watercolor paper, some of the pens I mentioned above and began to paint. I did not do a preliminary sketch, I just went for colors and shapes. In the process of painting I noticed that the shapes formed themselves into two fish characters. 

Now I thought about the background. Why not using acrylics for the background? So I went for an old acrylic paint tube, wondering whether it still would produce paint. Yes, it did. 

It might not be one of my best paintings, but it was important for me to have a break from all these AI image creations and do some traditional painting again.
 

How to use ChatGPT to create a refined prompt

Are you familiar with the expression "being afraid of the blank page / white canvas"? I must admit that more than once I felt like that when I tried to think of a prompt to use with one of the numerous AI Art Generators I am creating images with. Well I discovered a method for myself which helped me to deal with that kind of feeling and I want to share it with you. 

1. PromptSilo
PromptSilo is a webpage where you can find all kinds of information to put into a prompt. It gives you ideas for a prompt. For example you want to create an image which depicts a landscape with certain plants or flowers. It gives you a list of flowers, trees, whatever you like. You want to create a painting of this landscape in a certain style - just click on the artist.

This is what I got:
 bouganvillea trees style of Edgar Degas daylight

2. ChatGPT
The second step is to ask ChatGPT to refine the prompt. Here is the refined prompt:
Capture the graceful essence of bougainvillea trees in the style of Edgar Degas, bathed in the soft glow of daylight

3. Submit the prompt to an AI Art Generator (in this case: Bing Image Creator)

Here is the image created with the above prompt.

Once you have a refined prompt you can change it easily. You can replace the kind of tree you want to see, you can change the style, you can change the light. The possibilities are endless!

Painting with Liquid watercolours

I must admit I got lots of artist materials. Acrylic ink, acrylic tube paints, acrylic markers, alcoholbased markers, waterbased brush pens, oil pastels, a set of watercolours and some liquid watercolours (also known as "watercolour inks") from Royal Talens (Ecoline) and from Pebeo (Colorex).

It had been quite some time since I used these liquid watercolours. But two days ago I felt very much like painting with them again. I used Yellow from Colorex and Fir Green from Ecoline. I had bought a beginner Colorex set a long time ago, when they had no droppers on their bottles, so I had to use a pipette for putting the ink on my palette. Regarding the Fir Green the bottle has got a dropper, so putting it on the palette was no problem. But then it got a wee difficult - mixing liquid inks is a bit of a trial and error process. 

However, as you can see on the image I managed somehow to get various shades of green and yellow. I think mixing liquid paints (the same applies to acrylic inks, in my opinion) is a matter of practice!